What Financial Advisors Should Know About their Site’s Domain Authority

 

Domain authority (DA) is a scoring criterion developed by Moz, the go-to authority for SEO.

 

From a search engine marketing standpoint, DA is a great indicator of your site’s authority, which could have a strong correlation for the ease (or difficulty) to rank your site among competing sites.

 

If you just bought a new domain for your financial advisory firm or stuck on page 2 (or lower), then improving your site’s domain authority should be one of the goals of your online marketing strategy.

 

How is Domain Authority Calculated?

 

The points are awarded on a scale 100 depending on the strength of your site.

 

To measure DA, a machine learning mechanism is used along with Google’s algorithm to study how search results are governed. Over 40 signals, not all of them known, are used to calculate your site’s domain authority.

 

 

Considering this, I advise to make use of Domain Authority for comparisons of websites rather than measurement of internal SEO initiatives

 

What is Page Authority?

 

Page authority is used to measure the strength of the individual pages on your website.

 

What Is The Difference Between Domain Authority and Page Authority?  

 

Domain authority takes all the domains and sub domains into consideration when measuring your site’s domain strength. Page authority only applies to specific pages on your website.

 

Check out this video below from Moz for more details on when and how to use DA, PA, and link count metrics:

 

 

How can Financial Advisors find their site’s Domain Authority?

 

There are several ways to find your site’s domain authority.

 

This is the most straightforward way:

 

1. Sign up for a free account on Moz.com
2. Install the Moz Toolbar. Note: The Moz Toolbar is only available in the Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox web browsers.
3. After you install the Moz Toolbar, you should see this at the top of your Chrome browser:
4. Click the black M square, and you will see a number. This is your site’s domain authority.
5. Click the button two more times, and you will be able to access more detailed information regarding your site’s authority metrics, including your page authority.

 

 

How Financial Advisors Can Build Their Site’s Domain Authority

 

Wondering how you can build your site’s domain authority?

 

Unlike other metrics, it is tough to manipulate domain authority.

 

Quite simply, the best way to influence your site’s DA is to work on its overall SEO standing.

 

This includes:

 

• Removing spammy, irrelevant backlinks pointing to your site. Use a tool like Google Search Console, Moz’s Open Site Explorer, or aHREFs to review your site’s backlink profile
  
  
• Strive to attain backlinks from high authority sites, like university or government sites. These sites are denoted by .edu or .gov top level domains.
  
  
• Work on obtaining backlinks from sites that have higher authority scores than your site.
  
  
• Perform proper on page SEO for each page on your site that should be indexed.
  
  
• Ensure your site is structured properly. SILO site structures have been shown to work wonders with stagnant search engine rankings.
  
  
• Fix any broken links (404 errors) on your site. Try using a free tool like Screaming Frog SEO spider for a quick analysis of your site.
  
  
• Map out your website page URL structure and ensure you are using your site’s robots.txt file correctly.
  
  
• Submit your site’s site map to the popular search engines. The most important are Google and Bing.
  
  
• Improve your site’s loading speed. Use Google’s free tool, Google PageSpeed Insights, to assess your site’s speed.
  
  
• Create high quality, long form content – Key elements of great content include:

 

 

o   Thorough research and quoted sources

o   Target keywords and search phrases that you want your site to rank well for.

o   Incorporate rich media like images, videos, and infographics

o   Long form content, 1,000+ words. Disclaimer: Make sure your content is high quality. Quality trumps quantity in all cases.

o   Amazing types of content such as tutorials, how to guides, and “top 10” type posts with easily consumable information

o   Don’t just present ideas. Provide insights for your readers. You’re an expert in financial services, so tell your readers how they can act on information by providing steps and examples.

o   Probably the most important step for great content: Promote it! Site traffic is a major factor in your site’s domain authority

 

• Add links between pages on your site. This makes the depths of your website more accessible for both human and search engine robots.

 

Expert Tip: If your site is built in WordPress, Yoast is a free, popular plugin that assesses the SEO optimization for each page on your site.

 

Advanced Tactic: How Financial Advisors Can Build Domain Authority with Stacking

 

Domain authority stacking (DAS) is a strategy with this premise: linking multiple sites together in order to pass authority to your firm’s site.

 

This is an example of a simple domain authority stack:

 

 

You want to link your firm’s branded properties to your site, such as your Yelp page, standalone WordPress page, Blogger page, Tumblr profile, among others. This is important because you will still control the content and not run into any compliance issues.

 

Leverage Automated Tools like IFTTT to Boost your Stack

 

IFTTT (If This Then That) is a free tool that allows you to create recipes based on certain triggers. For instance, if you share a post onto your firm’s Facebook page, it will automatically be posted to Twitter.

 

Using IFTTT, you can automatically post content from your RSS feed, which includes your new site content, to those sites within your domain authority stack.

 

Domain Authority Stacking is Not a Magic Bullet for Improving Your Firm’s Search Engine Rankings

 

Experts have mixed opinions on DAS’s effectiveness. In some cases, it works wonders, while in other cases it has been shown to have minimal or even no results.

 

Key Takeaway: If you’re working to improve your website’s ranking, and it seems to be stuck, DAS is a great technique to try.

 

Domain Authority for Financial Advisors: A Great Guide for Improving Your Financial Advisory’s Search Rankings

 

 

As this article ventures a bit into the depths of SEO, I hope it has been helpful in clarifying what it takes to outrank your competitors.

 

While Domain Authority is not the end all to be all for your SEO and web presence, it’s a helpful metric to boost your firm’s site visibility in the search engines.

 

Financial advisors, want to learn more how you can leverage domain authority SEO strategy? Contact us today for a free consultation on your advisory’s web presence and online marketing strategy.