Domain Authority & Page Authority: Why They Matter for Your TMS Clinic

Sep 27th 2020

Domain Authority & Page Authority: Why They Matter for Your TMS Clinic

In search engine optimization (SEO), it’s critical for any business – especially TMS and other healthcare clinics – to earn the trust of search engines to rank higher in the organic search results. “Domain authority” and “page authority” are two good measures of this level of trustworthiness.

But what are they?

In this article we’ll walk you through what domain authority and page authority are, how they can impact the ranking ability of your TMS clinic’s website, and what you can do to improve these scores.

Let’s get started.

Understanding Domain Authority and Page Authority

The domain authority score (DA) is an SEO metric developed by Moz (often confused with domain rating by Ahrefs) that predicts how well your website will rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). This (unofficial) search engine ranking score ranges from 1 to 100. A higher DA shows that your website has a good chance of ranking higher on Google search results.

Page authority (PA), on the other hand, reflects the score for a specific page on your website. Like DA, the page authority score also ranges from 1 to 100.

The page authority and domain authority of a websiteare calculated by evaluating multiple ranking factors, such as:

  • Backlink Profile – this is the most important factor. It includes the number of inbound links/backlinks (links from external websites), linking root domain (number of backlinks from unique websites), and the quality of those links.
  • Content Quality – great content that delivers real substance, follows SEO best practices, and is shareable on social media.
  • MozTrust – it measures how trustworthy your website or page is, based on the websites you’re getting links from. The more trustworthy those linking domains are, the higher your MozTrust score will be.
  • MozRank – this represents the “link popularity” of your website. On a scale of 1 to 10, it shows you how important your website is on the internet relative to others.

Remember – Google doesn’t use your domain authority and page authority scores when determining Google rankings. They merely show how well a website can rank for competitive keywords, where the individual webpages stand, and the success of your SEO efforts.

Why Domain Authority and Page Authority are Important

We’ve established that PA and DA scores are important for SEO. But how exactly do they matter?

Here are a few reasons why improving your website’s DA and PA score will help your TMS clinic stand out:

  • Increasing your DA and PA scores can improve your chances of ranking in the SERPs
  • DA and PA scores are good measures of your overall “SEO health”
  • Overtime, as you start ranking for industry terms, you’ll start to seem more trustworthy

That being said, your goal shouldn’t be to increase your DA and PA, rather it should be to work on the underlying factors that search engines actually consider when ranking websites.

How to Improve Domain Authority and Page Authority [Prioritizing the Right Things]

To check your website’s domain authority and page authority, you can use MozBar, which is a free tool that you can download as a chrome extension.

Here’s what it looks like:

mozbar - chrome extension

As mentioned earlier, the only difference between DA and PA is that the latter uses the ranking factors on an individual page to determine the score, and not the entire website.

A sure-fire way of improving these scores is to work on building a solid backlink profile – which determines the quality and quantity of the links pointing to your website – while also focusing on the on-page variables.

It all boils down to the following:

  1. Building Quality Linkslink building should be focused on acquiring high-quality backlinks from high authority sites (such as Healthline, Verywell Mind, WebMD, etc. for TMS), and not the total links. This can have a direct impact on your page rank. Subsequently, they can increase your domain authority and page authority scores.
  2. Getting Rid of Spammy Links links from irrelevant, flagged, and/or low authority websites can affect your backlink profile. They can also lead to a higher spam score on Moz, dropping your DA and PA. Avoid getting links from such low authority and/or irrelevant websites.
  3. Focusing on the On-Page Factorswhen more people visit your website and decide to stick around, it shows Google that you’re doing something right. Therefore,focus on creating high-quality content, improving page speed, and enhancing the overall user-experience.

Remember – higher scores don’t mean that your job is done. DA and PA are constantly fluctuating.

Additionally, if you want deeper insight into your link profile, you can also consider other popular SEO tools that webmasters use, such as Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, etc.

Final Thoughts

A solid digital marketing engine is incomplete without an effective SEO strategy.

While Google search rankings are complex, putting efforts towards getting high domain authority and page authority scores can (indirectly) increase your entire domain’s chances to rank higher in the competitive market of TMS clinics.

This, in turn, can help you attract more potential patients to the website of your TMS clinic, position yourself as the go-to authority in the industry, and become a central name in your niche.

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