Maybe you want to explain domain authority to someone that does not work in SEO, such as friends or potential clients. SEO is a tricky term, and kind of gets thrown around alot haphazardly. Also, it can be difficult to explain SEO concepts to someone inexperienced with it. Hopefully after this quick read, you should have a better understanding and be able to communicate the idea of SEO better.

Domain authority is a very important SEO concept. Ask yourself, after I search something, why do I see certain results listed on the search engine results page, but not others? The reason is simple: search ranking factors. This is what search engines use to determine which results are at the top for that search query, phrase or keyword.

Search Ranking factors:

Keywords >> "Relevance" (On-page)

Links >> "Authority" (Off-site)

These are the two main search ranking factors, and ultimately are why any page is ranking or not ranking for any search phrase.

Are Keywords Still Relevant in SEO?

The first of these two main factors are the page itself. So, yes, keywords will always play an important role in SEO. Anything and everything on the page including the content and keywords determine its relevance to the search query. This is more widely understood of the two factors, while the next is really important and overlooked. 

Is Link Building Still Relevant to SEO?

There is also the second main factor of search rankings: Links. Does anyone link to these pages? Do other sites trust this page? Has anyone referred to or cited this page? This is known as authority. Google really innovated this early on and has become a very very important concept to SEO across the web.

• Links are credibility

• Quantity is good

• Quality is really good

You can think of a web page linking to another web page as a vote of confidence. It's like saying I am linking to this web page because it is credible and probably important. The number of links obviously is important because there are more votes saying this is a good page. However, Link quality is most important. If a site with high authority links to you, this is going to be much more valuable than a low authority site. 

And links from sites with a high authority are not just worth a little bit more. They are worth exponentially worth more. Think of a logarithmic scale skyrocketing. It is known for a fact that some links are much more valuable than others because of experiments, practice, expertise, and reading Google's patents.

Wrapping up, Domain Authority is a way Google grades sites based mostly on links and relevance. Unfortunately, Google no longer shares these ratings for sites. Third-party sites have to scan for all links between pages and emulate Google's discontinued PageRank. Moz provides a popular SEO tool for gauging Domain Authority. 

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