How I got my DA to 45

A few months ago, my Domain Authority (DA) jumped from 35 to 41. I was shocked that my DA was so high! Being 30 or…

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A few months ago, my Domain Authority (DA) jumped from 35 to 41. I was shocked that my DA was so high!

Being 30 or over seems to be a common goal for bloggers, so every time DA was due to update, I was happy to stay the same.

I was sure it was a mistake when I saw it had somehow found itself in the 40s. I was pretty confident that after the next update, I’d be back in the 30’s. But the next update saw me increase to 42, then to 43. Then the last update, I checked my score to find it had gone up to 45!

A get a lot of questions asking how I do it. So here are some of the things I do on my blog that helped me to get to a DA over 40 and stay there.

Further reading: What’s Domain Authority?

How to increase domain authority.

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Build links to other sites.  

The more links there are to your site, the better. This is an indicator that you are influential, have high-quality content that people want to share and your content is relevant and up to date.

There are many ways to get links to your site.

The most organic way is to write content that people want to share. People often link my blog tip posts in their roundups, or write similar posts and link back to my original post as it’s inspired their post. So putting out content that is helpful to your audience is the best way to get people to link back to you.

You can also guest post on other people’s blog, although Google prefers you don’t use this a link building tool and have penalised people in the past for it. It’s still a fantastic way to get your name in front of more eyes! Bloggers often ask for guest posts in Facebook groups, generally when they are on holiday or know they are going to be busy.

Another way is to buy adverts on other blogs. Many bloggers offer advertising packages for a pretty low price. Some of these bloggers even do a monthly advertising spotlight, so even when your advert has expired your the link to your site will still remain on their blog.

Social Shares

Like link building, getting your content shared on social is a great way to get your site seen as having great content and being influential.

It also leads to your content being read by more people, increasing the number of shares and link banks.

The best way to get your content shared on social media is to be active and gain a following.

I have several guides already how to do this:

Essentially, the more active you are, the more people will read your promotional Tweets and share them. This increases if you engage with others and share their content, too.

Put internal links in your blog posts.

Internal linking is when you link back to your old blog posts within a new one. You do this to link your audience to something similar you’ve posted about before, or to link back to old posts to give more info of context.

Doing this is great for on page SEO which increases DA. So be sure to link to your old posts when relevant!

Increase your user friendliness of your site.

Again, I’ve already written a few topics on how to do this, such as:

Keeping your site user-friendly is a way to keep people coming back to your site, sharing content and helping to get your site viewed as high quality.

Age your domain.

My domain is 4 years old.

The older your domain is, the higher your DA is going to be. That’s why if you’re ever thinking about starting a second or third site, I always encourage people to buy the domain as soon as possible and set up a simple site until you’re ready to use it properly.

Regular, Quality Content.

I honestly think that biggest factor to my DA is that I update daily.

Not only do I update daily, but many of my posts are over 500 words, even over 1000 words.

Being consistent, updating regularly and sharing long articles are all indicators of a high-quality website.

Not only does regular updates help boost your site, but it means you’ll have more articles indexed, more internal links and a higher chance of external links.

Daily updates aren’t reasonable for everyone, but you can see a clear difference in this site which has a DA of 45 and is updated daily compared with my Fitness Blog which is updated 3 times a week and only has a DA of 27.

With 100’s of factors contributing to a good DA, I’m sure you can find more out there. But these are the things I focus on to keep my DA in the 40’s.

Do you have any tips to share?

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33 comments

  1. Great tips here! Like you I have been building my DA recently – from zero in May to 28 now. Agree that internal linking is important – as much as possible I include an internal link in every post. Plus when I relaunched the blog I went back and put as many internal links as possible in old posts.

    The other thing I do is take part in crowd-sourced posts as much as possible. These are where bloggers include tips from other bloggers and link back to their site. It’s much easier than writing a guest post. And I’m also about to do my own crowd-sourced post in order to pay it forward.

  2. 45 is amazing! I’m not sure what mine is right now, I’m too scared to look! I know I need to work more on external links and links within posts, that especially, slips my mind all the time!

    Sarah 🙂

  3. My DA has gone up from 27 to 33 and I only post 3 times a week! Yes! It’s not much and I know it’s nothing compare to others but I worked hard at it and happy that it’s where it’s at now. And good on you, Corinne! You worked so hard and deserved all the success.

  4. I think age and time left till renewal makes a big difference (although I could be wrong lol), anything over a couple of years does batter than newer URLs and I’ve seen it suggested that you should try and buy your domain for 5 or 10 years in order to make it look better in the eyes of google etc.

  5. Hi Corinne, did not know to write more than 500 characters was so important’ll consider that from now on, I’m thinking about buying your own domain and this post has been very useful!

  6. DA is something that I’m trying to focus on at the moment and I’ve already started internal linking. Really want to start guest posting but it’s finding the time to write extra blogs on top of the daily blogs I’m already doing!

  7. Such great tips, I always find your posts like this so interesting and helpful!
    I’m currently building my DA back up, as I bought a new url and didn’t transfer it properly, so lost it!
    I’m getting there slowly…

  8. Great tips Corinne thank your for sharing. Congratulations on 45! More than well deserved as you always produce such high quality content! I didn’t realise linking back to old posts would help. I’ve only recently taken an interest in my DA, so I will definitely be trying these out. Lots of love, Helen xx

  9. I’m going to have to make sure I’m posting longer posts. My DA went from in the 20s to 17! That’s the lowest it’s been since I switched urls. I could cry, I’m not entirely sure why it’s dropped, I think because I starting doing more vlog posts, the length of my posts decreased, so many that hasn’t helped. I just don’t know. So frustrating to be honest. Ah well, time to refocus and try again.

  10. I’m going to have to make sure I’m posting longer posts. My DA went from in the 20s to 17! That’s the lowest it’s been since I switched urls. I could cry, I’m not entirely sure why it’s dropped, I think because I starting doing more vlog posts, the length of my posts decreased, so many that hasn’t helped. I just don’t know. So frustrating to be honest. Ah well, time to refocus again.
    Honestly Ainend try again.

    1. Don’t know what happened – there was an error when I posted – might be a junky connection? It has posted repeatedly, please delete. Sorry.

  11. I’m going to have to make sure I’m posting longer posts. My DA went from in the 20s to 17! That’s the lowest it’s been since I switched urls. I could cry, I’m not entirely sure why it’s dropped, I think because I starting doing more vlog posts, the length of my posts decreased, so many that hasn’t helped. I just don’t know. So frustrating to be honest. Ah well, time to refocus again.

    Honestly Ainend try again.

  12. You update daily!! How do you find the time?! I struggle to post once a week, need to sort it aaaat! My DA is 25 atm, it’s been up and down over the past few months as I broke my collarbone and wrist coming off my bike so couldn’t write (and had nothing to write about) for months. I do love your blog though – every time I pop over for a quick read when I see a tweet I’m here forever, into a black hole of posts!

  13. Great tips Corinne. What is nuts at the moment with DA is all the furore over it. TBH I’ve rarely been asked for it by seo or brands, and 4.5 years ago even page rank didn’t have the fuss about it as DA does with bloggers now (in particular newer bloggers).

    My tip is just give it time and forget about it. Mine’s around 40 too, and I’ve done nothing to get it there, other than commenting, doing social media, and writing daily. I think too many bloggers nowadays worry about it when there’s other things to work on that willl get the same impact.

  14. Fantastic post Corinne! My DA score is 23 at the moment, which I’d say is pretty good for a new website, but I really want to up my game this year in every aspect of blogging, so I’ll definitely be taking your tips on board x

  15. Hi Corinne
    Just dipped in to blog, lots of fab tips for a newbie. Interested to see your blogs are 500-1000 words, I try to keep my to around 200 cos I personally get bored if it rambles on! Those of yours I’ve don’t by the way.
    Does the shortness of mine affect DA?

    Thanks Jen x

  16. Thanks so much for these tips! I recently bought a new domain and my DA slid downhill from 31 to now 1, as I have to start all over again… I’m slowly trying to build it back up though!

  17. Personally I think too many people worry about DA, in particular new bloggers. I didn’t even know about DA until about 3 years in to my blog when it became ‘the’ thing, but just having been around for years is what has built my DA to a similar level to yours. I don’t do guest posting, I don’t have ads on other blogs, I don’t think anyone links to me in bloggers they love, and although I do a lot of commenting and linkies they’re usually nofollow.

    I do post daily though, and have a mix of long and medium length posts which help. Plus I now write on out local bloggers website (although the DA for that will be a low level link back). There’s some great tips here, but people should just worry more about writing a good helpful blog, that people want to read, and the DA will come.

  18. Hey, this literally couldn’t have come at a better time I was just googling DA’s and then this post came up on my twitter feed.
    I just had a few questions, can you not get a DA if you don’t have your own domain? Cause I know mines like in the 90’s but that’s because I have a WordPress account. So I’m basically just really confused about what a DA is! X

  19. Such a helpful post! I find it hard to keep on top of all the latest updates that affect DA. The Yoast plugin has really helped me, as it takes you through step by step some of the key points needed to improve DA and also get more eyes on my post. I’ve heard that keeping on top of broken links is a good way to keep your DA from falling. Another helpful WordPress feature! Xx

    Tania | When Tania Talks

  20. These are some great tips! I have been blogging for 4 years but only bought my domain 2 years ago so it’s still all fairly new to me as when I first started blogging DA wasn’t a thing. But how long did it take you to get up to 45? I want to give myself some sort of timescale to work towards achieving my aim! Also I agree with Tania.. Yoast is a brilliant plugin every blogger should be using it for SEO!

  21. I’m really struggling with my DA at the moment so I’m really glad I stumbled upon this post! I think I need to focus on getting more links back to my site and making my blog posts longer because I’ve been mainly posting short articles so far

    Jess x

  22. Thanks for the tips!
    I am realy neglecting the building links part, so I’ll take this as a reminder!
    Also, updating daily seems like a great plan. There are always posts to update, but I have to fit it in to my daily routine.

    Thanx again!
    Jip

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