Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why is my domain authority so low?
-
Hello, a couple of years ago I started publishing on my site more than 10 posts a day of content that no one else had. For this reason, my competitors started paraphrasing my content without giving proper attribution, and they ranked better in Google.
That's why I realized that apart from creating content I had to work on my SEO, so I started to get some backlinks, most of them via contests on blogs. I am getting about 1 high quality link from PR2, PR3 or PR4 blogs each week. According to Open Site Explorer, I have 20 root domain links (200 total links). In reality I have more backlinks but they don't show up (they do show up in Ahrefs, about 50 root domains). To my surprise, I only have 15 Domain Authority.
This is the most evident example, take a look at this screenshot: http://imgur.com/dFk2rkx
My website is on the far left, two of my competitors on the right. As you can see I win every category except total links and the most important, domain authority. Are total links that important for Domain authority, even if 99% are internal? By the way, I also have more posts than these guys, I don't know why the report says otherwise. Why is the site on the right ranking so high?
The same thing happens with the rest of my competitors, they have a lot of low quality links from "lists of domain sites" and in general a lot of very spammy links.
According to what I have been reading, my good quality links should be more helpful than my competitors' spammy links, which should in fact affect them. So what is going on? I have no idea if I'm doing things right. Why is my domain authority so low? Thanks for your help.
-
Feel free to inmail me your url and I'll look at it more closely.
Best... Mike
-
Thanks again for your reply, I'll try your suggestion, I suspect internal linking might be the culprit. My site is fast, less than 2 seconds in pingdom tools, I am even using a CDN. Bounce rate has been a solid 42% the whole year.
But still, my question still stands, how come my domain authority appears so low in OSE compared to those other sites? To be honest it doesn't make any sense when you see the numbers...
-
If those comparisons are your main competitors and if they consistently/clearly outrank you, then I don't think the problem is in the numbers OSE shows. It could be alot of other things, including but not limted to internal linking, or CTR in SERPs (title tags) or user signals like bounce rate, or duplicate content or depth of content or site speed or downtime or a combination of those things and others.
On what you show in those comparisons and what you say about the quality of the back links etc, I would choose your link profile over theirs.
Consider making a spreadsheet of pages/terms where you are clearly beaten by these sites. Then, list across the top all of the different ranking factors you can think of. Then, fill in the info for your pages and your competitors and look for patterns. That's what I would do.
I hope that helps a little. Best... Mike
-
Hello, thank you for your answer.
I signed up for a Moz pro account less than a week ago, so I don't really know how long it's been like this.
My home page authority is marginally better compared tho these two sites, here is a screenshot: http://imgur.com/jd6pwzj
I am not ranking better than my main competitors on Google, I have searched for articles and most of my competitors usually rank better. Since I update my site a lot I am still getting around 5K uniques a day, but I know it could be much better.
Any suggestions? Thank you so much for your help.
-
That is frustrating. At the same time, it sounds like you're doing alot of right things.
Here are a few questions for you:
How long has it been at D/A 15?
What's your home page authority and how does that compare to these competitors?
How are the actual search results going in terms of, for instance, traffic to your site?
Just a note that Moz's tools, as good as they are, are not synonymous with how Google sees it.
Best... Mike
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?
Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
Link Building | | Sindre
theglobe.co.za
www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?3 -
If My site has 20 DA will it be good to get backlinks from a very low DA 3 site for free
is there any side effects to get backlinks from a site which has low DA than you?
Link Building | | ShashankDubey10 -
1000's Backlinks from ONE Root Domain - Positive or negative?
One of my website's link is placed over a comment. This website has a "recent comments" section in the footer which is hence appearing on all the websites pages. All tools including - Google Search Console, Majestic and MOZ are showing 45000+ links from that root domain. Questions: Are these links harmful to my rankings? Should I get all those links disavowed? Should I disavow the root domain or leave the link that lies on the home page? What if there are up to 10 links coming from a domain? is that harmful too? Apart from disavowing, is there any other option to get this fixed? If at all this counts as an issue... Thanks in advance!!
Link Building | | Ishrat-Khan0 -
I just uncovered a massive 500+ domain PBN linking to competitors
As the title, some competitors I've been watching are using a PBN they (or their agency) have built. I'm looking to get some discussion on how you approach situations like this - do you just report all of the domains to Google and pray they do something? There are 4 sites I'm looking at, all competing in the same niche with very similar websites (different branding and content, but essentially the same pages). I thought all were related, but after Excel-ing all the domains to see which overlap I've found that there's several sets; PBN 1 covers 117 domains that link to competitors A, B & C. Signaling to me that these are owned by the same person. PBN 2 links together B & C with 30 domains, PBN 3 is just C with 40 domains. PBN 4 is just B with 105 domains. PBN 5 is just A with 10 domains. PBN 6 is D by itself with more than 340 domains. Signaling to me that this one probably isn't owned by the same person. It looks like new domains are added to these PBNs every week and this has been going on for quite some time. Now, I'm fully against use of PBNs that don't use authentic websites that provide value, and I can't find any of these sites that aren't just a basic WP template with a single-word text logo followed by spun content. This is a goldmine, because according to Ahrefs these sites are pulling in well over 500,000 monthly visitors between them, and these links make up the majority of each site's link profile. If these networks were to crumble, that would open up a big opportunity for more authentic sites to rank well. How would you recommend to tackle this? Do I find example URLs and write reports for each of the 500+ domains or are there better ways of working through this?
Link Building | | Leads.Bz0 -
Would you consider these domains spammy or at risk for penguin penalty?
I'm doing a bit of competitor backlink auditing and am curious how you view these domains? I also am doing this for others as a comparison and growing reference maybe of domains that they can crosscheck with their own backlink profile and make sure these aren't on there, in preparation for penguin algo release to core. Either chime in with known domains to be spam, and I will create a live list based on answers here. Domain Domain Rating directoryworld.net 64
Link Building | | Deacyde
prlog.ru 60
torchbrowser.com 60
jzip.com 58
localbiznetwork.com 58
gimpsy.com 54
pageonepower.com 52
nashvillelife.com 49
2thetopdesign.com 49
seocounsel.com 48
healthywealthyaffiliate.com 48
hollinslegal.com 48 On a working Disavow list either in root domain or extended url form seocourt.com
wldirectory.com
onpaco.com
lostdirectory.com
ligginit.comligginit.com
alivedir.net
tiptopdirectory.com
onemilliondirectory.com
submittolinkdirectory.com I've read that sitewide footer links even from parent company sites will only count as one, regardless of how many links they have, I was wondering if that was true as well?0 -
Moving blogs to different domain
Hey guys, We currently have some blogs on one of our pages (fraserisland.com.au) and we are launching a complete rebranding of our sites. We want to move the blogs from fraserisland.com.au to the new parent page of travelfreedom.com.au (but still link it to fraserisland.com.au), however I don't know what affect this will have on the ranking of the blogs. The biggest thing I'm worried about is that the domain will be completely different, and not a sub domain, but I'm not sure what impact this will have on the effectiveness of SEO on the blog. Thanks guys
Link Building | | Mysites0 -
How many links with page authority to beat competition if we already score 62
How many links with page authority do I need to beat or get closer to competitor with page score 78 and domain authority score 72, if we already score 68 on page and 62 domain authority. This is in one of many beauty product markets. I ask because there is a company offering me for $80 each 10 links with higher than 70 page score (up to 80) and higher than 74 domain score (up to 86). All the other factors: number of links and social are almost the same for our website and the competitor's
Link Building | | beehappy1 -
How to Beat Exact Match Domains
Hi all, Has anyone got any particular methods for beating exact match domains in the SERP's? I've got a stronger link profile than the 7 results ranking above me, but cant seem to get anywhere in the SERP. I'm thinking: links with keyword anchor text aggressive on page optimisation more links Any ideas/experiences you've had would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance James
Link Building | | jamesjackson0