When it comes to SEO, your domain authority is one of the premier factors to ranking well. Effectively your domain authority indicates how important your google sees your domain, and indeed your business. Its measured on how many backlinks come through to your website from other websites, but more importantly the quality of those backlinks
Aim:
Get more backlinks from higher quality sites than your competitors.
As a business owner, you’re likely already aware of the importance of creating authority online. But do you know how to do it? This is where the digital marketing skills of web presence, back-linking, citation building, and web branding come into play. But it’s not about being present everywhere; it’s about being present in the right places for the right reasons.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how you can boost your domain authority:
Understanding Web Presence
One of the best ways to become an authority in your field through digital marketing is by boosting your web presence, web branding, back-linking, or citation building… It’s got numerous names, but ultimately it’s how we get your business found more and more throughout the internet.
However, we want it on good-quality websites, not crappy irrelevant ones. It’s got to be relevant – a website where we would want our business to be found, or associated with. It’s really important to stop paying a lot to “SEO companies” to just do backlinks. This is all about how we build you a really good web presence and web brand that grows and adds value and authority to your business.
The goal is to establish a strong and reputable online presence by being featured on high-quality websites relevant to your industry.
Complete Regular Backlink Analysis
One of the 1st tasks is to get a good idea of what your current backlink profile is like. Is it good and healthy coming from positive sites or are there some links coming from spammy sites? We want to be crystal clear of your position today. We want to pull a list of all the domains that link through to your domain. We use Google Search Console to do this.
- Use great tools: There are a couple of other tools you can use as well that do it. Either way, we want to identify any really spammy, dodgy, poisonous backlinks to your site and we want to disavow those through Google Search Console.
- Do this regularly: We now recommend doing this quarterly. There are more and more things popping up on the Internet. We need to regularly remove the crap and then let’s move on to getting stuck into how we build all the good web presence and backlinks to your website.
Establish Strong Digital Foundations
What are the foundational websites you should be on? That’s all the main business directories and citation sources:
- True Local,
- Yelp,
- Yellow Pages
- etc.
There are 20 to 40 that we want to get your business listed on because it’s the right thing to be doing. You should be found on those sorts of websites. By being listed on these authoritative platforms, you can establish a credible and consistent online presence.
Mapping It Out on Digital Maps
Geographical web presence is vital, especially for local businesses. Ensure your business is listed on mapping services such as Google My Business, Bing Maps, and Apple Maps. Your visibility on these platforms is a significant factor in local search rankings. This step is crucial to reaching potential customers in your area.
Engage With Your Industry
Next, it’s time to get more specific about the industry you are in. To become an industry authority, engage with industry associations, directories, and communities related to your business.
- What are all the industry associations, industry directories etc, that we can get you on?
- How do you get active within your industry?
- How do you help run some training seminars for your industry association?
- How do you get on the board of it?
- How do you put some workshops on?
- How do you share your content?
It is really good business practice to get active in your industry because you’ll learn from them, and you’ll see what they’re up to. It’s really important for you to do that. Obviously, we want to benefit accordingly with better and better organic search results.
Support the Local Community (On and Offline)
Then there’s your local community and sponsorships. Community engagement is both a good deed and a smart move. Sponsor local events or teams and ensure that your involvement is visible on their websites. Not only does this benefit your business, but it also fosters goodwill within the community.
- How are you actively contributing to your community?
- What’s the local football team that you’re sponsoring and how do we make sure we get on their website with a link through to yours?
- How do we then obviously promote that on your social channels?
- How do you have a webpage saying you’re sponsoring the local scout group or whatever it may be?
Aim for Awards and Recognition
Doing all this work is great for your business, it’s great for PR and Google loves it. And we want to see if you can win some awards. Winning industry awards and recognition can significantly enhance your online reputation. Potential customers trust businesses that have received accolades from their peers. Google rewards such achievements with better organic search results, making this a win-win strategy.
Like with all the really important things we do in life, there’s got to be some awards that we can win. So once again, these are really good business practices. Nothing dodgy about you. Just do the right things and Google rewards you.
Embrace Social Engagement
It’s time to get social! It’s time to engage socially with your target audience. It’s time to get them to be your biggest fans, your promotion army as they share your ideas, education and information with others because they love it so much. Encouraging them to share your content, creates a ripple effect that expands your reach, reputation, and industry authority.
Leverage These Tips to Build Your Industry Authority
Becoming an industry authority is a multifaceted digital and physical marketing endeavour. It’s about legitimacy, relevancy, and making the right connections. By following these steps, you can enhance your online visibility and reputation, ensuring that your business stands out for all the right reasons.
