What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) is a score from 1 to 100 developed by Moz to predict the likelihood that a website will rank well in search engines. The higher the DA value, the greater the ranking potential. The score is based on various factors, mainly the quality and quantity of incoming backlinks. Important to understand: DA is not a Google metric but a third-party tool for comparability. Similar metrics are Domain Rating (DR) from Ahrefs and Authority Score from Semrush. DA should be used as a relative comparison value, not an absolute measure. Building DA is a long-term process that happens mainly through backlinks from authoritative websites.
Key Points
- Scale of 1-100, higher is better
- Not an official Google metric, but Moz tool
- Mainly influenced by backlink quality
- Comparison value, not absolute truth
- New domains typically have DA 1-10
- Top sites like Google have DA near 100
Practical Example
“Our website increased its Domain Authority from 25 to 45, leading to significantly better rankings.”