Internal links, new pages & Domain Authority

[gfiedel]

I have two questions regarding Domain Authority:

1. Is it possible that a drop in Domain Authority may have been caused by adding a blog and blog posts? In other words, would adding pages/posts dilute the site's authority? And will it catch back up with itself or will that require inbound links to those new pages? (oops! that was 3 questions in one)

2. Would it be detrimental to have internal links coming from blog posts without authority to my Home page and could that have contributed to a drop in Domain Authority?

Thanks!

[OrionGroup]

Adding pages / posts should not dilute your site's authority. Is the new content you added unique/original or is it copy/pasted from another source?

I would recommend interlinking the blog posts to certain key pages on your site where possible and within reason.

There are changes being made to search engine algorithms every day, it's sometimes had to say if a drop or rise can be attributed to something you did or something the search engine did.

Scott

[Thos003]

I don't believe adding a blog to a website would generally cause a drop in authority. But here are a few scenarios where I feel it could drop your authority.

• It could be negative if the content added to that blog section is duplicate content.
• It could be negative if the content is too thin in that blog section.
• It could be negative if the bounce back rate is too high in the blog section.
• It could be negative if the blog is overly syndicated to other low quality blogs.

So unless you fall into one of those, then I don't think your drop in authority is likely related to you adding a blog. Now if you lost rank, then perhaps google is trying to determine between pages that are too similar which one should rank.

To your 2nd question, internal links to your homepage will most likely not hurt you especially if they are part of the navigation structure. It is natural for a page to link back to the home page in the navigation. But links to your home page within the blog content that are keyword stuffed could hurt you, these links are not natural.

Have you lost a significant amount of traffic? What exactly do you consider a loss of authority?

[jws8118]

I agree with this response.

1.  It's not diluting your page authority.

2.  The links only hurt you if your blog is employing some spam tactics.

[gfiedel]

Thanks, Everyone!

I am basing the Domain Authority on the seoMoz number on my reports. It went from mid/high 40's to 39. Page Authority for Home is 49. MozRank is 4.32, MozTrust 4.60.

While not innovative or groundbreaking, our content is original and not duplicated, thin or syndicated at all. I have not checked bounce back rates on the blog pages.

The links to the Home page from the blog were not part of the navigation structure, but internal links from the content. I have now deleted the links I was concerned about. I think they were too keyword stuffy. I have never employed spam tactics but I do sometimes get a little carried away with on-page optimization for keywords.

We have never had a ton of traffic as we offer a primarily local service that doesn't bring a lot of frequent traffic. And then we lost traffic a few months ago due to losing position in the SERPS for our 2 main keywords, so we have very little traffic.