Increasing Domain Authority

In ten months I increased a client’s domain authority (DA) from 24 to 32 with just 12 hours of digital PR per month. To do this, I aimed for ‘top tier coverage and achieved links from:

The Independent, Forbes, The Daily Mail, London Evening Standard, Grazia, Women’s Health, Top Sante, Good Housekeeping, Best, Choice, My Weekly, Get The Gloss, County Weddings – and more.

What is DA? 

The domain authority of a website is a search engine ranking score which describes its relevance for a specific subject area or industry. This relevance has a direct impact on its ranking by search engines, trying to assess domain authority through automated analytic algorithms.

How does Digital PR improve DA?

One way to increase your DA is to get other websites to link to your website. The more relevant these sites are to your industry and the higher their DA, the higher your DA will become when they link to you. Newspaper and magazine websites are very authoritative. Search engines rank them highly and so their DA is very high and links from them are very desirable. Digital PR (hello, that’s me) uses age-old PR tactics to achieve these gold-dust links.

What did I do?

Over the course of ten months I have achieved 117 pieces of coverage, 39 of which are what I call ‘top tier’ – news and magazine sites with very high DA. The client hasn’t been doing any SEO activity, or SEO focussed content creation. With Digital PR alone, they have increased their DA by eight points.

How did I do it?

I covered the basics. I began by reaching out to all top and mid tier journalists and bloggers to introduce myself and the brand. 

I sent regular press releases based on new and seasonal products. 

I sent samples out for review, chasing coverage for each item.

I aimed high. My client saw that inclusion in top 10 roundups such as the Indy Best and coverage in the very top tier titles achieved the best traffic and sales. I began to tailor my efforts towards the most valuable coverage. I identified the journalists who regularly wrote the top 10 roundups and all the national health and beauty journalists. I reached out to them all individually, telling them exactly how I could assist with their upcoming articles. I placed my client firmly on their radar, alongside much bigger competitor brands.

I didn’t take no for an answer. If, heaven forbid, a top ten roundup appeared that my client did not appear in, I politely messaged the journalist and explained why it was important to their readers that we were included. I sent samples, and had great success – such as this roundup in GLAMOUR. 

I built relationships. When a top tier journalist covered my client, I asked for them to be sent a thank you gift and handwritten note. This has led to repeat inclusion in future articles and helped to achieve the holy grail of coverage for my client – The Indy Best silk pillowcase! This followed our immense gratitude after the journalist awarded us the Indy Best hair towel.

As you can imagine, we have sent a lovely thank you package to these journalists who covered my client in Forbes and the Daily Mail.

Of course, I apply these techniques to all my clients. I am becoming so friendly with some journalists that this year I got two clients in the same Fathers’ Day gift guide! Another client is also a regular thought leader in HR magazine due to an ongoing and symbiotic relationship with the news reporter.