Domain Authority (DA) is a metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank in search engine results based primarily on the quality and quantity of its backlink profile. Scored on a scale of 1 to 100, a higher score indicates a stronger domain more likely to rank competitively across a range of keywords.

Domain Authority is a third-party metric — it is not something Google uses internally. But it correlates well with actual rankings and is widely used as a practical proxy for assessing site strength, qualifying link building targets, and tracking SEO progress over time.

What Domain Authority Actually Measures

Domain Authority is calculated using a machine learning model that incorporates dozens of link-based signals into a single predictive score. The most important factors are:

Linking root domains. The number of unique websites that link to your domain. Quality matters more than quantity — one link from a DA 80 publication counts far more than 50 links from DA 10 sites. This is the single most impactful factor in your Domain Authority.

Quality of linking domains. Not just how many sites link to you, but how authoritative those sites are. Links from established, trusted sources — major publications, government and educational sites, well-known industry sites — contribute disproportionately to Domain Authority.

Your own DA relative to the competition. DA is a relative score — it positions your domain against every other domain on the web. This is why a new site with a few quality links still scores low even though those links are genuinely valuable.

Domain Authority vs Page Authority

Domain Authority measures the strength of your entire domain. Page Authority (PA) measures the strength of a specific URL. As we covered in our guide to page authority, a high-DA site does not automatically mean every page has high PA — individual pages need their own backlinks to build page-level authority.

How to Increase Domain Authority

Earn high-quality backlinks. This is the primary driver of Domain Authority. Focus on earning links from authoritative, relevant websites through the strategies we have covered — broken link building, guest posting, HARO outreach, and creating genuinely linkable content. Each new quality link from a relevant authoritative site moves your DA upward.

Remove or disavow toxic links. Low-quality, spammy backlinks from link farms and PBNs can suppress Domain Authority by signalling poor link quality to the algorithm. As we covered in our guide to the disavow tool, cleaning up your worst links can sometimes improve DA as much as adding good links.

Fix broken links on your site. Internal broken links that lead to 404 errors disrupt the flow of equity through your site. Use our broken link checker to find and fix these. A technically clean site with functioning links distributes its authority more efficiently.

Grow your site's content depth. Sites with extensive, high-quality content across a niche attract more natural backlinks over time as they become genuine reference resources. As we covered in our guide to topical authority, depth of coverage in your niche attracts links from others writing about the same topics.

What DA Score Is Considered Good?

DA is relative to your competitive landscape rather than absolute. For local service businesses competing in a small geographic area, DA 20–30 may be sufficient to rank competitively. For competitive national or global niches, you may need DA 50+ to rank on page one. Compare your DA to the sites currently ranking for your target keywords — that is your actual benchmark.

Summary

Domain Authority predicts ranking potential based on your backlink profile quality. Increase it primarily by earning high-quality, relevant backlinks through content and outreach, cleaning up toxic links, and fixing technical issues that interrupt equity flow. Use our anchor text analyser to monitor your link profile health as it grows.

Missed the previous article? Read: What Is a Redirect Chain and How Do You Fix It?