Google weighs many factors to rank each page in its search results. A site that is technically sound and optimized for the right keywords is still held back if it lacks authority. Sites that rank at the top of the results page (SERP) usually have a higher domain authority score.
How does Google judge a site's authority? What does a domain authority score measure, and how do you improve it on a Webflow site? Here are our answers.
What is domain authority?
Domain authority is not a ranking factor. Google does not use it in its systems and does not use the term.
The metric is calculated by SEO tools called domain authority checkers. "Domain authority" is the most common name, but each tool has its own. You will see site authority, website trust, domain rating or, at SE Ranking, domain trust.
These tools calculate the score from the number of backlinks a site has and their quality. If many high-authority sites link to yours and very few spam sites do, your score will be good.
Built by SEO professionals, this metric gives you a quick read on the quality of your backlink profile and lets you compare it with your competitors'.
Why domain authority matters for your SEO
If it is not a ranking factor, why care about it? Because Google has a similar system, called PageRank, that assesses a site's authority from the backlinks pointing to it. The patent for this system is public, but Google does not disclose exactly how it determines a site's authority.
Domain authority metrics are the best estimate SEOs have of that system. The formula varies from tool to tool, but most give a fairly accurate picture of the quality of your backlink profile.
These metrics do not influence your rankings directly, but your backlink profile does. It is not the only factor. On average, though, the higher a site's domain rating and the more links it gets, the better it ranks. That means more organic traffic and a lower average cost per lead for your inbound marketing.
In SEO, your goal is to earn more quality links so you rank higher. Domain authority measures exactly that. Growing it is a good indicator of your off-page SEO and can serve as a measurable KPI for your SEO work.
Tips for improving your Webflow site's domain authority
For SEO, a Webflow site starts with several advantages. Technical SEO matters as much as off-page SEO, and Webflow covers most of it by default.
Webflow templates are optimized to work on every device. Webflow also offers fast, secure hosting with a global CDN. Your site follows Google's best practices and loads quickly anywhere in the world.
You save the time you would have spent managing all of this, and you can put it into growing your domain authority.
On the technical side, you have only 1 thing left to do, which is to connect your own domain. If your Webflow site still runs on the free subdomain every project gets, move to a real domain.
Buy a domain name that matches your brand, through Webflow, GoDaddy or another registrar, then connect it to your site.
Authority is built on the connected domain. Moving authority from yourbrand.webflow.com to yourbrand.com takes a lot of effort and gives weaker results than links earned directly to the final domain.
If that is already done, here is how to increase your Webflow site's domain authority.
Earn high-quality backlinks
The main driver of your score is earning many high-quality backlinks. The more authority the sites linking to you have, the more authority your site gains.
The hard part is assessing the quality of a potential link source, then finding a way to get that link.
Sometimes a site's quality is obvious. Major news sites like Forbes or The Washington Post carry authority in Google's eyes, and a link from one of them would be excellent for your SEO.
For most other sites, several criteria come into play. The basic criteria are the following:
- Domain authority
- Relevance
- Uniqueness
The last 2 are the easiest to understand and control.
Most of your backlinks should relate to your site's topic. If your business sells dog collars, the sites linking to you should cover pets and pet care. If you run a marketing agency, your links should mostly come from digital marketing blogs.
A few links from unrelated sites are not a problem. If they make up most of your backlink profile, though, they can hurt your domain authority.
Links should also sit within unique text. Google can penalize your site if you republish the same article with a link on dozens of sites. Check that the sites linking to you do not publish duplicate content, and do not publish any yourself.
A checker like SE Ranking's measures your current score. The tool calls this metric Domain Trust and calculates it from the number and quality of links pointing to a site. For any site, it also shows this data:
- The number of backlinks
- The number of referring domains
- Estimated traffic volume by country
- The number of keywords the site ranks for
- Average position in the SERP
- The number of indexed pages
- Domain age
All this data helps you judge the quality of a site that could link to you, especially estimated traffic. A site that ranks well for several keywords and gets decent traffic is trusted enough by Google. A link from it will help your domain rating and can bring you referral traffic.
So check a site's quality before seeking a link from it. There are 2 ways to find these sites.
The first is to search Google for "your industry + blog" to find sites that publish outside contributions. They usually allow at least 1 link to your site in the content you publish.
The second is faster. Run a competitor through a backlink checker and pull the list of domains linking to it. Remove the sites unrelated to yours, then check the domain authority of the others.
You can then use this list to earn links in several ways. Here are the most effective methods to increase domain authority through link building.
Foundational links
These are links you get with little or no effort, on sites that work like databases.
- Business directories
- Review sites
- Event sites
Content-driven links
These techniques rely on creating content for the site you want a link from.
- Publishing guest posts on industry blogs
- Writing a column for a news site or blog
- Answering journalists' requests on sites like HARO
Advanced link building techniques
These techniques require solid command of SEO tools and a large volume of outreach.
- Broken link building
- Getting listed in resource or review lists
- Reclaiming unlinked mentions
That covers most of what you can do to increase your site's domain authority. A few extra actions are still useful.
Diversify your backlink profile
Domain authority depends on the quality and number of links, and also on their diversity.
In the first months, it is normal to get only 1 type of link, often through guest posts. After a year, aim for a mix of link types. Beyond links from industry blogs, you should have some from directories and social networks. Join online discussions and post your content on your company pages to get them.
Google then sees that your site has a natural presence on the web, beyond a few links built here and there.
Ideally, you have both dofollow and nofollow links pointing to several pages.
Focus on quality content
Reaching out to sites and writing content for them works, but it takes a lot of research and effort to earn links in volume. To scale, create content that deserves to be cited. Other writers and publishers will pick it up and reference it in their own articles.
On a Webflow site, the SEO content formats most likely to earn you dozens of links are the following:
- Comprehensive guides on a specific topic
- Case studies
- Research reports
- Resource pages with industry data
- Interactive tools and widgets
This kind of content needs active promotion at first. Use all your channels. Add it to your newsletter, share it on social media and contact other publishers with a link to it.
Optimize pages for traffic
Some tools include traffic in their domain authority calculation. Even if yours does not, the end goal is still better rankings and more traffic, so this step is necessary either way.
To optimize a page, place your target keywords in the body text, in the SEO tags (title tag, meta description) and in image alt text. Keyword research is up to you, but Webflow provides tools to automate adding keywords to your pages.
Webflow also offers a tool to automate schema markup. Schema is a JSON document that gives Google extra technical information about the page and makes indexing easier. It can also trigger a SERP feature, like the navigation below.
Webflow can generate these files and add your site's information without any work on your side.
Monitor and reduce bad links
Finally, monitor your backlink profile for bad links, because they can lower your domain authority. Sometimes an article becomes popular and hundreds of spam sites copy it, leaving links to your pages. Sometimes low-quality sites link to hundreds of good sites in an attempt to manipulate domain authority.
Run a check every month. If you spot a flood of links from dubious sites with very low domain authority, use Google's disavow tool. Google will stop taking them into account and they will no longer affect your domain authority.
A good domain authority score leads to good rankings
Domain authority, or domain trust, is a useful metric to measure the results of your off-page SEO and compare your site with others. Growing it brings you better rankings, more traffic and, in the end, more conversions.
To increase it, earn varied, quality links and disavow bad links when they appear. Keep optimizing your site and your on-page SEO too, as it remains one of the keys to success on Google.
Apply these techniques and track your main SEO metrics with Webflow's SEO tools to measure the results.