Domain Authority (DA)

What Is Domain Authority?

Although Domain Authority is not an official Google ranking factor, SEO professionals use the value as a practical benchmark for competitive analysis and measuring link-building progress. A rising DA shows that your backlink profile is growing. Compare your DA with your competitors’ to gauge how much link building is needed to compete in contested niches.

Domain Authority (DA) is a Moz metric for evaluating the ranking strength of a domain on a scale of 0 to 100. The metric is based primarily on the quality and quantity of a domain’s backlinks. A domain with a high DA statistically tends to rank on page 1 more than one with a low DA. Domain Authority is not an official Google metric, but it is a widely used predictive metric in the SEO industry to quickly assess the competitiveness of websites. A new domain has DA 0–20, established mid-tier websites 40–60, and highly authoritative domains DA 70+.

DA is calculated using machine learning and analyzes the link profile: number of backlinks, authority of linking pages, link diversity, and other factors. Moz updates DA values regularly — so the metric can change every few weeks. Importantly, DA is a statistical predictive metric, not a direct ranking formula. A link from a DA-90 domain does not automatically carry a preset ranking weight — but the probability is higher that it is valuable compared to a link from a DA-10 domain.

For SEO strategy, Domain Authority is a quick reference point for link building and competitive analysis. When doing guest post outreach, you can target websites with an appropriate DA. In competitor analysis, DA quickly shows how strong competitors are. However, don’t rely blindly on DA — a relevant, editorial link from a DA-30 site can be more valuable than an irrelevant, purchased link from DA-70. Quality and context matter more than raw numbers.