Boost SEO Rank with A Domain Authority Stack

Here is what I’ve found via testing to be the fastest and most effective way to leverage the ranking benefits that domain authority stacking can provide. The theory of DA stacking is based on increasing your domain’s authority by having a series of domains with high DA linking to each other in a linear fashion like so:

Site 1 is a high DA site that then links to > site two which is a high DA site > which then links to site three which is a high DA site > which then links to your money site.

Some SEO consultants mistakenly think this can be achieved using social platforms like this: Facebook page > links to Twitter page > which links to Pinterest page > which links to the money site.

The theory is correct, but most social profile links are nofollow. Furthermore, even if the links were dofollow, they’re all orphan links in the sidebar and are completely detached from any on-page content.

The purest and most potent form of domain authority stacking occurs when a contextual link on a high DA site points to another high DA site that has a contextual link on it that points to your money site.

Assuming you had control over all sites, this poses the question of, why wouldn’t I just point all contextual links straight to my money site. One could argue that the second site would absorb most of the link juice from the first link, and it would be better not to waste that contextual link juice and point that link straight to the money site.

A domain authority stacker would argue that this type of linking structure is much rarer and more natural, and that search engines actually favor it more. So you can potentially achieve better rankings by allowing the high DA links to flow through to each other and stack on top of one another before the final link points back to your money site. It also has the added safety of having fewer links pointing to your site.

Boosting With Domain Authority Stacking the Right Way

Any tiered linking structure is essentially an attempt to juice up the potency of the tier 1 links, and in a way, it’s a form of DA stacking. The main idea in DA stacking is that instead of the traditional tier two links being much weaker than tier one, they are usually just as strong. To execute DA stacking in its purest form, you would need at least three high DA sites with contextual links that you control. Now as you know, that’s not easy to come by, so here’s a workaround I often use that leverages the effectiveness of the DA stacking method with great success.

Firstly let’s tackle the two juicing sites that we’ll use for the purpose of stacking the DA onto the main tier 1 site, (site C). Remember this works best when all links are contextual. It’ll still work if the links aren’t contextual, (image or sidebar links, etc.), but nowhere near as good as contextual links.

Now, these two initial sites could be two PBN sites, or any combination of site types, as long as the outbound link is contextual and the sites have a DA of at least 30+. Here’s where some crafty 301’s come into play with a powerful twist. The 301’s need to be weighted according to the target site and they must also be on the topic too.

What I mean by weighted correctly is that we’re not going to point a 301 with 1000+ links behind it to a target site that only has a total of 200 links. A smart on-topic 301 juicer has no more than 10% of the total link count of the target site behind it. For the above scenario, our optimal 301 would have no more than 20 links behind it. As the 20 links pointing to the 301 get crawled again over the course of a few weeks, you’d technically only be sending 20 new links to the target site, and the target site will absorb those new links quite nicely.

The Unbeatable way to find Authoritative on Topic Domains

To find the perfect domain to 301, it’s hard to go past Domcop as it’s the only tool of its type that lets you sort expired domains by topical trust categories. There are three parameters that you need to adhere to that govern the purchase of your 301 domain. The two most important factors are topical trust and the anchor text. It’s no good finding a domain with inbound links that have perfect anchor text if all the links have been categorized as off-topic. And vice versa, of course, it’s no good having the perfect topical relevancy if all the anchor text is about Nike shoes.

If you have to compromise, which you often do, then go for better anchor text rather than topical relevancy. So if you’re trying to rank your money site for “Plumber City” then an expired domain with anchor text links about “blocked drains” and “hot water repairs” will serve you better than perfectly on-topic inbound links with anchor text about “ugg boots”.

Now that you’ve found a good expired domain with on-topic links and half-decent anchor text, the last thing to check is the inbound link count, and it should only be around 10% of the target site. So if the site you’re trying to juice up already has around 500 inbound links, then the optimal domain to 301 would only have around 50 links behind it.

After the 301 has taken full effect, you should see the site’s DA increase by around 20 points after the next Moz update, depending on the quality of the domain you 301 redirected to the site. You’ll also see the site’s topical trust flow increased nicely as well. You can then give the site some breathing space for a month, and then send another 301 to it again with the same link credentials. You can easily take a DA25 site to a DA50+ using that strategy.

Your money site will remain protected from these 301’s because it’s too many link hops (tiers) away from these DA juicing sites. The second stage is just to repeat this strategy on the second site in your DA stack. So now you end up with two decent DA50+ sites (due to each site having good inbound 301’s).

The third and final site in the DA stack should be as white hat as possible because that’s the site that you’ll be using to send the contextual link back to your money site. This final site should already have great DA behind it and will have no inbound 301’s pointing to it. Let’s call this site.

It’s much better if you don’t own this final site, but you control a page on it. Think sites like Chamber of Commerce, high-end directories, etc. Sites that you actually have to pay for to get access on.

So now your stack has two high DA sites that have been juiced up with 301’s, (site A and site B). Now simply put a contextual link on site A linking to site B. And the put a contextual link on-site B which links back to site C. And then site C has a contextual link pointing back to your money site.

The Correct Anchor Text Strategy

Now for the contextual links anchor text strategy. Sites A and B should be used as topically relevant or partial match anchor text or links. So if the money site was trying to rank for “plumber city”, then site A would link to site B with anchor text of something like “affordable blocked drain solutions”. Then site B would link to the whitehat site C with something like “experienced licensed plumbers”. (use the below share buttons and I’ll give you the exact anchor text strategy for the last site- share the love right?)

My experience in DA stacking has shown that it’s quite difficult to increase the DA of a site by sending it a single contextual link from another high DA site. If the target site has a DA of 40+ then a single inbound link from another high DA site won’t really move the site’s DA.

It is important to note that the entire purpose of doing this has nothing at all to do with attempting to get a domain’s DA & PA metrics to increase on the Moz scorecard. This strategy is all about using unique and powerful inbound linking techniques that have a natural footprint. Often the needle won’t even move on a site’s overall DA score by sending in a single high DA link, but you can be sure that the page authority will increase nicely.