How to 3x your Domain Rating in a few months

Your Domain Rating ( Ahrefs DR) is like your online credit score.

The higher your DR, the easier it (usually) is for your site to rank.

We 3x'ed this client's DR in 6 months, here's how.

But first, what is DR exactly?

DR is a metric that measures the strength and authority of a domain based on backlinks.

Higher scores mean more trustworthiness and clout! Ahrefs DR score can range from 0-100.

Domain Rating uses a proprietary algorithm to measure backlink quantity and quality, the authority of linking websites, and the relevance of links - all in one.

It's not an exact science, but higher DR typically correlates to higher and more rankings.

How do you improve your site's Domain Rating as quickly as possible?

1) Acquire quality and relevant backlinks to your home page first

Your home page is your main pillar page, all "link juice" flows from it to other pages.

Here's our process for this:

2) Use a hub-page + sub-page structure to organize your content into topic clusters.

Make sure you interlink these pages to connect relevant topics and increase your topical authority.

3) Create a smart content strategy for your "sub-pages".

You should focus on 2 main types of content here:

• A) Research studies/data-driven content
• B) "pain points" content

Data-based content is great for you to acquire backlinks organically and on autopilot, especially if you start ranking for keywords like:

- marketing statistics

- sales statistics, etc...

"Pain Point" content is great for sales. Most middle-of-the-funnel content is going to be pain-point-driven.

These will also be targeting super long tail keywords with very low search volume but great business potential (higher ROI).

4) Acquire backlinks to the main hub pages

These will be your "ultimate guide" type pages, the main pillars for each of your content hubs.

As you promote these pages, all the interlinked sub-pages will benefit in turn and some of them will start to rank.

Then the snowball starts rolling:

Good content structure -> the links acquired are more effective -> increase in DR -> higher ranks for data-based content -> more organic links & further increase in DR -> higher ranks for pain-point content -> (hopefully) more sales

To speed things up even further:

- HARO (to get quality link opportunities to your door)

- Content updates (to push existing content that is performing well, and higher in the rankings)

- Content repurposing (to find your audience where they are and spread the word faster)