Domain Authority
Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages, scored on a scale from 1 to 100.
Domain Authority is a metric created by Moz, an SEO software company, to estimate a website's ranking potential. It analyzes factors like the number and quality of backlinks pointing to a domain to generate a score from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating greater ranking ability. It's important to understand that Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor.
However, DA is useful as a comparative tool to evaluate the relative strength of websites. It helps SEO professionals prioritize link building targets, assess competitors, and track their site's authority over time. DA is calculated using a machine learning model that considers linking root domains, total number of links, and other factors.
In practice
- A startup tracked their DA monthly and saw it grow from 12 to 38 over 18 months through consistent content marketing and PR outreach, correlating with a 200% increase in organic traffic
- A marketing agency used competitor DA analysis to show a client why they needed to invest more in link building: competitors had DAs of 45-60 while the client was at 22
- A local business focused on earning links from high-DA local news sites and chambers of commerce, efficiently growing their authority in their geographic market
- An e-commerce site discovered that pages on their site with the most backlinks from high-DA domains consistently outranked their other pages
Not sure how this applies to you?
A senior engineer walks your site, your search presence and the way enquiries reach you, then writes down the three things worth fixing first. You keep the document either way.