Whilst Pagerank isn’t used anymore, this gave birth to other SEO tools which use their own proprietary methods to measure the strength of backlink profiles for sites across the internet. These SEO tools are used by agencies, freelancers and companies worldwide.

Also note, you cannot compare results across the different tools as they measure SEO metrics in different ways.

Ultimately the goal of all these tools is to try and mimic search engines like Google and understand how they score and rank each site based on a mixture of SEO elements.

As well as scoring a domain, each page is also scored and the terminology is slightly different based on what tool you use.

• Semrush.com
  • Domain – Authority Score
  • Page – Authority Page Score
• Ahrefs.com
  • Domain – Domain Rating (DR)
  • Page – URL Rating (UR)
• Moz.com
  • Domain – Domain Authority (DA)
  • Page – Page Authority (PA)

Everytime someone performs a search in a search engine, it is a difficult task for search engines like Google to make sure they return the most relevant results possible.

Think of Authority like Popularity. If a search engine has to decide between two sites and which it should rank highest, authority can help. One site may have many links pointing to it from other sites, whilst the other may have little to no links. Search engines can make an educated choice that the first one is the best to place at the top of the organic search results because the popularity and mentions (links) it receives)

The internet is a big place and competition is ever growing so authority is vital to increase web visibility and appearing in as many organic search results as possible.
You can have the most amazing, well built website, but if no one links to you, search engines won’t pay you any interest either.

Think of link building as a type of PR. Building relationships with other site owners who like the content you are publishing and wish to share with their own visitors by including a website link from their site to yours.

Content marketing is a focused approach on creating relevant, valuable and consistent content. Producing dull and poorly written content will be disliked by users and search engines alike.

Good planning and understanding what is highly relevant right now is key as this will be much more attractive to users staying on the page longer and exploring the links within the article, search engines will also pick up on this.

A disavow file gives webmasters the ability to discount links. This is usually only used in extreme cases where links are seen to be toxic or highly irrelevant and you would wish not to be associated with them. This doesn’t prevent the link from existing, but does inform search engines to ignore them as part of your backlink profile.

Anchor text is the visible text on a hyperlink. This text will normally cause the mouse pointer change to a finger when hovered over indicating a link is present in the article.

This is the anchor text

The anchor text is also an important indication of what is expected to happen once a user clicks. Think of anchor text like a sign on a door which hints what you may find if you open that door.

Search engines also use this to help understand the relevance of the target page. If a page has many inbound links with similar anchors it will boost the relevance of the target page and help the page rank.

Attracting links by creating amazing content which others want to mention or content marketing is the best way to increase domain authority. There are many documented ways to boost domain authority but many are considered blackhat and not advised as they could lead to search engines placing a penalty on your site.

Bravr has worked hard over the years to craft building authority and gaining the best results.

This is relative to the niche and competitiveness of the sector you are in. Also individual page scores can and keyword difficulty are all factors. Authority scores are also logarithmic which means going from 0 to 30 will be relatively easy and will require a certain amount of links. Moving from an authority score of 30 to 50 is harder and will require 2 to 3 times more links. Lastly moving from 50 to 80 is very difficult and requires many times more links than the first two stages and links must be acquired from high authority level domains.

Many agency SEO tools do offer a free overview report. This usually gives a small insight to the strength of a site’s backlink profile and overall Authority Score.

• Check your Authority Score with SEMrush
• Check your Domain Rating with Ahrefs
• Check your Domain Authority with MOZ

Bravr has Agency level subscriptions to these tools which enables us to get deeper insights to sites overall authority and gap analysis.

Put simply, No. Domain authority should be thought of as a comparative metric not an absolute metric, and used as a handrail to understanding whether you are doing the right job in building your link profile.