“Website authority” or “domain authority” refers to how much credibility your church’s website has, relative to all other websites our there. This rating is a number between 0 and 100, with 0 being the lowest, and 100 being the highest. You can think of it as the numeric value of strength for all your organic search engine optimization efforts as compared to all the other websites in existence. While it hasn’t been proven that your site’s domain authority is directly linked to your site’s search engine rankings, there is a strong correlation between the two based on a study of over 200,000 sites and associated rankings.
Why is domain authority so important for a church website? Knowing how you measure up compared to similarly focused websites will help you know where you stand and identify opportunities for improvement. Identifying these areas can lead you to actionable steps to improve your church website authority, search engine rankings, and new visitor website traffic leading to in-person church visits.
External Backlinks
External backlinks are important to the strength of your church’s website because they suggest to search engines that your site is trusted and has relevant and desirable content. For example, if your church is featured on a site with a yearly “Top 10 Churches in Your Area” article, your site’s authority will grow because it was “endorsed” by that referring site. That backlink will also continue bringing viewers to your site over time. The more external backlinks you get from other reputable websites, the more trusted your site becomes, and the better you’ll rank within search engines.
Increasing Your Domain Authority
Your church website’s domain rating is calculated using a number of elements: the number of unique referring links to your site (external backlinks), the “authority” of their referring domains, and the number of unique links these referring sites link out to. Although your number may be low when you analyze it with Ahrefs, if it’s still higher than your neighboring churches’ numbers, it’s likely you’re benefiting from more organic search engine traffic than they are thanks to higher rankings for keywords you have in common. In its most simple terms, the key to increasing your domain authority is to gain more external backlinks from reputable websites. To do so, you should focus on creating shareworthy content that can’t be ignored, or asking those reputable and related sites to feature your church’s website in an article.
When you’re looking for possible referring domains for backlinks, it’s important to keep a few priorities in mind: the domain must have its own high-quality backlinks, it doesn’t link out to too many other sites (especially those that are untrustworthy or focused on another category), it publishes high-quality content, and it gets quite a bit of organic traffic.
Learn how your domain authority measures up and how you can gain more high-quality backlinks by using Ahrefs.
If you have questions about using Ahrefs, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’d love to help you improve your church website’s domain authority and bring more local people to your church.
What is Website Authority?
“Website authority” or “domain authority” refers to how much credibility your church’s website has, relative to all other websites our there. This rating is a number between 0 and 100, with 0 being the lowest, and 100 being the highest.
What is Domain Authority?
“Website authority” or “domain authority” refers to how much credibility your church’s website has, relative to all other websites our there. This rating is a number between 0 and 100, with 0 being the lowest, and 100 being the highest.
Why is Domain Authority Important?
Knowing how you measure up compared to similarly focused websites will help you know where you stand and identify opportunities for improvement. Identifying these areas can lead you to actionable steps to improve your church website authority, search engine rankings, and new visitor website traffic leading to in-person church visits.
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is a link from one website to another. Google uses the number of sites that link to another site as an indicator of trust and uses this as one of the factors to gauge where a site should sit in the search rankings. The more external backlinks you get from other reputable websites, the more trusted your site becomes, and the better you’ll rank within search engines.
Comments 3
What types of organizations and websites do you recommend churches try to get links on?
Great question! So long as the website follows all the rules mentioned above (it’s a reputable website, it doesn’t link out to too many other sites, it has it’s own high quality backlinks, it publishes high quality and related content, and gets some organic traffic) then we’d say anywhere that your church’s potential new visitors might be looking. This could a website offering family-friendly events, a website introducing new residents to the neighborhood or local area, or a website offering resources for any felt needs that your ministries support. Thanks so much for taking the time to read our post!
Thank you for this article. We are currently using the free version of Ahrefs that still allows us to keep track of our backlinks. It’s helpful. God bless.