Domain Authority (DA) is often mentioned in SEO circles, but not everyone understands how it’s calculated or what it really represents. While it’s not a direct ranking factor, it can tell you a lot about your site’s standing, trust, and overall website’s SEO performance.
If you're trying to improve your rankings and beat the competition, understanding how domain authority works is one of the smartest starting points.
It helps you evaluate how your domain compares to competing websites and gives clarity on your long-term visibility in search engine results pages.
This page breaks it down in simple terms — from how domain authority is calculated to real-world SEO impact and why your domain authority metric may rise or fall over time.
Domain Authority was created by Moz, and it is designed to predict how likely a website is to rank in Google compared to other websites. It’s scored from 1 to 100. A higher domain authority score suggests a stronger likelihood of ranking well in search results.
But here’s the key:
Domain Authority does not look at the quality of your content.
It mainly evaluates your site’s link profile i.e., meaning the inbound links, trust, and strength of the websites linking to you.
So if your website has many high quality backlinks from trusted sources, your DA will likely be higher.
Moz uses advanced machine learning models to evaluate your link profile. While the exact formula is proprietary, several advanced factors significantly influence your domain’s DA score.
Backlink quality is not simply about getting links from big websites. Moz’s algorithm evaluates how your site fits into the global link graph, which is similar to a map of the internet’s trust flow.
Advanced factors include:
Sites that exist inside trusted “neighborhoods”, such as news networks, governments, educational hubs, and industry-leading ecosystems. These will pass more authority than isolated high-DA blogs.
Moz models how trust moves across links.
If trusted sites link to a site that links to you, some of that trust flows through the chain.
A backlink from a page that is topically aligned with your content provides more authority than multiple irrelevant links.
This advanced interpretation prioritizes how your link graph supports your website’s ability to earn trust across your entire domain.
It’s not just the number of domains linking to you — DA looks at how your link profile grows over time within your competitive niche.
Advanced signals include:
Links spread across news sites, SaaS platforms, educational publishers, niche authority sources, and editorial hubs create a healthier profile.
A naturally growing link profile indicates authority. Sudden spikes or unnatural patterns may weaken your score.
Older links lose weight unless new editorial references continue reinforcing your authority.
Even if your links are increasing, your DA can drop if your competitors are growing faster.
Diversity matters — but growth patterns matter more. Sites with more trustworthy linking root domains build a stronger and more natural link profile.
Internal linking does more than connect pages — it shapes how authority flows across your site.
Advanced signals that influence DA indirectly:
Strong internal clusters help Moz interpret your site as a subject-matter authority.
Internal links determine how much authority your strongest pages pass to newer or deeper URLs.
Pages that are easier for crawlers to discover maintain stronger internal authority signals.
These elements support stronger technical SEO, allowing your authority to flow efficiently between pages and increasing your domain’s stability over time.
Your DA can also fluctuate simply because Moz updates its database. If they crawl new backlinks or remove spammy ones, your score may go up or down, even if you haven't made any changes
This is why consistent link building efforts and monitoring are important.
Yes — but with limitations.
Domain Authority is most useful when:
Comparing your site domain authority with competitors
Evaluating potential backlink opportunities
Tracking long-term progress
But it’s not useful as a standalone KPI. Why? Because Google doesn’t use it directly.
You must pair DA analysis with user experience, page performance, and high quality content — just like we explained in What is a Purple Cow in SEO?
To understand why a good domain authority score matters, the website owners must look beyond simple metrics and they should evaluate how domain authority measures the strength of your backlink profile, the trust passed from reputable sites, and the overall content quality across your domain.
Since DA was developed by Moz, it reflects how well your site can rank higher in Google search results when compared to others in your niche.
In order to increase domain authority we must look into other factors, including domain age, high quality backlinks, internal structure, and ongoing SEO health, all of which shape your website’s domain authority.
Regularly using a domain authority checker helps you check domain authority, understand calculated domain authority, and track domain authority over time as you publish new pages or attract better links.
For anyone focused on improving domain authority, investing in creating high quality content, refining your SEO strategy, and staying consistent with optimization will naturally increase your domain authority and strengthen long-term credibility.
Because DA is a comparative model, a slight domain authority change is normal, but if you continue to increase your domain authority, your site will gradually become stronger in search engine ranking and benefit from consistent visibility.
While Moz doesn't disclose the exact formula, here's how the process generally works:
Moz uses its own crawler, similar to how Google does, to scan millions of pages and map backlink relationships.
Analyzing link quality, trust, and external links pointing to your site, the crawler evaluates:
Total number of links to your domain
Authority of those links
Link diversity (unique domains)
Spam score of referring domains
Moz uses machine learning to compare link profiles across the web. This allows the algorithm to assign your domain a score relative to others, not in isolation.
You're then assigned a score between 1–100.
1–30: New or low-authority site
30–60: Moderately established
60–90: Strong authority site
90+: Web giants (e.g., Wikipedia, Amazon)
These signals help estimate your search engine ranking score relative to other domains.
If you're in the 20–40 range, you're in the perfect position to grow.
If your DA dropped recently, don't panic. A few reasons this may happen:
Moz updated its index and removed spammy backlinks
Your competitors gained stronger backlinks
You lost a few key referring domains
Your site's link growth didn't keep pace with the industry
It’s normal for domain authority to change, so focus on long-term patterns, not daily variations.
What matters is not a day-to-day change, but your overall trend over weeks and months.
Explore more on when SEO growth becomes visible in The Tipping Point in SEO.
You cannot directly “set” your Domain Authority score. DA is calculated using machine learning and compares your link profile to the entire internet.
But you can influence the signals that drive DA:
Earn links from authority clusters rather than isolated websites
Publish data, frameworks, research, and unique insights that naturally attract citations
Build a backlink moat—hard-to-replicate links from recognized industry sources
Strengthen your semantic authority with deeply interconnected topical content
Refresh high-authority pages to maintain link health
Improve crawl depth and internal authority distribution
These methods go far beyond beginner-level link building — they reshape your site’s position in the authority graph.
DA isn't a Google ranking factor. But the factors that affect DA — such as backlinks, authority, and site trust — are core signals in search engine optimization.
In other words:
DA is not the goal. SEO strength is the goal. DA is just a helpful indicator.
Think of it like a credit score — Google doesn't look at your credit score, but it looks at what influences it: spending behavior, payment history, debt ratio, etc.
The same principle applies in SEO.
No. DA, DR, and Authority Score each use different link indexes and formulas.
Moz uses DA
Ahrefs uses Domain Rating (DR)
Semrush has its Authority Score
These are relative metrics, not absolute measures of ranking strength. Each one has its own formula and index. But they all aim to answer the same question:
“How strong is this domain's authority in the eyes of search engines?”
To compare these scores properly, use them within the same tool rather than switching between them.
Knowing your DA is just the start. If you want to improve your DA and your website’s performance, you should:
Benchmark your site against 3–5 competitors
Identify their external links using tools
Prioritize link building and content strategies that attract better links
Build relationships for guest posts
Track progress monthly — not daily
Focus on relevance and quality, not shortcuts
Strengthen your SEO strategy
Using tools like Google Search Console, you can monitor improvements in visibility and organic traffic.
Now that you understand how Domain Authority works, the next page in this series will guide you through how to increase it. It is not just for score improvements, but for long-term SEO performance across search engines and social media platforms.
Because knowing your score is helpful, But knowing how to improve it strategically is what gets results.
Previous page: What is Domain Authority?
Next page: Why Domain Authority Matters in SEO Strategy
