Welcome to my SEO beginner’s guide part 2. If you’ve not read part 1 yet, then head over there first as this is a continuation from yesterday’s guide (part 1 found here).

So, we’ve covered the main questions such as what is SEO, how to optimize your posts and what plugins to use. They’re the key aspects.

But how do you know if your work is paying off? Well, that’s where Moz, DA and PA come in.

The SEO Must Have = Moz

Moz is a website focused on all things SEO. The resources available include keyword research and website health checks to name a couple. I recommend making an account and exploring the resources when you have time.

However, the main reason why Moz is so great from an SEO perspective is you can find out your DA and PA scores.

DA and PA

Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) were both created by Moz.

They are scores that represent how high your site is ranking, or in other words, an indication of how successful your blog’s SEO is. The scoring is from 0 to 100, 100 being the best score. The higher the number, the higher your rank will be in search engines.

Domain Authority

It is often DA that is referred to most in blogging, especially if you are wanting to collaborate with brands.

DA is a measure of your entire domain’s success. It’s how your whole website is performing.

Brands like a good DA score. They want to know that your sponsored post, for example, will be found easily on search engines, and therefore the brand receives more engagement, which reflects well on you because brands recognise you as a good person to collaborate with.

Page Authority

PA is the ranking for one single web page rather than the whole site like DA.

As a result, it’s common for your PA to be higher than your DA because it’s easier to ensure one page is SEO-friendly rather than your entire site.

As a blogger, it’s hard to rank highly as you’re competing against major global websites, so don’t beat yourself up if you find your scores are quite low. From the research I’ve done, scores in the 20s or 30s are great achievements for bloggers.

How to find your DA and PA

This is where we come back to Moz. There are 2 ways to find your scores using Moz.

Firstly, if you simply want to keep track of your scores, I recommend downloading the Google Chrome extension MozBar and create an account. When you have the extension switched on, you can view any sites DA and PA including your own.

If you want to delve deeper with the analytics, then use the link explorer option on Moz. Once you’ve added your domain, you can view detailed information regarding your DA, PA, linking domains etc. I’m still figuring some of it out myself, but it’s quite easy to navigate the main points once you’re logged in.

With a free account, you can use link explorer 10 times a month, which I find is plenty.

How to improve your DA

Now that we know our scores and are creating optimized blog posts, how do we then improve our DA.

For a start, having SEO-friendly posts is vital because they provide the content of your site and include keywords so Google and other search engines understand the niche of your site and what searches to include your blog in.

It’s all about trust

I’ve found writing meaningful comments on other blog posts and including your domain in the comment helps as they represent your blog away from your site (hope that makes sense). It shows that you care about interacting with others and won’t just leave spam comments. Your blog is then regarded highly by search engines and your DA increases.

Of course, when you comment on other blogs, you’re the one who is having to prove your site is trustworthy.

Something that really helps DA is when other websites include a link to your blog. This is called backlinking. If a site features a link to your blog, it means that your blog is deemed trustworthy and people benefit from viewing it, therefore increasing your ranking.

Receiving valuable comments on your own blog, not just the generic ‘great posts’ also shows that people find your content beneficial. This then encourages search engines to rank your site highly.

A Final Word

And we’re done! Wow, we’ve covered a lot of ground in these two posts. I hope you’ve enjoyed this SEO beginner’s guide. If you have any further questions regarding anything I’ve mentioned in either post, then email meganelifestyle@hotmail.com or catch up with me on social media. Let me know how you get on with your SEO ventures!

Megan x

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