Improve your blog domain authority

Business Benefits

Improve the performance and health of your blog relative to competitors.


Regularly produce long-form content that is thorough, better than competitors’ similar content, and follows SEO best practices.

Use a tool like Ahrefs Content Explorer to find and exploit content gaps in competitors’ content. Add expert quotes, original graphics, original research and data, or well-researched arguments that are unique, surprising, or more detailed than competitors’ similar content.

Follow SEO best practices for each blog post, including:

  • Use one main keyword in your title.
  • Use properly formatted header tags, like one H1 tag and many H2 and H3 header tags to logically split up subtopics.
  • Include internal links to related blog posts or other relevant pages of your website.
  • Include related keywords naturally throughout each blog post.
  • Include descriptive image alt-text.
  • Include high-authority outbound links when citing a source or for further reading.
  • Aim for at least 1000 words for most blog posts.

Check your domain authority and its strength by using Moz’s Link Explorer and comparing your domain to your competitors’ domain authorities.

Check your domain authority metrics, which were developed by Moz, by using Moz’s Link Explorer or MozBar. Domain authority is measured from 1 to 100, with 100 indicating the highest chance of ranking. Enter in your SERP competitors’ URLs as well to see what domain authority you are aiming to beat.

Alternatively, use Ahrefs’ Authority Checker.

Perform technical and SEO audits to find technical and on-page SEO issues to fix, like redirect errors or slow page load time.

Use a site crawler tool, like Moz’s Site Crawl tool, to find technical SEO issues, including:

  • Slow page load speed.
  • Redirect errors.
  • Broken links.
  • Missing or unoptimized meta descriptions.
  • Site not optimized for mobile.
  • Indexing issues.
  • Duplicate pages.
  • No header tags.
  • No image alt-text.

Perform a monthly link audit to assess your blog’s backlink profile, using a backlink checker tool from a site like SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs.

Identify:

  • broken or lost backlinks.
  • unlinked brand mentions.
  • toxic backlinks.

Include a competitors’ backlink analysis to find backlink opportunities and reassess your strategy to beat them.

Email guest blog proposals to industry blogs that have a high domain authority, accept guest blog submissions, and attract user engagement.

To assess guest blog opportunities:

  • Use Moz’s Link Explorer or another domain authority checker to check the blog’s domain authority.
  • Check their guidelines to see if they accept guest blog submissions.
  • Look at some of their recent blog posts’ comments, social media comments, and shares to gauge user engagement.
  • Check to see if they use a nofollow link tag. Prioritize sites that do NOT use nofollow links.
  • Study the blog’s typical writing style, length, and niches to see if it’s a good fit for your brand and to help craft your proposal.
  • Follow the specific blog’s instructions about what to include in the submission proposal, if information is provided.

Write high-quality guest blog posts and blog posts for your site that contain links back to your relevant blog posts.

For guest blogs on other sites, include strategic links back to your site’s blog posts when relevant and useful. Follow the guest blog’s linking rules. If linking is only allowed in the author’s bio, include one prominent link to your blog.

For all blog posts on your site, include relevant internal links to other related blog posts on your site. If your blog does not have breadcrumb navigation, tags, and an easy-to-follow navigation structure, update your blog to improve internal navigation.

Email site owners or page authors to request backlinks that claim unlinked brand mentions, fix lost backlinks, or replace their broken link with your related blog post.

Use the backlink profile information from your link audit to guide the link building outreach process. Create a customizable email template for each type of outreach, like for claiming an unlinked brand mention or fixing a lost backlink, to expedite the process. To prioritize link building efforts:

  • Choose pages that are recent or that are updated frequently
  • Choose related, non-spammy sites
  • Check to see if they use nofollow tags. If they do, avoid prioritizing this link.
  • Make sure the blog’s author or site owner has accessible contact information
  • Look to see if you have any brand mentions or lost backlinks from high-authority sites, especially sites that end with .edu or .gov. Prioritize these opportunities.

Remove toxic backlinks by sending your list of toxic links to Google’s Disavow Tool.

Toxic backlinks are links from sites that are perceived by the search engine as spam or suspicious. Use a link checker tool like Website SEO Checker’s Toxic Backlink Checker, or review the information from your link audit, to see if you have any inbound links that are considered spam. To prevent spammy links from affecting your SEO, create a list of the spam links in a text file and upload to Google’s Disavow Tool. Review Google’s guidelines first to assess if this step is necessary.

Promote your blog content and guest blogs to social media and email lists to drive traffic to your blog and guest blog posts.

High blog engagement, like comments and shares, boost domain authority scores. Encourage sharing by including sharing icons on all blog posts and by promoting your blog posts on social media. Encourage commenting by ending blog posts with an insightful question, including a call to action to leave questions in the comments section, or by responding to blog comments with useful answers.

Check your domain authority once a month to assess progress and nurture your backlink building strategy.

Your Moz Domain Authority will change every 3-4 weeks. To nurture your backlink building strategy:

  • Check for email responses from site owners you contacted for backlink opportunities.
  • Audit your backlink profile around once a month.
  • Send backlink outreach emails and follow-ups.
  • Create high-quality blog posts each week with internal links.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T11:30:32Z