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 ranking factor used by Google, it can tell you a lot about your site’s standing and potential.
If you're trying to improve your rankings and beat the competition, understanding how Domain Authority works is one of the smartest starting points.
This page breaks it down in simple terms — from calculation to real-world SEO impact.
Domain Authority was created by Moz, and it's designed to predict how likely a website is to rank in Google compared to other websites. It’s scored from 1 to 100. Higher scores suggest a stronger likelihood of ranking well.
But here’s the key:
Domain Authority does not look at the quality of your content.
It mainly evaluates your site’s link profile — the quantity, quality, and trustworthiness of the websites linking to you.
So if your website has many high-quality backlinks from trusted sources, your DA will likely be higher.
While Moz uses complex machine learning algorithms, we know some of the key elements that influence your DA score:
Not all backlinks are equal. A single link from a highly reputable site (like a news site or a .gov domain) can be worth more than 50 links from low-authority blogs.
To build strong backlinks, consider strategies like guest posting or digital PR — or explore our article on Blue Ocean Strategy in SEO to position your content in uncontested space.
It’s not just how many backlinks you have, but how many different domains link to you. For example, 50 links from 1 website is less valuable than 10 links from 10 different websites.
A diverse backlink profile is more natural and more respected by search engines.
While DA is mainly driven by external links, a well-organized internal link structure helps spread page authority throughout your site.
Read our guide on Internal Linking for SEO Success for a simple way to enhance this factor.
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 and monitoring are so important.
Yes — but with limitations.
Domain Authority is most useful when:
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 content quality — just like we explained in What is a Purple Cow in SEO?
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.
The crawler evaluates:
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.
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:
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 can’t "set" your DA. But you can do the things that influence it:
If you’re wondering how often you should refresh your content to support your SEO metrics like DA, read: How Often Should You Update Your Website
DA isn’t a Google ranking factor. But the factors that affect DA — such as backlinks, authority, and site trust — do influence Google rankings.
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, but they are similar.
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.
Here’s what we suggest:
Now that you understand how Domain Authority works, the next page in this series will guide you through how to increase it.
Because knowing your score is helpful —
But knowing how to improve it strategically is what gets results.
