Questions About Domain Authority

[bear bryants hat]

I have the SEO for Firefox toolbar installed on my browser. Was happy to see this morning that my website domain authority jumped 20% overnight. I always tweak my website and make minor changes here and there but I did a couple things yesterday that I rarely do.

First, my domain registration was due to expire in a couple weeks, so I renewed that. Second, my web host offers a MEMBERS section on my website. I never use it. Never saw a benefit to do so. But yesterday, I noticed my site had 18 members (I thought I had to approve members first but apparently not). All 18 members were spammers, and had links going to there site. I deleted all members. This has sparked my curiosity so I have some questions.


How much does domain authority affect search engine rankings?

How accurate is this toolbar compared to how search engines see your site (specifically domain authority)? Will I soon see a jump in traffic?

How did I jump so much so quickly after being still for months? Was it from one of the actions mentioned above or was it just a coincidence of the toolbar being updated last night?

 

[WebEminence]

Are you talking about the plugin by SEObook? It doesn't look like it includes Domain Authority. Maybe you're using a different one.

When people say Domain Authority, they are usually referring to the metric by Moz.com. You can view your domain authority at opensiteexplorer.com.

It usually doesn't change 20% overnight but it is logarithmic so going from 10 to 15 would be much easier than going from 30 to 35. It very well may have just been an update that happend and took into account a long period of activity.

Keeping your domain renewed out for a long period of time is a good practice but I'm not sure it would reflect in your domain authority. The spammers links out to bad sites could have negatively affected your DA but I believe DA is more about who is linking to YOU.

I'm not sure what toolbar you're using but I've found DA to be a reliable metric in comparing sites to each other and determining a sites overall authority. It usually relates accurately to how Google views a website.

DA going up is always a good thing and could very well mean you can expect more traffic. They are not directly related but if DA goes up, there is a good chance your rankings will increase also.

 

[scagnt83]

MozBar shows domain authority

 

[bear bryants hat]

When people say Domain Authority, they are usually referring to the metric by Moz.com. You can view your domain authority at opensiteexplorer.com.

WebE & scagnt83, Yes I am using the moz toolbar. Since WebE mentioned opensiteexplorer.com, I just ran my site through that. Toolbar shows my homepage up to 18 while siteexplorer still has me at yesterday's 15. That's wierd!

 

[scagnt83]

I just ran my site through that. Toolbar shows my homepage up to 18 while siteexplorer still has me at yesterday's 15. That's wierd!

None of that stuff is 100% correct. It is just a best guess from the info they can find.

Remember that Google is the one who ultimately decides, those tools are just a guesstimate of what google thinks.

Take my fixed annuity site for example. If you run it through seo tools, it will show links that google has not yet indexed according to my webmasters account. But their software found them so they show them as links. But at the same time I have links indexed by google that the seo tools miss.

So it is all guess work mostly.

 

[bear bryants hat]

I know its just guesswork. But I thought that the moz toolbar and opensiteexplorer are both moz.com free tools. So I was puzzled as to why I scored differently. I would have figured they are one and the same.

 

[scagnt83]

I know its just guesswork. But I thought that the moz toolbar and opensiteexplorer are both moz.com free tools. So I was puzzled as to why I scored differently. I would have figured they are one and the same.

good point, I cant answer that.... lol

 

[WebEminence]

They may pull the data from different servers that are updated at different times. If you check it again in a week, my guess is that they will be the same. But who knows...

The Moz domain authority metric is not fool proof and not an exact replica of the Google algorithms but it's still very useful for comparing a domain's change over time and comparing domains to each other.

 

[Artash]

Domain Authority (the Moz metric you are referring to) doesn’t determine search rankings alone. There are hundreds of other small and big factors involved.