My DA has stayed at 1 for an entire year.

[TaylorRHawkins]

Good afternoon.

I recently got hired as an SEO for a site, and it appears that they have been stuck at a 1DA for almost a year. I've been working on them for 3 months now with no improvements.

I'm not sure if this is related but they do not have a traditional ".com" address. There URL ends with ".kitchen"

If you have any idea why this might be happening, please let me know. 
It would be much appreciated. 
Thanks!

[BlueCorona]

Hi Taylor,

What has been your plan of action over the past three months? It would be helpful to know what things you've already tried!

Do you have a strategy in place to get high quality backlinks to the site? One of the most important things to remember when trying to build your backlink profile is that you need to focus on quality, _not _quantity. For example, it’s not about how many links you can get to point back to your site—it’s about how good those links are. One link from a reputable, authoritative website is better than 20 links from a spammy website or site with a domain authority of 2.

When reaching out for backlinks, look for websites that provide value to their visitors. If visitors stay and interact with said website until they find your link, search engines will take a cue that the linking site is engaging and provides relevant value to the user’s online experience. When that site chooses to link to your site, it’s another clue to Google or Bing that your site will enhance the user’s experience even more. For some more tips on backlinks, check out this blog that we wrote.

Hope this helps!

[TaylorRHawkins]

I appreciate the response!

I should have prefaced this a little more; I've been working in the SEO industry for 4 years now and I have a good grasp on how to properly linkbuild / run a campaign. I've gotten results for plenty of clients over the years.

I've been getting relevant, authoritative backlinks for this client as well as adjusted their On-Page Optimization for the better.

It appears they have a 902 Error Code from Moz. Google Webmaster Tools is able to crawl the site, but Moz for whatever reason isn't it. I looked into our web hosting platform and even contacted their tech-support team for help. On their end, it says that the crawl abilities are active and there shouldn't be a problem.

Yet there's still a 902 error and their DA hasn't moved at all. sigh

[DonnaDuncan]

Hi Taylor,

Here's a Moz post that discusses possible reasons (and remedies) for the 902 error.

Your domain authority might be stuck at 1 for a couple of reasons:

1. The Moz crawler is abandoning your site (because of the 902 error).
2. The Moz crawler is skipping your site (because it doesn't crawl every website every update).
3. The Moz crawler isn't finding all (or enough of) the backlinks pointing to your website. If you have few link sources, the likelihood of this occurring increases.
4. Your efforts aren't making an impact.

Are you using other sources to check your backlink profile? Maybe Google Search Console, Majestic SEO and/or Ahrefs? Are they showing progress and improvement? If yes, you're likely on a good path and need to resolve the crawl problem to see that reflected on Moz.

[ViviCa1]

I saw a response from someone at Moz to someone with this same issue - they had a .cc domain. The response was that Moz currently don't support custom TLDs. Most likely .kitchen is also affected by this. See here for the discussion.

[DonnaDuncan]

That link was helpful and from only a few days ago. It confirms your suspicion.

Thank you. I'd still use those other tools though, to gauge whether your efforts are paying off.

[TaylorRHawkins]

I got a response from someone at Moz over an email and they confirmed this to be true. They don't support custom Top Level Domains, so they can't crawl ".kitchen" - Thanks everyone!