Domain Authority
Determine the effectiveness of your link-building efforts by measuring the "trust" factor of your domain.
Domain Authority score
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) is a score from 1 to 100, developed by Moz, that predicts how likely a website is to rank well on search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher the score, the stronger the site's competitive position in search.
DA is shaped by the number and quality of links pointing to your domain. A site with many links from credible, well-established sources earns a higher score than one with few or low-quality links. Analyzing your backlink profile, and comparing it against competitors, reveals where you stand and what it would take to improve your SEO traffic.
Domain Authority benchmark
Domain Authority is a useful SEO metric, but benchmarking it is harder than it looks. Tom Roberts, CEO and Head of Digital Marketing, puts it plainly: "Not only do I quite frequently see sites with a lower DA than their competitors rank higher, but averages can also be skewed by self-hosted web 2.0's like WordPress blogs that have DAs of 100."
A common question is what minimum DA score a site should have before you consider guest posting on it. Roberts suggests a general threshold of DA 30 or above, but adds important context: "A blog with a lower DA score might have a highly engaged community and a strong social share campaign. Conversely, a blog with a higher DA might just be a glorified link farm with little relevance to your industry."
The number alone does not tell the full story. Use DA as one signal among several, not as the only filter.
Domain Authority challenges
Domain Authority is difficult to influence directly because it is an aggregate of multiple signals: MozRank, MozTrust, overall link profile, and more. That complexity is intentional. DA is designed to approximate how competitive a site is in Google's eyes, and since Google weighs many factors, DA has to as well.
This means you cannot move the score by changing one thing. Incremental improvements across your broader SEO strategy accumulate over time into a meaningful shift.
Domain Authority best practices
Improving Domain Authority comes down to two fundamentals: remove bad links and earn good ones. Everything else is in service of those two goals.
Rohit Palit from Search Engine Journal shares a helpful infographic that walks marketers through the full range of tactics. Here are the approaches that tend to move the needle:
- Audit and clean your backlink profile. Identify and disavow low-quality or spammy links that drag down your score.
- Earn links from authoritative sources. A handful of links from well-regarded domains carries more weight than dozens from low-quality sites.
- Create content worth linking to. High-value content earns links naturally over time. This is the core of content marketing done well.
- Work with an SEO agency. Agencies with established relationships can secure legitimate, high-quality backlinks. It is an investment, and results depend on the partner you choose.
- Focus on MozRank and MozTrust. Both are influenced by your link profile. Getting links from pages that are themselves well-linked-to is the most direct lever you have.
The underlying principle: your Domain Authority score reflects your overall SEO health. The best way to raise it is to improve the fundamentals, not to chase the metric itself.
How to monitor Domain Authority
Domain Authority is most useful when tracked alongside related link-building metrics. On its own, it is a snapshot. Paired with backlink growth, referring domain trends, and organic traffic, it becomes a meaningful part of your SEO dashboard.
Tracking Domain Authority on a Web Analytics Dashboard gives you a single view of how your domain health connects to traffic and conversion outcomes. You can also monitor paid and organic performance together on an Adwords Campaign Dashboard.
A dashboard built in Klips keeps these numbers current and consistent, so you are not pasting figures from different tools or relying on a manual pull to know where you stand.
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