What is Domain Authority?
If you have ever practiced SEO in any way, shape or form then you have probably heard of Domain Authority, or DA, but what is it?
Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs).
A DA score ranges from 1 to 100, where the higher your score is, the greater chance you have of ranking in the SERPs.
How is Domain Authority Calculated?
Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating a variety of factors, including linking root domains and the total number of links, into a single DA score. Have a DA score then makes it easy to compare websites as well as the “ranking strength” of a website over time.
How Do I Find Out My Website’s Domain Authority?
You can find any website’s DA by entering a URL into Moz’s free Domain Analysis tool.
What is a “Good” Domain Authority?
Generally speaking, you can expect large company website’s such as Google or Facebook to have a very high DA, as they have a large number of high-quality external links. For instance, Google’s DA is currently 92 at the time this blog post was written.
Smaller businesses on the other hand, may never come close to these types of DA scores as their websites have fewer inbound links. In fact, if you’re a small or medium business in Australia and your website DA score is between 20 to 40, then you’re doing very well!
Just starting out? Well it might interest you to know that brand new websites will always start with a Domain Authority score of 1.
This leads us to our next section…
How do I Improve My Domain Authority?
While a higher Domain Authority is beneficial for SEO, it is best used as a comparison metric rather than a standalone or Google ranking metric.
In fact, DA is not a metric used by Google in determining search rankings and has no effect on the SERPs. That being said, Google does evaluate websites on their link profiles, so a solid off-page SEO Strategy with high-quality inbound links is vital for both Google rankings and DA.
We hope this has helped to clear up what Domain Authority is, how it’s derived and how it should be used. If you have any questions or comments, leave them in the comment box below or get in touch.
