Any blogger looking to work with brands will be all too familiar with the phrase “what is your DA”. The higher your DA, the more you get paid. But what exactly is a a blog DA score and how do you go about improving it?
For the longest time I was confused about what a DA score was but it suddenly started popping up everywhere. My blog was purely a hobby for quite a long time. It was only a couple of years ago that I started accepting sponsored posts and started treating blogging as a side hustle and that’s when I made the effort to research what a DA score is.
So what is a DA score?
DA stands for domain authority so put simply your DA score is a search engine ranking that predicts just how well your blog will rank on search engine pages. A DA score goes from 1 to 100, the higher your score the more likely you are to rank. The higher your domain authority the more money you can expect to get paid for jobs as brands will know you have a better chance of ranking on search engines.
A DA score can only be calculated on domains you own so domains ending in .blogger.com or .wordpress.com won’t have a DA score as you don’t own the domain. That’s why it’s super important to buy a domain from the get go. My biggest blogging regret is that I was blogging for around 7-8 years before I even bought my own domain. That’s 7-8 years where my domain authority could have been building up. I now have two other blogs aside from this one and the first thing I did was buy my own domains for them. Domains are probably one of the cheapest things you could buy in your blogging journey and in my opinion it should be a top priority.
How do you improve a DA score?
So the thing that everyone wants to know is how do you improve your domain authority? If a DA score can equal more blogging opportunities and more money then surely it makes sense to be doing all you can to improve it. Sadly though there’s no magic formula to improving a DA score and you’ll often find your score will fluctuate too. It also doesn’t happen overnight. Building up you DA score is a long term process and it will be a matter or months not weeks before your score goes up even one or two points.
Whilst there may not be a perfect formula for improving your DA there are a number of simple things you can get into the habit of doing that will build up your domain authority over time. Good SEO practices are essentially what you need to give your DA a boost and lets be honest, they’re not bad habits to get into when it comes to blogging anyway. Here are 5 things you should be doing to not only improve your DA but improve your blog overall:
- Optimize your on page content – make sure your using keywords and phrases and variations on them. Make sure you have a meta description for all your posts as well as image alt tags.
- Up your linking game – internal links are super important. Linking to other relevant posts you’ve written keeps people on your site for longer. Make sure internal links are easy to navigate and make sure you have a home button too that people can return to. You can internal link in several ways (and you should be looking to do all of these if you can): internal links can be placed with in a blog post – for example, above where I talked about not having my own domain from the start I linked to a post about things I wished I’d known when I started blogging. You can also internally link with featured post sliders and a sidebar spot and ‘you might also enjoy…’ widgets at the bottom of posts.
- Tidy up your links – broken links aren’t good for your blog. If you’re linking to external sites sometimes these links no longer exist. While it can be a pain you can use broken link checkers to source out any bad links. The one I use is brokenlinkcheck.com
- Get externally linked on someone else’s blog – getting linked on another authoritative site is a good way to show your content and site can be trusted. If you’re working with brands they might link to your content or share it but another great way to boost your authority is by advertising or guest posting on another bloggers site. By advertising with another blogger your content will be shared not only on their blog but across multiple platforms.
If you’re looking for a cheap advertising package I have one for just £5! To get the full details head on over to my advertise with me page.
- Take care of the smaller details – you could have amazing content with all the right keywords but if you’re website isn’t mobile friendly or doesn’t load quickly then there’s just no point. Most people are going to view your site on mobile so you need to make sure it’s fully optimised and responsive while still look great on mobile. Also if your site doesn’t load quickly then people won’t have the patience to wait around and will just leave your site.
How to check your DA score
The best way to check your DA score is with Moz. You can create a free account where you get 10 link checks per month which is more than enough as your DA score doesn’t need to be constantly checked. It’s easy to use and breaks down what your score is, the number of unique external linking domains and the keywords you rank for.
How important your blogs DA score is to you depends on what you’re wanting from your blog. If it’s just a hobby it’s not a factor you need to worry about too much but if you’re wanting to make money from your blog then educating yourself on what a blog DA is and how to improve it will really help you out.
I hope this post helped you out when it comes to understanding what a DA score is and hopefully you’ve learnt some tips on how to improve it.
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Hi lauren, thanks for sharing this informative content, I never knew how to check my blog DA but this post has taught me how. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, I’m glad you’ve learnt something from it!
This was really interesting, especially the section on links. I’d love to get my da score up a bit, but as you said, it is just a waiting game sometimes. I’ll definitely be trying the tips in this post though 😊
Thanks, I’m glad you found it helpful!
I definitely start looking into DA now I’ve bought my own domain – I was the same in that it took me about 7 years to buy my own and only bought it last month!
Tash | http://www.agirlwithview.co.uk
Better late then never for us!
My struggle at the moment ! This post was very helpful to me . Thank you 💙
You’ll get there! I’m really glad you found it helpful!
Thank you for this! As a new blogger, this is very useful!
Thanks! I’m happy you found it useful!
This is such an informative post. I’ve only recently started my blog again but over the next year I’m looking to get my own domain and maybe turn it into a way to make some extra money. This is incredibly helpful for me to know so thank you for posting!
I’m glad it helped you out.
I’m pretty new to the blogging world and I took a course and I know how important SEO is. Also harder when you have multiple categories to blog about but I know it takes time so I’m hoping I’ll get there soon! Thank you for sharing I hadn’t thought about #3.
You’ll get there! It definitely doesn’t happen overnight but just keep working on it and you’ll see great results!
My goal this month is to work on increasing my DA score. Moz also has a Chrome extension and tells the DA score for every site I visit which I find really helpful. Thanks for your tips!
I didn’t know about the Chrome extension so thanks! I’ll have to look into that.
Hi there!
I’m from Twitter and I thought this blog post was pretty neat! I think you were able to take an otherwise dull topic (at least, not something I’m particularly interested in, no hate!) and really transform it into an easy to understand, digestible point of information. I like the way you structured the post and provided such a pretty background and pink font (although I feel at times it’s a little too light for me to read properly). Any who, you did lovely and it was neat to learn more about this perspective.
Happy blogging!!
xxx
Thanks for reading and thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for sharing this! I’ve just looked into my DA and didn’t have a clue where to start so this was very much needed!!
Hope you’re keeping well
James.
Ah brilliant! I’m glad it’s helped you out. I hope you’re well too.
Really good tips! I’ve been working on my DA and over the past year it’s gotten to 14, but I’m looking forward to it growing to double what it is now!
You’ll get there, you’re blog is amazing so you’ll definitely achieve double and more!
Been doing a lot of reading about this so it’s good to see I’m on the right lines. This is well constructed and easy to read after my brain hurts from reading really technical pages about DA and SEO ahaha.
Haha, I’m glad I could make it a bit easier for you!
Thank you for sharing. This post has been super helpful and I’m going to go back through my posts and see if I can make them better using your suggestions.
Brilliant! Thank you, I’m glad it’s helped you out.
Brilliant. Very helpful.
Thanks!
Hi, that is a wonderful post with useful tips, I am going to implement all on my blog- https://perspectiveofdeepti.blogspot.com/
Thanks!
Thanks! I’m glad you’ve found it useful.
Some great tips. I accidentally deleted my old blog in December last year trying to move it from WordPress to Blogger. So, I’m having to start afresh and would love to get my DA back up. Would love to advertise with you 🙂
Lots of love, Helen x
http://www.whathelenloves.com
I can’t wait to have you as an advertiser in July! Oh no, I hope you manage to get it back up soon!
Thanks for sharing this. I am also using my blog as a hobby for now but soon I am planning to buy a domain. This post helped me a lot why it should be a priority for me now!
Thank you! I’m glad it helped you out.
Thank you for this! It’s so helpful for me. I’ve been blogging for several years already, but it’s only now that I’m paying attention to things like DA scores and SEO and keyword search. At times, it’s overwhelming, but thank you for explaining it so easily! 🙂
Thank you! I’m really glad you’ve found it helpful!
Thank you Lauren. This was very useful information. I still don’t understand quite well how to select and use keywords in my blog URL and title to optimize my ranking. Can you give me an example of an optimized blog article URL and also title. I also am not sure how to label the Alt text to increase ranking. Kindly give me me an example of an optimized Alt text narration.
All of my posts are SEO friendly to the best of my ability, I run my blog post titles through Co Schedule Headline Analyzer to help me. As for alt text on images if you blog on WordPress then just select your image and there should be an option to add alt text. Your aiming for long tail keyword for your title and alt text. For example if I was writing about how to start a blog you need to get a bit more specific so ‘how to start a blog and earn money’ might be a better idea.
Thank you. This has given me a good idea,
This was such a useful read! Thank you so much! It has definitely taught me a few things that I am going to check out!
LifeRightNowx/ http://www.liferightnowx.co.uk
Thanks! I’m glad it helped.
This is so good, thank you so much!!! I’m returning from a 1.5-2 year hiatus, so it’s good to know that the rules for the DA score game have stayed roughly the same, haha!!
I’m glad you found it useful!