Incase you've stumbled here out of interest, we should probably discuss quickly what exactly is SEO and Domain Authority. 'Search Engine Optimisation' is about ensuring your web page ranks high in the search engines when someone is googling a particular topic. Whereas your DA is a number from 1-100 that shows you how well your website ranks on search engines, this metric was developed by moz and you can find yours here. Don't be discouraged if yours seems low, on average most bloggers vary from 10-40, whereas pages like twitter and facebook are basically at 100. Whilst improving your DA might take some ground work (getting links back to your website) there are some things you can incorporate into your website to help boost it up in the next few months.
1. Have your own domain.
The first thing you need to actually be able to have a DA, is your own domain name. If your blog or website has .blogspot or .wordpress in it then you'll be seeing their ranking, and not yours. You can use a site like GoDaddy to get one and setting it up just takes a quick youtube tutorial and you're good to go. Make sure you make it easy to read and doesn't contain any words Google might find offensive, like poop.
2. Be user friendly.
Back in 2010 when piczo was still around it was all about having music, glitter falling down the screen and about 100 widgets on your page - but nowadays this just means longer loading time and a high chance that someone will probably click the X on the corner of the screen. Most templates you buy/insert come optimised for mobile use, but it's always good to check as more people are accessing pages this way and this is something Google also takes into account.
3. Format your posts.
This might add an extra 10 minutes to your publishing time but once you get into the habit of doing this you won't have to think about it twice. There's been a lot of debate as to whether having H1, H2 tabs still improve your SEO, but just to be on the safe side it's worth incorporating. Make the most of headings, sub-headings, paragraphs, numbering and making sure the reader can find what they're looking for easily.
4. Optimise your images.
This is something I didn't realise mattered until a couple of months ago, but it's basically ensuring your images alt/title text are named appropriately. On blogger you can do this by clicking 'properties'. If for any reason your photo isn't loading, it will tell the reader what the photo is of i.e. the Eiffel Tower. Another tip is not to over spam your post with images either as this will slow down the loading speed.
5. Link building.
When it comes to links there are three things you should be practising, the first being including at least two inbound links that will point the reader to another page in your blog. Two outbound links to trustworthy websites - i.e. another bloggers page, booking.com, imdb. This can then also be split into do-follow and no-follow, which by rule of thumb if you're being sponsored to include someones link, you should generally make it a no-follow link as google might perceive this as being 'spamy' or not genuine. Lastly, the hardest part is getting other people to link back to your website, which brings me on to my next point.
6. Guest post.
Guest posting is not just great for increasing your online presence and reaching new people, but if they include a link back to your site that's them telling Google 'this person is trustworthy and has good things to say rank them a little bit higher will ya' You'll have to do this for free mostly, but again it's great for building relationships, widening your audience and link building.
7. Use keywords.
Keywords are the key to SEO writing. These are basically the words, or variation of words people usually use when searching for something they want. Take this post for example, if it were me trying to find out this information I'd Google 'ways of increasing your SEO' or 'how to get a higher Domain Authority' so these would be the type of key words/phrases I would include in my post. You can use a tool like wordtracker that will show you popular keywords for your topic.
8. Remove bad links.
You know when you click on a page on the internet and get hit with the 404 error, that can sometimes happen to pages in your website. You can use a free tool like this one to find the ones you have and get rid of them. Sometimes this might just need you to delete spammy comments people have left in order to try and increase their DA, which usually doesn't work because ya boy Google is clever.
9. Use meta descriptions & a captivating title.
That little description box on the side of your post when editing (on blogger) is what tells people what your post is about when shared on Facebook, Pinterest and on Google - i.e. the few lines that come up under the title. Keep this around two lines so you can get the full picture and make sure to use one of your keywords in here. Some may confuse having a captivating title with 'clickbait' - which many Youtuber's seem to be a fan of lately. Using titles like '10 ways to ___' and 'how to ___' all invite people to learn more about something. So be inspiring and creative with your titles but try not to lie to your readers just to get a few more views.
10. Share your posts on social media!
Finally, to bring this all together you need to get people to click on your links. Using a tool like tweetdeck allows you to schedule posts, so you can keep promoting older 'evergreen' posts. Commenting on other people's blogs might entice them to do the same with yours, and again is a form of link building if you refer back to your blog - in a non spammy way. There are plenty of comment pods out there or twitter # to help promote your content, so make the most of it! Here's a recent post I wrote on how to increase your social media presence.
So that's all from me on this topic guys, the crappy thing about SEO is sometimes you can be doing all these things and then your DA will drop/stay static for no reason but do not despair - if you're producing good content the rest will follow suit! Do you have any more tips to share on improving your website rankings?
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