Digital PR and Website Authority

Website authority gives your website credibility in search engines, such as Google. Having a high website authority can help you rank highly in Google. There are multiple elements that go into improving your website authority, and one of those is digital PR.

What is website authority?

Website authority, also commonly known as domain authority, refers to the overall strength of a website’s domain. The strength of a website’s domain correlates to its ability to rank highly in the Google and other search engines results pages. Domains that have higher website authority are thought of as the gold standard and are often sought out by other websites as they are able to pass on backlink strength – colloquially known as “link juice” – to other websites.

How is website authority measured?

Website authority is measured in a number of different ways by different platforms. Moz, a provider of SEO software, created Domain Authority (DA) to showcase the likelihood of a website appearing in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Moz’s domain authority score is ranked from 1 to 100.

Moz says that its domain authority score is calculated by analysing ‘multiple factors, including linking root domains and total number of links, into a single DA score’.

Ahrefs, an SEO tool, created Domain Rating (DR). This is used to measure a site’s “link popularity” when comparing it to other websites. Ahrefs says that a higher DR signals a more authoritative website.

Ahrefs says that its domain rating is calculated between websites. The platform says it:

• finds all the domains that have at least one followed link to the target domain
• looks at how many other domains each linking domain links to

They then ‘pass some amount of “DR juice” from each linking domain to the target domain’. The amount that is passed on is based on an internal calculation by dividing the DR of the linking domain by the number of unique domains that it links to.

Semrush, another SEO tool, also has its own authority score ranking that looks at three main factors – link power, organic traffic and spam factors. These are all used to measure a domain’s overall quality and are determined by AI and machine.

Semrush states that each factor holds a different weight. Link Power holds the most weight, followed by organic traffic, and finally, spam factors.

Google says that it doesn’t take into account any of the measurements above to rank a website. However, it is widely believed that Google itself uses a very similar internal metric to score websites – such as the quality and strength of its backlink profile.

Do you want a higher or lower website authority?

Despite different platforms measuring the authority of a website differently, one thing they do have in common is their measurement. All the tools above measure authority from 1 to 100. 1 is the lowest and 100 is the highest. Therefore, you should aim to increase your website authority.

What is considered a good website authority score?

What a good website authority score looks like varies, depending on which measurement tool you use. However, a score of 40 is generally considered average to good. Anything 70+ is considered excellent. Very few websites have a domain authority of above 90. A couple of examples of those above 90 are the BBC and Wikipedia.

How do I check website authority?

You can use any of the tools mentioned above to check website authority scores. While they will all give slightly different figures, they are all reputable tools that are used widely in the SEO industry.

What should my website authority be?

While we would all like a website authority score of 80, this isn’t always feasible. Some industries/sectors are more likely to have higher scores than others, so there isn’t one rule. To determine where you should be, you should benchmark your website against your closest competitors and adjust your search strategy accordingly.

For instance, if your closest competitor is five points ahead of you in terms of website authority, you know you should be able to make an impact fairly quickly by making tweaks, such as adding digital public relations (PR) to your list of tactics.

You can compare your website’s authority against your competitors’ using platforms such as Ahrefs and Semrush. Here is an example of what you will see (taken from Semrush).

You can see that a website’s authority score can fluctuate, depending on a number of factors. But ideally you will want to see steady growth.

The example above pitches a global company (in blue – who also happens to be one of our clients) against some of their competitors. Although they are a global company, operating in all four corners of the world, and the market leader, their authority score on Semrush hovers around 50 (but has been growing steadily).

While we are taking steps to improve the score, they are unlikely to get to 80+ due to being a niche business. But that doesn’t matter; they are leading in their field. This means they are more likely to rank higher for more keywords and more more share of voice in the SERPs than their competitors for a whole host of key search terms.

How can I improve my website authority?

There are a number of factors that go into how authoritative a website is seen. Different tools, like Semrush, Moz and Ahrefs, use their own methodologies. We do know that there are certain things that help, such as:

• the number of linking domains to a site
• the number of backlinks to a site
• the number of citations
• the number of high-quality and relevant linking domains and citations
• the number of high-quality and relevant backlinks and citations
• a low percentage of bad-quality links that can be seen as spam

Digital PR is a ranking factor and can help each point by creating stories that journalists are interested in, resulting in more backlinks and citations from authoritative websites that are relevant to the brand – thus reducing the percentage of bad links.

How can I stop my website getting spammy backlinks?

You cannot stop passive backlinks. Some websites that are seen as spammy will link to you for multiple reasons. And while you don’t necessarily want them to, they do form part of your overall backlink profile. A natural backlink profile has a range of referring domains, with domain authority ranging from 1 to (hopefully) 80+. As long as you have a high percentage of referring domains that are credible, these spammy backlinks won’t harm your website authority score.

If, however, your backlink profile is made up primarily of spammy backlinks, you may struggle to compete in the search engines. And this is where investing in a digital PR strategy comes in.

How can digital PR improve website authority?

Digital PR is a digital marketing tactic that helps websites build high-authority and high quality backlinks and citations on trusted websites.

Digital PR is one of the most effective ways you can make an impact on your website’s authority, enhancing your SEO profile – while also improving brand awareness.

Backlinks – and more recently citations – are votes of confidence for search engines from one website to another. By earning a link or mention on a website that is trusted by Google – and other search engines – you are showing that your website is also trustworthy. This, in turn, increases your website’s authority and can dramatically improve your site’s ranking in SERPs.

What is digital PR?

Digital PR combines the principles of traditional PR with an SEO-first strategy to drive results in the SERPs for brands. While digital PR was built on the foundations of link building, it has developed to encompass traditional PR tactics to gain results in search engines.

How can you get websites to link back to your website with digital PR?

Digital PR uses a number of tactics to earn backlinks and citations from a website. Much like traditional PR, digital PR is built on elevating a brand, placing it as an expert in the field. Reactive an expert commentary and newsjacking is a popular way of earning backlinks.

Proactive digital PR campaigns are often used to tell a story. Often using internal and/or third party data and statistics, a digital PR campaign will tap into people’s interests by telling stories that link back to the brand’s niche or sector.

Traditional outreach, also known as link building, can also be used to earn links to things such as calculators, infographics, statistics and data pages, and quizzes.

Giving useful information is key to earning a backlink, while assets, such as data pages, can also bolster your chances of earning a backlink.

While the execution is different, all digital PR tactics have one thing in common; they have a journalist’s interests and the brand’s target audience at heart – increasing the chances of gaining coverage.

You can read more about digital PR and how it fits into to SEO puzzle here.

What is the digital PR process?

Digital PR is most effective when combined with an SEO strategy. For instance, if your SEO strategy is to improve rankings for your business insurance and business loans, your digital PR strategy should reflect this and be working in tandem with SEO to drive awareness and traffic to those pages.

To do this, you will need to work closely with SEO – either in-house or outsourced – to focus on key pages, keywords and terms, and topics in order to build authority around those.

One you have the above, you can create a digital PR plan that will complement SEO and drive tangible results.

Find out how our digital PR and SEO teams work together.

Digital PR is a ranking factor that can improve a website’s backlink profile, naturally. By doing so, digital PR can improve a website’s authority score, enhancing its performance in the search engines, while also building a brand’s reputation and driving traffic.