Check Site Authority Score

Semrush’s Website Authority tool offers various insights like traffic volume, numbers of keyword rankings, and surveys of the competition. One key proprietary insight is the Authority Score, which is a powerful way to track the perceived quality of your site in a way that you can report on over time.

What is an Authority Score?

Authority Score (AS) is a proprietary metric developed by Semrush to take a holistic view of a domain’s likelihood to rank high in the SERPs. Experts say it’s like a trustworthiness score (yes, as in the “T” in E-E-A-T) that may parallel how Google’s algorithms assess your content.

You may have heard of other competitors’ metrics like Domain Authority or Domain Ranking, but Semrush’s AS combines the power of its celebrated database with advanced AI-powered algorithms, and proactively protects against manipulation.

You can view Authority Scores whenever you look at a domain or URL in Semrush’s Domain Overview, Backlink Analytics, Backlink Audit, or the Link Building Tool.

What goes into an Authority Score?

A wide range of factors get incorporated into authority, centering around the quality and quantity of links and traffic combined with an overall sense of how natural (not manipulated or spammy) a domain is. 

For example, a site with fewer, high-quality backlinks may have a higher AS than a site with 20 times as many backlinks if these links are spammy.

You’re likely familiar with assessing links and traffic, but what goes into the spam score may seem a bit mysterious (until now). 

The spam assessment part of the Authority Score looks at the backlink profile and checks for five different characteristics:

1. Do the linking sites have any organic rankings in the SERPs? If not, these could be shadow sites, PBNs, or other manipulative sites created solely to generate backlinks.
2. Unnaturally high percentages of dofollow domains, which could signal link schemes or other manipulations.
3. A mismatch between links and traffic, which should be minimal if links are being made from sites genuinely deeming the target to be helpful and relevant.
4. Excessive referring domains sharing the same IP address and/or network.
5. Whether another domain exists with the same backlink profile, which could signal artificial manipulation of links.

How do you boost your Authority Score? If you’re able to pull more organic traffic, build high quality links, or reduce your site’s spam factors, your Authority Score will increase.

Add the Website Authority tool to your toolkit

Better yet, use Semrush’s full range of tools and see how, together, they form a central dashboard to measure success and discover new opportunities for your organic and paid marketing efforts. Sign up for a free Semrush trial today!

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