EXPLAINED: The impact of domain authority on estate agency websites
Nelly Berova looks at five things you can do to improve your estate agency website's score and its rankings on Google.
One thing we’ve ignored so far is domain authority, yet this marker for how credible and authoritative your site is can have a big impact on your chance of appearing high up the search engine results pages (SERPs).
If you’ve never heard of domain authority and don’t know how to boost yours, we look at what it’s all about and the five things you can do to improve your score.
What is domain authority and why does it matter when ranking your estate agency website?
Your domain authority should be a core element of your SEO – and overall digital marketing – strategy. A good domain authority score will improve how you rank in search results.
Essentially, it is a scale, developed by the software company Moz, to rank how trustworthy a website is perceived to be. It does this by looking at factors such as your keywords and backlink count (i.e, the number of other websites linking to your site).
When considering your score, it is best to look at it in the context of other estate agency businesses similar to yours. Don’t be demoralised by comparing your business to other sectors. The likes of government sites, leading bodies for a particular industry or UK-wide businesses (including large estate agency chains) may score much more highly because their brand is known and because of the weight of relevant keywords plus other factors.
How can I find out my domain authority score?
There are several online tools you can use to check your domain authority. We use the program SEMrush. Scores range from one to 100 – the higher the better. In our experience, a good score for local estate agents is between 20 and 30. Over 30 is really good, and any higher is obviously amazing.
Why should I care?
As we’ve said, a good domain authority tends to correlate with high visibility on the SERPs pages, but there’s more to it than that. Sites with good domain authority often have more credibility, meaning more clicks and interactions plus better trust for your brand.
Understanding your domain authority can also be useful in strengthening your digital marketing strategy. Comparing your site to your competitors’ can highlight any gaps that you can address through quality content directed at your niche customers, for example.
How can I improve my domain authority?
There are five key areas of your estate agency website that it is worth addressing to boost your domain authority. And it’s fair to say that making improvements here will also improve your site in other ways:
1. Boost your backlinks – getting other sites to link to you will significantly improve your domain authority and your visibility on SERPs. Start by analysing the backlinks on your site and comparing those to the sites of your competitors. There are free online tools to help you do this.
2. Remember that all backlinks aren’t created equal – you want to avoid paid-for and spammy backlinks and those designed to artificially inflate your position on SERPs. Instead, look at ways of getting quality, relevant and organic links to your site through contact with local businesses – or by becoming an authority on the market in your area, maybe by guest blogging on other sites, for example.
Look at ways of getting quality, relevant and organic links to your site through contact with local businesses.”
3. Put quality first – we’ve said this many times but prioritising high-quality blogs and web content will boost the credibility of your site. Make this central to your digital strategy, focusing your content on the needs and wants and of your core niche audiences. Answer their questions in a useful and informative way to maximise their connection with your brand.
4. Don’t ignore the basics – optimise every page of your site by paying attention to the detail, incorporating the right keywords and following best practice when it comes to meta titles and descriptions, alt tags on photos and the technical side of your pages’ SEO.
5. Remember the impact of social – your social media accounts also have a part to play by driving traffic to your site, creating opportunities for backlinks and generally improving the visibility of your brand. Again, great quality content on your preferred platforms draws likes, shares and comments, getting visitors to your website in the first place.
Ultimately, we can’t stress enough that the more great content you add to your site, answering customers’ problems, the better your credibility and search results – not to mention domain authority. And if this sounds daunting, remember there are professionals out there to help you navigate this complex and frequently-changing digital world.
Want to know more? Contact Nelly and her team at Art Division.
