What is Domain Authority in SEO?

Domain Authority (DA) is a score from 1 to 100 developed by Moz that predicts how well a website is likely to rank in search engine results. It's calculated based on the number and quality of inbound links to a domain. It's NOT a Google ranking factor — Google doesn't use Domain Authority in its algorithm. It's a third-party approximation of link authority, useful for competitive analysis and benchmarking, but not something Google's algorithm directly measures.

What is a good Domain Authority score?

DA is relative, not absolute. A score of 30 is excellent for a new local business website, adequate for a regional competitor, and weak against a national brand with a score of 70+. Rather than targeting a specific DA, compare your score to your direct competitors in the same niche and market. If your competitors rank 40–50, targeting 45+ is meaningful. The absolute number matters less than how you compare to the sites you're competing against.

How do I increase my Domain Authority?

DA is primarily driven by backlinks — specifically, the number and quality of other websites linking to yours. To increase DA: earn backlinks from authoritative, relevant websites in your industry; create content worth linking to (research, guides, tools, data); build local authority through directories, press, and community links; and fix any toxic or spammy links pointing to your site. DA also increases as competitors' scores change — the scale is relative to the wider web.

What Is Domain Authority and Does It Actually Matter for SEO?

Domain Authority (DA) is one of the most misunderstood concepts in SEO. Many businesses obsess over their DA score without understanding what it is, what it isn't, and — critically — that Google doesn't use it at all. Here's what it actually means and what to do about it.

What Domain Authority is

Domain Authority is a metric created by Moz, the SEO software company. It scores a website on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100, intended to predict how well the site will rank in search results. The score is calculated primarily from the number and quality of backlinks pointing to the domain — sites with many high-quality inbound links get higher scores.

The scale is logarithmic, which means it's much harder to move from 70 to 80 than from 10 to 20. Most new or small business websites start in the 1–20 range. A DA of 30–40 is common for established local or regional businesses. A DA of 60+ typically indicates a well-known brand with significant link authority. DA of 90+ is reserved for the likes of Wikipedia, YouTube, and major national publications.

DA is not a Google metric

This is the most important thing to understand about Domain Authority: Google does not use it. It's a third-party metric created by Moz based on their own estimate of link authority. Google's actual ranking algorithm uses its own internal version of link authority (PageRank and many other signals) that the public cannot directly access or measure.

DA is Moz's approximation of link strength — and it correlates reasonably well with actual ranking ability because both DA and Google's internal signals are driven by the same underlying reality (quality backlinks). But the correlation isn't perfect, and chasing a DA number for its own sake is misguided. You can't improve your Google rankings by improving your DA score — you improve your Google rankings by improving the real underlying signals that DA is trying to approximate.

This is also why buying "DA improvement" services is pointless. They change a third-party number, not your actual ranking ability.

Similar metrics from other tools

Moz's DA is one of several similar scores:

Domain Rating (DR) — Ahrefs' version. Also measures backlink profile strength on a 0–100 scale. Many SEO professionals consider DR slightly more accurate than DA, but both are approximations.
Authority Score — SEMrush's equivalent metric.
Trust Flow and Citation Flow — Majestic's pair of authority metrics.

These metrics don't always agree with each other because each tool uses its own link index and calculation methodology. A site might have DA 45 from Moz and DR 38 from Ahrefs — neither is "right", they're both approximations using different data. Don't mix metrics when doing competitive analysis; compare sites using the same tool's metric.

Where DA is actually useful

Despite not being a Google metric, DA has legitimate use cases:

Competitive benchmarking. If you want to know whether you're competitive with the sites ranking for your target keywords, comparing DA (or DR) gives a rough sense of whether your link authority is in the same ballpark. If you're DA 15 competing with DA 60+ sites, you know you need significant link building before you'll rank for competitive terms.

Evaluating link opportunities. Before pursuing a backlink from a specific site, checking its DA gives a rough indicator of that site's link strength. A link from a DA 70 site is likely worth more than a link from a DA 5 site, all else being equal.

Tracking progress over time. If your DA is growing over months and years, it's a rough confirmation that your link building efforts are producing results. It's imperfect (Moz recalculates the whole web's DA regularly, so your absolute score can change without any change in your actual link profile), but directionally useful.

Content and SEO reporting. For clients or stakeholders who want a single number representing "website authority", DA is commonly understood and useful for that purpose — as long as it's presented as a directional proxy, not a precise measure.

What drives Domain Authority

DA is primarily driven by backlinks:

Number of linking domains: how many unique domains link to yours. 100 backlinks from 100 different sites is more valuable than 100 backlinks from one site.
Quality of linking domains: a link from a high-DA site passes more authority than one from a low-DA site.
Relevance of linking domains: links from sites in the same industry or topic area are more valuable than random links.
Anchor text distribution: a natural mix of branded, generic, and keyword-rich anchors. Unnaturally keyword-heavy anchor text is a spam signal.

Technical factors — site speed, HTTPS, clean URL structure — affect rankings but have minimal impact on DA, which is almost entirely a link-based metric. Content quality affects DA indirectly, by attracting links that wouldn't otherwise be earned.

How to improve it (and what actually matters)

The right frame: don't try to improve your DA. Try to improve your actual link authority — the real underlying signal DA is approximating. DA will follow as a side effect.

What actually builds link authority:

Create content worth linking to. Comprehensive guides, original research, free tools, data-driven case studies, unique insights — content that other sites in your field want to reference. This is the most sustainable link acquisition strategy. See the content marketing guide for how to build this kind of content.
Build local authority. For local businesses: GBP, local business directories, local press mentions, chamber of commerce listings, industry association memberships. These build the local authority signals that help you rank for local searches. See the link building guide for the practical tactics.
Get mentioned by authoritative sources. Contributing to industry publications, being quoted as an expert, appearing in local press — third-party mentions build authority that DA eventually reflects.
Fix toxic links. Spammy, low-quality links pointing to your site can drag DA down. Review your backlink profile in Moz, Ahrefs, or Search Console's Links report. Use Google's Disavow Tool for obviously spammy links you can't get removed — though Google is generally good at ignoring spammy links automatically, and over-disavowing can do more harm than good.

What's a "good" Domain Authority score?

There's no universal "good" DA — it's relative to your competition. The only DA that matters is whether yours is competitive with the sites ranking for the keywords you're targeting.

Rough benchmarks by context:

New website: DA 1–5. Normal — no links yet.
Established local business: DA 10–30. Competitive for local keywords with low national competition.
Regional business with some press and directory coverage: DA 25–50. Competitive for regional terms.
National brand with consistent content and press coverage: DA 50–70.
Major media, large corporations: DA 70–90.

Rather than setting a DA target, check the DA of the sites currently ranking for your target keywords and use that as your benchmark. If you want to rank where they rank, you need comparable or better link authority — plus better content and on-page SEO. The SEO checklist covers the full picture of what it takes to rank competitively.