Domain Rating: What It Is & How to Increase It?

Checkout the snapshot above. You can see that it has a metric for Amazon’s ‘Domain Rating’ along with the number of backlinks and the number of linking websites. 

Must be confused right - because what even is Domain Rating and why are there so many tools in the market to measure it. 

Why is it a common term that every SEO expert murmurs about in almost all the conversations. 

And how are SEO backlinks related to it? 

I am sure you have plenty more questions, and I am going to resolve them all for you today. Not just that, we will also discuss the impact of Domain Rating on your business and how you can improve it as well. 

What is Domain Rating?

Domain Rating (DR) is a term curated and trademarked by Ahrefs that tells you how strong your backlink profile is on a 100 point scale. The more your score is, the better it is. 

How to check DR?

DR can be checked with one of Ahrefs free SaaS SEO tools called Website Authority checker. Here is an example of that. 

In the paid version of the tool you can also check your backlink profile in detail. You can find out your best links, your lost links, and your broken links as well along with referring domains. 

Here is what your backlink profile might look like in Ahrefs. 

Ahrefs Domain Rating explained

Ahrefs have a 0-100 point scale to measure Domain Rating of a website. With 100 being the strongest. The stronger your Domain Rating is, the stronger is your backlink profile. The stronger your backlink profile is, the more are the benefits of SEO. 

Ahrefs Domain Rating is influenced by the following factors: 

• The number of unique domains linking to your domain. 
• Total number of backlinks to your website. 
• The DR score of all the domains giving backlink to you. 
• The number of unique domains each referring site is linked to. 

Then some amount of DR juice is passed on to your domain. 

Keeping it simple, here are the aspects that you need to keep in mind as per Ahrefs Domain Rating calculation process. 

• Link from a higher DR website would add more value. 
• More the number of backlinks the better would be DR. 
• Preferably get links from unique domains over same repetitive domains. 

The above given interpretation is to make DR easy to understand. But note that even the above given interpretation has several conditions attached to it. For instance, buying backlinks from a high DR website will definitely add value to your link profile but only if the referring website is of good quality. 

Domain Rating vs Domain Authority vs Website Authority

Terms like domain authority (DA) and website authority (WA) are often interchangeably used. However, at the grass root level in the SEO world, all three of them have different meaning and significance. 

Let’s look into how DR is different from DA and WA. 

Domain authority is a metric by one of the renowned SEO tools - Moz. This metric is used to depict how well a website will rank on the search engine. While Domain Rating is a term given by Ahrefs that assesses the strength of  your backlink profile on a scale of 1-100.  

Domain Rating has no direct effect on a page’s ranking on Google but domain authority does. Domain authority also compares your domain to the others in the market. 

Domain Rating is just dependent upon the backlinks’ profile but domain authority takes into account the traffic, the backlinks, the spam score, and even domain age into account. 

DA and DR are fixed metrics with all the factors impacting them are fixed. But Website authority is a different ball game altogether. 

Website authority is subjective and most SEO experts have their own factors they need to check to level a website as a ‘high authority website.’ 

These factors are different for all, but at ZeroAdo we take into account the following things before we tag a website:

• The traffic it is getting. 
• The quality of the website. 
• The niche of the website. 
• Type of website - business/media. 
• Value of website traffic. 
• Backlinks. 
• Site structure. 

Why is Domain Rating important for SEO?

Domain Rating and SEO go hand in hand and SEO is directly proportional to your Domain Rating. The better your Domain Rating will be, the better would be your sEO results as well.

Why and how? Let’s find out!  

Improved search engine rankings

While, a high DR doesn't ‘guarantee’ higher search engine rankings it is important to note, that most ranking content pieces are often from websites with comparatively higher DRs. 

Along with other factors like quality SEO content and on-page SEO optimization, we can say that DR also plays a crucial role. 

Checkout these results from page one and page two of Google search results. 

Now let’s look at the Domain Rating of the ranking content on page one vs page two.

Clearly, the above example is evidence that Domain Rating does have a role to play in enhancing your rankings but not directly.

Improved trust of search engines

A higher DR depicts a strong backlink profile. A strong backlink profile means that multiple unique and other domains with high DR are vouching for your domain. 

That validation adds brownie points in the eyes of Google for your domain, thus building more trust and credibility. 

Link exchange and building 

Link building is a crucial activity when it comes to increasing DR but it is not easy, especially with low DR. A higher and improved DR also opens more opportunity doors for link exchange and building. 

Thus the loop of link building to increase DR and higher DR to increase link building keeps on going thus helping you save some efforts on that front.  

Increased traffic 

While Google repeatedly says that it does not take Domain Rating into account as one of the ranking metrics in search engines, it also emphasizes that backlinks do play a crucial role. 

They emphasize that backlinks are considered while ranking a page and so quality backlinks can help a page rank better. Backlinks are also a direct indicator of DR, thus, higher DR is related to better rankings on Google. 

“We have various systems that understand how pages link to each other as a way to determine what pages are about and which might be most helpful in response to a query.” - Google Search Central 

Better rankings result in increased traffic, and thus, higher DR results in higher traffic. 

How to increase Domain Rating?

Now that we have established how important Domain Rating is for SEO and overall your business website, it is time to get to work to increase it. 

As an SEO expert from ZeroAdo, I am sharing some quick tips that can help you improve your DR and reap the benefits of it. 

Create linkable content and assets 

To improve your DR you need to build backlinks. And for quality backlinks, you need to have different types of SEO content with top-trier quality, that people would want to link back to. 

It could be anything, an E-book, templates, a primary research data article, or a simple blog itself. Such pieces of content are called linkable assets. These high quality content pieces add value to the readers and so many other brands want to link to these to make their SEO content pieces of high quality. 

Creating linkable assets is crucial as this is the only way you can put your backlink building process on autopilot mode. In all the other link building ways you need to put hefty efforts to get even one single backlink. 

For instance, at ZeroAdo, we have linkable assets like blog SEO templates and content quality guidelines that can be used by anyone as reference in their content pieces. 

Do link exchange by pitching to high DR websites

We earlier established that a higher DR website will be able to pass more credibility to your website than a lower one. It is because a website with high DR is being vouched for by more websites than a website with lower DR. 

So the “DR juice” that is passed to your website is more. But the higher a website’s DR is, the more difficult it would be for you to get a link from them. So negotiate for links by offering a link in return, or writing a guest post, or maybe updating their outdated content. 

In this circumstance, your negotiation plays a huge role, as it can get you or make you lose several high quality links. If you do not want to go through the hassle of link exchange then hiring the best link building services is always an option to lookout for. 

ZeroAdo is one such provider you can opt for. Our Crew has the collective experience of 15+ years in the SEO and link building realm. We build only the best quality links for our clients from websites as high as 90+ DR. 

We have a network of 500+ partners and we can get you not just quality in link building but also quantity. Here are a few top brands that we have collaborated with to get the link for our clients and ourselves, and we can do the same for your brand as well! 

Get links from multiple sources for credibility 

The more diverse your backlink profile is , the better it would be for your SEO as well as DR. you want to let Google know that your website and your content is validated by multiple websites and sources. 

So always try to diversify your backlink profile and keep reaching out to unique domains and keep finding SEO content ideas in the market to get a backlink from. 

Get creative with your link building approach for instance you could get a link in the form of an image, or maybe by becoming a credible source for a news reporter. 

A diversified link profile also ensures that you are not building repetitive links which can result in spam activities. So it gives you a win in multiple ways. 

Keep track of your bad links and update ASAP 

Domain Rating takes a lot of resources in terms of time, capital, and efforts. And poor links in your profile can negatively impact that. Thus it is crucial to keep an eye on your links at all times and keep updating any broken or lost links to maintain a healthy profile. 

This is one of the most crucial practices in white hat link building as opposed to black hat link building where poor, broken, and spammy links are often an occurrence. 

You can check your broken and lost links with Ahrefs in a minute and fix those. 

Post on social media for social signals 

Along with unique links from multiple domains, you also need social media’s support to keep your DR in check and improve your credibility in Google’s eyes. 

Make your social media pages with your domain names and add links to your website as well on all pages or share your content there to gain some social links. 

Social media also helps you in local link building as you can ask regional customers to give you feedback on your product and services on social media. Or maybe tag your business if they visit you that can earn you some links from user generated content. 

Improve technical SEO 

Technical SEO has a major role to play in improvement of Domain Rating. White it does not directly impact the DR having a good site structure and an error free website always earns you better rankings on Google. 

Furthermore, Google also prioritizes pages with better user experience as you can check in the image below. Those better pages rank higher, become linkable assets for you, and thus get you more backlinks. 

The loop keeps on going.

Ahrefs Domain Rating an important SEO metric 

We have established that Domain Rating is an important metric for SEO because it depicts how strong your backlink profile is. And a strong backlink profile has several benefits like improved rankings and increased traffic and leads. 

So, Domain Rating must be tracked regularly and constant efforts should be made to increase it. But increasing your Domain Rating is not going to be easy especially when there are malpractices like PBN backlinks and spam links exist. 

If you are struggling to improve your DR and want to speed up the process while also following the best backlink building practices then contact ZeroAdo. We are SEO and link building experts that can put the process of increasing your Domain Rating on autopilot mode. 

Connect with ZeroAdo now, and watch your SEO graph grow.