Struggling to increase domain authority and see your site climb the search rankings?
If you’ve been working hard on SEO but still can’t break through to the top, it can be frustrating.
But how do you improve it? 🤔
Well, the good news is, there are clear, actionable steps you can take today to boost your domain authority and strengthen your site’s SEO game in 2025.
From optimizing your content to building high-quality backlinks with outreach tools, it’s all about consistency and strategy. In this article, you’ll learn 9 powerful steps to increase your domain authority and drive better results.
Whether you’re new to SEO or an experienced marketer, these tips will help you make tangible improvements to your site’s authority and rankings.
Different Ways to Calculate Site Authority
Website authority is like your website’s reputation. It’s important to understand because it helps show how high your site might appear on Google and other search engine results.
Google doesn’t officially have a “website authority” score, but it’s a key idea in SEO (making your website better for search engines). It basically tells you how strong and likely to rank well your website is.
Many SEO tools have their own ways to measure this authority. They each use a different formula to come up with a score.
Domain Authority (DA) by Moz
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. It considers factors like the number of unique domains linking to your site, the total number of backlinks, and the authority of the linking domains.
DA scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating a greater ability to rank.
Authority Score (AS) by Semrush
Authority Score (AS) is Semrush’s metric for evaluating a domain’s overall quality and SEO performance. It integrates data on referring domains, backlinks, organic traffic, and other factors to provide a comprehensive assessment.
AS is also scored from 0 to 100, with higher scores suggesting stronger authority.
Domain Rating (DR) by Ahrefs
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs’ metric that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile. It focuses on the number of unique referring domains and the quality of those domains.
DR scores, like DA and AS, range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating a more robust backlink profile.
Domain Power (DP) by Search Atlas
Domain Power (DP) is a newer metric that aims to provide a more accurate reflection of a site’s authority by blending organic traffic and ranking keywords data from Google Search Console. This approach focuses on actual site performance rather than just backlink profiles, offering insights into real-world SEO effectiveness.
This makes Domain Power the most accurate metric on the market.
Increasing Your Site Authority: Step-by-Step Guide
Building website authority isn’t magic 🧙
It’s a process with actionable steps you can take.
So here’s a breakdown.
1. Create High-Quality Content to Attract Backlinks and Build Trust
High-quality content builds your website authority. When your content is helpful and interesting, people share it and link back to it.
These backlinks then work like votes of confidence, telling search engines like Google that your site is a trusted source. This improves your site’s reputation and authority and helps you rank higher.
But how will you know your content’s on point?
The first thing you can do is use Search Atlas’ Scholar Tool. This tool is unique as it can show you how Google evaluates your content’s clarity, factuality, and overall quality.
It also gives you insights into how your content stacks up against competitors.
Speaking of competitors, analyze what kinds of content get the most backlinks in your niche. Once you know that, you can create content that fills gaps, covers topics you’ve missed so far, or offers more value.
Next, you’ll want your content seen and linked to, so you have to target the right keywords. For this, you can use keyword research tools to find popular keywords your audience is searching for.
This ensures your content is valuable and easily found, increasing the chance of earning backlinks, attracting traffic, and increasing your authority.
After publishing content, track how it performs regarding search rankings and traffic. These insights help you optimize future content and improve what’s already live, making everything work even better.
2. Optimize On-Page SEO to Enhance Search Engine Understanding and Rankings
Search engines like Google need to understand your website to rank it. On-page SEO is how you help them. By organizing your content and using keywords well, you tell Google what your page is about and why it’s valuable.
So here’s a checklist of things you can do to boost your on-page SEO and rankings:
- Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: Use OTTO SEO to craft clear, concise, keyword-rich titles and descriptions that attract clicks and improve search visibility.
- Check Keyword Usage: OTTO helps ensure you’re using the right keywords naturally, avoiding overstuffing, and keeping content effective and reader-friendly.
- Run an On-Page SEO Audit: Quickly identify issues in URLs, headers, alt text, and links with On-Page Audit Tool to boost site structure and performance.
- Improve Site Speed and Mobile-Friendliness: OTTO provides actionable tips to improve page speed and ensures your site is mobile-friendly for better SEO and user experience.
- Internal Linking to Spread Link Equity: Find opportunities with OTTO to strengthen internal links, helping boost page authority and guide search engines through your content.
3. Acquire Authoritative Backlinks to Boost Site Credibility
Acquiring high-quality backlinks is one of the most powerful ways to boost your site’s credibility and improve your domain authority. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your chances of ranking better on SERPs.
But how do you acquire these backlinks? 🤔
It’s not just about collecting any link; you need to focus on high-authority, relevant backlinks that genuinely add value.
So here are some ways you can do it. First, you can do outreach to other relevant websites in your niche, including bloggers.
While some people still do it manually, Search Atlas’ OutreachTool makes this process easy. With this tool, you can research potential link-building opportunities, track your outreach efforts, and manage responses, all from one platform.
Another fantastic way to gain authoritative backlinks is by creating and distributing press releases. Search Atlas’ Press Release Software helps you craft professional press releases that highlight important news or updates about your business.
Once you’ve created a press release, you can use the Press Release Distribution Tool to send it out to media outlets, bloggers, and industry influencers. These backlinks are often highly valuable and can have a significant impact on your domain authority.
4. Improve User Experience to Increase Engagement and Reduce Bounce Rates
Improving your site’s user experience (UX) is a game-changer when it comes to boosting engagement and reducing bounce rates. A great SEO UX means your visitors have a seamless, enjoyable experience when they land on your site.
Why does it matter?
Well, if users land on your page and quickly bounce away because it’s slow, confusing, or hard to navigate, search engines like Google take that as a sign that your content might not be all that relevant or user-friendly.
This negatively impacts your rankings. But when your visitors are happy, engaged, and spending time on your site, it tells Google that your content is exactly what they’re looking for.
So, how can you improve UX with the right tools?
- Optimize Site Speed: If your website takes too long to load, visitors will leave before they even get the chance to engage with your content.
- Run a Full UX Audit: Review everything from your site’s structure to its readability and mobile responsiveness, using site audit tools. Check for potential issues, like broken links, slow-loading pages, and confusing navigation.
- Mobile Optimization: Test your site’s mobile responsiveness Look at font size, button placement, or image scaling, so your visitors get a smooth experience no matter the device.
- Enhance User Engagement with Content Optimization: User engagement is closely tied to how easy it is for visitors to find and consume your content. Make sure your content is easy to skim and navigate.
- Fix Navigation Issues: A confusing navigation structure leads to high bounce rates. Identify and address these problems by checking your internal linking strategy and overall site layout.
You can also automate all of these tasks with OTTO SEO, which you’ll love if you have an agency and plenty of sites to take care of.
5. Fix Broken Links and Address Technical Issues to Ensure Site Health
Search engines like Google use crawlers to scan your website. If they encounter broken links, errors, or other technical problems, they may struggle to index your content properly or even decide to lower your rankings.
Plus, users aren’t likely to stick around if they come across broken pages or malfunctioning features.
So, how can you fix these issues?
- Identify and Fix Broken Links with Site Explorer: One of the simplest ways to check for broken links is by using Search Atlas’ Site Explorer. The tool scans your entire website to find any internal or external links that are broken. Once these are identified, you can go in and update or remove them.
- Run a Technical SEO Audit: To ensure your site is free from any technical issues that could hurt its performance, run a thorough audit. The right tool will highlight problems such as slow page speeds, missing metadata, incorrect redirects, duplicate content, and other technical SEO issues.
- Monitor Your Site’s Health: Evaluate your site’s content, structure, and technical performance, alerting you to areas that need attention.
- Optimize Site Structure for Better Crawling: If your site structure is messy or disorganized, search engines may struggle to crawl it effectively. OTTO SEO can help optimize your site’s architecture, ensuring that important pages are easy for search engines to find and index.
6. Monitor SEO Trends to Adapt Strategies and Maintain Competitive Edge
Staying on top of SEO trends is crucial for maintaining your site’s competitive edge. Search engines constantly update their algorithms, and new trends like AI content, voice search, and video optimization are emerging fast.
By using the latest tools, you can track these changes and adjust your strategy accordingly. OTTO SEO automatically adjusts to changing trends and search engine updates, meaning you won’t have to worry about falling behind.
And here’s an example.
In 2025, Google’s shift to require JavaScript and limit data scraping has caused headaches for traditional SEO tools.
Unlike others, Search Atlas stays ahead of these changes by using first-party data from Google Search Console (GSC). With JavaScript-enabled browsers and advanced browser emulation, Search Atlas delivers accurate, up-to-date insights without relying on scraping.
This approach keeps your data safe and ensures you get the most reliable information for your SEO strategies, even as Google tightens its requirements.
7. Establish Topical Authority to Position Your Site as an Industry Expert
Want to make your website the go-to resource in your industry? That’s where topical authority comes in.
By becoming a trusted expert, you’ll build trust with both your audience and search engines, making your site a leader. The key is consistently creating high-quality, in-depth content that really dives into the topics your audience cares about.
But where do you even begin?
A great starting point is keyword gap analysis. Think of it like this: what are your competitors covering that you’re not? This analysis helps you pinpoint those missing topics and subtopics that are important to your target audience.
By filling those content gaps with valuable, relevant information, you show search engines that your site offers comprehensive coverage within your niche.
This significantly boosts your topical authority, making you the reliable source everyone turns to, which, in turn, increases your relevance and trustworthiness in the eyes of search engines.
Finally, don’t just create amazing content – promote it! Consistent, high-quality content, discovered through smart strategies like keyword gap analysis, will truly solidify your site’s expertise.
And if you are looking to expand your reach, using paid content ads will bring your valuable content in front of the right audience at the right time.
8. Use Topical Dominance to Improve Your Authority
Think of topical maps and topical authority as becoming a respected expert on a subject. Topical dominance is like taking that to the next level. It’s about being the ultimate, number one resource for that subject, covering everything about it across your entire website. You’re not just an expert; you’re the expert.
So, while topical authority focuses on building trust and credibility on specific topics, topical dominance means you completely own that topic. You achieve this by creating tons of content that explores every possible angle, question, and related idea.
The goal is for your site to rank highly for a huge range of keywords all connected to that main subject, making you the undisputed go-to source.
And there’s a really juicy tool that can help you compare your site to competitors for this exact metric.
9. Remove Toxic Backlinks to Preserve Site Reputation and Authority
Toxic backlinks are links from low-quality or spammy websites that can harm your site’s reputation and hurt its rankings. These links signal to search engines that your site might be associated with unreliable or unethical sources, potentially leading to penalties.
Why does it matter?
If left unchecked, toxic backlinks can damage your domain authority and make it harder for you to rank well in search results. The goal is to maintain a clean and trustworthy link profile, which is essential for preserving your site’s credibility and ranking potential.
To manage this, use link building tools or OTTO SEO to identify toxic backlinks. It scans your link profile and flags any suspicious links. Once identified, you can disavow these harmful backlinks automatically. Regularly monitoring your backlinks and removing toxic ones is key to maintaining your domain authority.
Improve Your Domain Power and Rank with Search Atlas AI Tools
Increasing your site authority is one of the most powerful steps you can take to boost your ranking.The higher your site authority, the more likely you are to appear at the top of search engine results, making your website a trusted resource in your niche.
At Search Atlas, we respect all metrics, but we know Domain Power gives you the most precise picture of how well your site is positioned to climb the SERPs.
And with Search Atlas AI tools, you can get this information quickly and take action fast. Ready to see the difference for yourself? Start improving your site’s authority now with a 7-day free trial.
