Almost everyone aspires to be on Google’s first page, which describes the competition for a higher domain authority (DA).
After putting in a lot of time and effort to raise your domain authority, you might be wondering, “Why would domain authority drop?”
There are a variety of explanations why this may occur; however, keep in mind that a sudden decrease in DA might not be related to you.
In this article, we’ll look at a few explanations why your domain authority could be dropping, as well as how to fix it.
By the end of this post, you would have been cleared on why domain authority drops, and your panic would have stopped.
Ready for the drive? Let’s begin…
What is Domain Authority?
This is a measure developed by Moz that indicates the number of valid backlinks (i.e. external links to your website from other trusted sources) your site from other websites.
Domain authority attempts to determine how well a website will rank in SERPs, with 0 indicating the lowest likelihood of ranking well and 100 indicating the highest likelihood of ranking well.
The domain authority of a website is calculated using a logarithmic scale, which means that increasing the score from 60 to 70 is more difficult than increasing it from 30 to 40.
Your score is also affected by the value of those backlinks.
It was developed by Moz, but it’s an approximation of Google’s “PageRank” score (from 1 to 10) for determining the quality of a website.
Almost every major SEO tool has an equivalent of domain authority built into it: Ahrefs has Domain Rating, SEMrush has Authority Score, and so on.
Domain Authority (DA) measures how trustworthy a website is in comparison to other sites based on a variety of factors, including links.
It’s like a confidence vote if website A links to website B. The relation raises website B’s Domain Authority, making it more likely that posts on that domain will rank.
Why Would Domain Authority Drop?
As you’re trying to improve your domain authority (DA), it can be discouraging when you see a sharp drop.
A slight drop of 1-4 points is normally not a big issue because both Google and Moz tool updates can make your authority fluctuate.
However, if you see a significant change it’s reasonable to be concerned. Certain activities have the potential to hurt your domain authority.
Here are a few examples of the activities that can harm your domain authority:
1. Unethical link-building
The majority of website owners are aware that backlinks are beneficial to a website’s ranking.
Backlinks are also beneficial to your website. But the most significant factor is the type of website that is linking to yours.
Always keep in mind that linking your website to bad backlinks can be detrimental to your site.
Just a few bad backlinks, or even just one bad backlink, will lower your site’s domain authority.
And one thing to note is that you should not buy backlinks from someone or any backlink provider.
Backlinks are sold by a large number of Fiverr sellers. These forms of backlinks should never be purchased.
Some websites have had to stop blogging as a result of purchasing these forms of backlinks.
They discovered a significant drop in search traffic that was difficult to recover from.
This form of link-building would lower your domain authority and, as a result, your keyword rankings.
You should avoid participating in any link schemes. You must not purchase links; otherwise, Google will penalize your website.
2. Long term inactivity
Your DA may be harmed by a lack of action behind the scenes of your website.
What I am simply saying is the fact that your website hasn’t been updated in a long time. For months, there have been no blog entries. In reality, you don’t have any recent content.
Google has previously stated that pages with important and helpful content would receive higher rankings.
Your blog would be deemed out of date if the last time you posted about your industry was in 2017. And, in the vast majority of situations, outdated knowledge isn’t useful.
You should add new content to your website to address this issue. This is one of the reasons why blogs are so useful.
Writing on a regular basis allows search engines to crawl your website more often, indicating that you have fresh and up-to-date content.
3. The website’s content is of poor quality
Google favors blog sites with excellent content and a genuine concern for their followers.
If you try to increase the number of contents on your website without worrying about your readers, you will notice that your blog’s domain authority will drop.
It will also be a factor in the decline in organic search traffic. If you manage a blog, you should always try to keep your blog posts to 800 words or more.
Each of your website’s blog articles should have sufficient information. So, instead of simply increasing the number of blog posts, please write valuable content.
One thing I’d like to point out is that many blogs have started and have received over 1000 daily visits for less than 80 or even less than 45 blog entries.
The explanation for this is that these blogs have sufficient and helpful content. Each of these websites’ blog posts is helpful.
4. Competitors’ websites
Even when you’re doing everything correctly, if you’re losing traffic and your domain authority is dropping, one of the causes may be that your competitors are doing better in terms of SEO than you.
Analyze and track your competitors’ link-building tactics, social media channels, and content marketing approaches.
You can use software available online to track and control changes made by your opponent, or you can do it manually.
Do the same thing in a far better way once you have a good understanding of what they have done to outrank you. This is just like applying the skyscraper technique.
Despite the fact that a new website takes time to develop, it is not unusual for a brand new website to outperform an older competitor.
Always be on the lookout for new opportunities, and never stop working to improve your content.
5. Extensive use of rich anchor text
Using anchor texts with a lot of keywords will hurt your rankings and DA.
The anchor text on your page lets search engines figure out what your website is about.
If you have a lot of almost the same keyword anchor texts in your backlink profile, search engines like Google will assume you’re trying to cheat the system and improve your rankings for that particular keyword.
That does not go well with Google. It enjoys diversity.
As a result, you can stop using the same keyword anchor texts over and over again, and instead mix in other related texts.
Therefore, try to spread your anchor text across several keywords.
6. Too much keyword stuffing
Stuffing your website with the same keywords would hurt your DA, just like overloading the same keyword anchor texts.
You should use your keyword 3-5 times in your website content and blog articles for every 1000 words of content.
You do not have to fill in as many keywords as possible because Google will be able to say what your website is about just by crawling it.
7. Problems with the server
Server outages happen all the time, and Google doesn’t penalize websites for them.
It shouldn’t last longer than a day or two to be considered temporary. If this time lasts too long, your search engine rankings will suffer as a result.
If you’re planning a multi-day maintenance cycle, make sure to set the server to return a 503 error code, which informs Google that the outage is only temporary.
If you’re having issues with your current hosting provider, take a look at our hosting options to get quality help for your website.
If your website is experiencing server issues, whether it’s due to empty markup served to Googlebot or a broken caching feature, it’s critical to address any issues as soon as possible.
8. Slow page loading time
Another ranking factor is website speed, which can have an effect on your domain authority.
Sites with too many high-resolution pictures, advertisements, connections, and other features that slow down the load time would likely lose their top rankings. Slow websites irritate users, and Google is no exception.
There are a few things you can do to keep your site from slowing down:
- In this context, compress your photos and any running files.
- Don’t load too many photos and videos into your web pages.
- Adverts will slow down your web, so avoid getting a lot of them (too many adverts will make your site look spammy anyway).
9. Content duplication
If you’re blogging and trying to build new content quickly, but you’re copying content from other websites, you might face a Google penalty and see your domain authority drop.
Make an effort to write high-quality, trustworthy content. Bear in mind that the more attention you devote to the content, the higher the quality will be.
If you’re having trouble with popular topics, take a different strategy and look for niched topic areas with less competition that will help your website rank higher.
We recommend Ubersuggest as a good method for discovering long-tail keywords that are easier to optimize.
10. There are an excessive number of spammy backlinks
You still have one more SEO task to complete.
Spammy sites can connect to your site on a daily basis in the hopes of improving their own rankings.
Your DA could suffer as a result of this. When Google penalizes a blog, it examines the websites to which it is connected.
It’s always preferable to keep your website as far away from spammy sites as possible in terms of SEO and DA.
Check your backlink profile for any spammy website links and remove them.
11. Poor technical SEO
Search engines are constantly evolving. Google, for example, releases new updates on a daily basis to boost its usability.
Google set a deadline for all websites to be mobile-friendly last year. Google has also recently made an announcement.
Google set a deadline for all websites to be mobile-friendly last year. Google recently made another mobile-friendly announcement, claiming that mobile responsiveness is a key ranking factor for websites.
It’s essential to stay up to date with search engine updates in order to avoid being penalized.
Doing SEO on your website is a continuous process that must be attended to on a daily basis to ensure that everything is running smoothly.
If your SEO isn’t properly handled, your DA and rankings will suffer as a result
How To Improve Your Website’s DA Score
A better DA score indicates that you would definitely do well in search engines, ranking higher and doing so more regularly.
Having a higher domain authority could even affect the types of deals your blog receives, such as sponsored posts, ads, and so on.
So, what can you do to boost your DA score? Here are a few things to remember when you write posts and work on your website.
1. Purchase a domain name
You can start increasing your Domain Authority as soon as you get a custom domain.
The age of a domain affects your DA score significantly, so the older it is, the better.
The domain’s expiration date may also affect the ranking, so keep that in mind when buying a domain.
2. Creating backlinks
The number of websites that link to you has a significant impact on your site’s domain authority.
To determine what the domain authority of your website will be, the Moz tool will look at how many other websites links to your domain (40 links from a single domain or 40 links from 40 multiple domains), this helps to raise the value of your website indirectly.
Consider internal links as well – link to existing similar posts when writing new articles, but don’t go overboard.
To reduce the chance of links from spammy or low-quality pages, avoid using black hat SEO methods for your link building.
Delete any spammy links if you come across them. And see what is linking to you, use tools like Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools).
3. High-quality content
Everyone still emphasizes the importance of high-quality content because it is the secret to growth. Anything that adds value to your readers is considered quality content.
If you create excellent content on a regular basis and distribute it effectively, you will rank higher more often, which means that more people will find you and connect to you.
This boosts your authority and online credibility, which boosts your domain authority as well.
4. Shares on social media
If your blog is widely shared on social media and your posts get a lot of likes, it’s a sign that you’re creating high-quality content.
By sharing your content on social media, if enough people find it useful, interesting, or enjoyable enough to share it, search engines would note and promote it more.
It also expands your scope by exposing your content to audiences who may not otherwise see it.
Add social sharing buttons to your articles to make it easier for people to share your content.
5. Search engine optimization
How well-optimized is your website and content for search engines?
Your site would certainly appear more regularly on the search engine results page if it is designed for search engines (and readers!).
Again, this means that more people can read it, like it, post it, and so on, increasing the authority.
Examine your website’s layout and navigation, as well as the user interface? How simple is it to use your website?
Also look into things like image alt tags, load speed, heading tags, keywords, redirects, and overall content to see how properly optimized they look.
If your site has a bad user experience, it will lead to a high bounce rate, which will lead to a drop in your domain authority.
6. Patience is the principal thing
Continue to improve your site, and your rankings will improve over time.
Recognize that your Domain Authority is influenced by a variety of factors, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see a rise.
Not even Rome was built in a day, so don’t give up and throw in the towel after putting in a lot of effort and you seem not to have moved the needle.
You must know that the whole SEO thing is a long-term game. It is the effort of today that will determine the riches of tomorrow.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Where can I check Domain Authority?
Using Moz’s Free SEO Tools, you can verify the Domain Authority of any website.
It’s a free tool that comes with Moz.
Simply enter a domain and you will be able to see the Domain Authority as well as a portion of the backlink profile for that domain.
You will see all of the data if you upgrade to the paid version.
2. What is a good DA score?
Domain authority is best used as a relative measure that is compared to the DA scores of your competitors.
If your competitors have an average DA score of 30, having a DA score of 40 is fine. To put things in perspective, brand new websites start with a DA score of 1.
Just a few big websites have DA ratings of 100 or higher, such as Amazon, Facebook, and YouTube.
3. Does internal linking influence DA?
No.
However, it will assist in the transfer of authority from one page on your web to another.
4. Domain authority, does it matter?
Your Domain Authority is significant because it reflects your search engine ranking.
It allows you to see how you stack up against your competitors and gain a better understanding of your site’s popularity in the eyes of the search engines.
5. Does Google use domain authority?
No.
Domain Authority is not a factor in Google’s ranking algorithm.
Google also utilizes domain-like metrics based on links that are close to Domain Authority, but not Domain Authority itself. What Google uses is known as page rank.
6. What is the average domain authority?
The average Domain Authority ranges from 40 to 50, with anything between 50 and 60 being considered excellent.
The domain authorities between 60 and 100 are the next level. High domain authority is the term used to describe these.
7. How is domain authority calculated?
Domain Authority is determined by combining multiple variables into a single DA ranking, such as linking root domains and total links.
This score will then be used to compare websites or to track a website’s ranking power over time.
8. What is a backlink profile?
Your complete list of backlinks, also known as inbound links or incoming links, is your backlink profile, or backlink portfolio.
Specific backlinks aren’t explicitly distinguished from the total number of backlinks to your website in the description.
To maintain a healthy backlink profile, make sure you’re producing high-quality content that educates readers. To ensure an error-free user experience, you must also preserve the health of your website on a regular basis.
It is advisable that you disavow all links that come from low-quality pages, regardless of the tool you use.
Monitoring your backlink profile will help you figure out where you need to change and which sites you can avoid.
It will aid in the improvement of your rankings and should be included in every marketing plan.
9. Why is a backlink profile so important to DA?
Backlink profile is significant because Moz’s DA score is heavily influenced by the number of backlinks and the sources of those backlinks.
Moz is concerned because Google and Bing are concerned. Backlinks are used by search engines as a type of reputational yardstick.
Linking to your domain from reputable sites is a vote of confidence. A small number of or dubious sites connecting to your domain may be a red flag.
10. How long does it take to increase domain authority?
There is no set time for increasing a domain authority by a certain sum.
This is the most frequently asked question, especially among digital marketing newbies.
To begin, you must understand that increasing domain authority occurs at various levels.
To put it another way, increasing domain authority from 5 to 10 is easy. However, increasing domain authority from 25 to 30 is extremely difficult.
There is just a 5 DA gap between the domain authorities in both cases. The DA, on the other hand, has a somewhat different value.
Your page authority can be quickly increased by 5 points in the first case; all you need to do is create a few high-quality backlinks to that page.
However, in order to increase your domain authority from 25 to 30, you’ll need to create an increasing number of high-quality backlinks.
Conclusion
As you’ve seen, you now know why domain authority would drop.
The reason for this is not rocket science, but it is something that can be fixed when armed with the right information.
Just implement the tip in this post and shot your website to the top of the search engines.
Don’t also forget that backlinking never stops. Whichever way you intend to get backlinks to your website that is whitehat is advised because that is one way you can easily increase the domain authority of your website.
While on it, avoid links from any spammy source because that is the easiest way towards destroying your backlink profile.
Happy whitehat link building and see you on the search engine result page.