Domain Authority: What Is It?
Moz’s Domain Authority measures a website’s potential to rise in search engine rankings. Domain Authority ranges from 1 to 100, with higher numbers indicating greater potential in search engine rankings.
Are you curious about your own website’s DA score? This free tool will tell you your Domain Authority rank.
How does Moz determine Domain Authority?
The most important factor in Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) calculation is the number of incoming links (also called “backlinks”) pointing to your domain.
Moz obtains this data from its Link Explorer index, which is regularly refreshed. Higher DA scores are typically associated with more popular and authoritative websites.
Moz’s Authority Scoring Guide explains the formula behind Domain Authority in detail. To simplify things, though, it comes down to your backlink profile.
To what extent does the quality of a domain’s authority matter?
Domain Authority is measured on a scale from 0 to 100, making it easy to assign relative value to different results. However, getting a perfect DA score is incredibly difficult; only the largest and most popular websites have ever managed it.
Moz stresses the comparative nature of this metric for this very reason. Search engines can and do rank websites with low DA scores highly.
Assume that your site’s DA is 25. Even if it’s lower than the scores of millions of other websites, if it’s higher than the scores of your major competitors, you’ll likely rank higher for the most important keywords in your industry.
To rephrase: you need a higher Domain Authority score than the sites you want to outrank.
Methods for Evaluating Domain Reputation
Are you curious about your own website’s DAuthority score? Numerous choices are available to you. Just to name three:
Tools such as Ahrefs’ Website Authority Checker, Da Pa Checker, Domain Authority Checker, and Moz’s Domain SEO Analysis Tool
The Use of Domain Authority in Search Engine Optimization
Domain Authority scores can be used for more than just strutting your authority; they can also inform a laser-focused search engine optimization strategy. Because of DA’s comparative nature, you can use it to evaluate your own SEO progress and establish more practical goals.
1. Select keywords using DA.
DA can be a helpful metric for determining whether or not your website has a chance of ranking on page one for a given set of keywords.
You should aim to optimize your website for keywords that have a Keyword Difficulty score that is lower than, or is at least equal to, your DA. In order to appear on the first page of search results for the keyword “coffee subscription boxes,” for instance, your domain authority (DA) needs to be at least 60.
While not a perfect measure, it can be useful for finding keywords with less competition that will bring in free, targeted traffic to your site in the meantime as you work to improve your Domain Authority.
2. Identify your SEO priorities
Considering the competition is a great way to use your DA score because it is a comparative metric.
If your domain authority (DA) is already higher than your rivals’, then producing top-notch content is probably enough to boost you to the top of search results. For this reason, it’s recommended that your team focus its efforts on on-page optimizations, which are easier to implement and require fewer resources.
Off-site SEO is the reality, but it requires more time, resources, and money. If you want to compete and increase your website’s visibility on Google, you’ll need to be aggressive with your off-site strategy if there is still a large gap between your DA and that of your competitors.
 3. Heed Google’s rules
Domain Authority is a representation of E-A-T and backlinks, two things that are considered to be ranking factors but are not in and of themselves. According to Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, which are referenced in Backlinko’s 2022 SEO guide, the author of the primary content can affect its ranking. You can help Google determine your website’s expertise and authority by including detailed information on your about page, contact page, privacy policy, and terms of service, and ensuring that your blog authors are experts in the topics they cover and have bylines that indicate as much.
When your Domain Authority (DA) goes up, your search engine rankings go up, too.
There’s an air of prestige about a high DA in the world of search engine optimization. While a high DA score is certainly impressive and not easily attained, it is important to keep in mind that this metric in no way limits or defines SEO success.
Still, it’s worthwhile to work on increasing your DA because doing so depends on elements that are critical to achieving a high Google ranking, and a high Google ranking leads to more visitors. Take advantage of the advice in this post to increase your DA and convince Google that your domain is credible and widely used:
1. Register with search engines and directories.
2. Make excellent content.
3. Involve yourself in public relations
4. Attempt Broken Link Building
