What is DA?

DA stands for Domain Authority which is a search engine ranking score. This service was formed by Moz – an online blog for SEO. You can find your website’s domain authority using Moz’s Link Explorer, their SEO toolbar or in their Keyword Explorer. One’s domain authority score refers to the likelihood of a website ranking on SERPs (search engine results pages). The score is on a scale of 1-100 with 100 being most likely to rank and 1 being least likely to rank. It effectively tracks websites ranking strength however it is important to note that this is not a Google ranking factor and will have no effect on SERPs and is more of a tool to use in order to gauge how you will rank on search engines. Domain authority is single-handedly one of the most accurate ways of gauging the landscape of SERPs and is very important in order to recognize how one can improve their rankings on SERPs. 

Moz states that the Domain Authority score is calculated using a machine learning (machine learning is defined as the study of computer algorithms that improve through the use of data) algorithm predicting how much Google is using the domain in search results. Due to it being a machine learning calculation, results are not fixed and fluctuate quite frequently.  

The Moz website also claims that there is less room at the higher end of the scale and that it’ll be easier to grow from a score of 20 to 30 than from a score of 70 to 80 due to more links being acquired by bigger conglomerates like Facebook. DA is something to be used as a comparison scale rather than an absolute score of your rankings. Domain authority scores can be improved through improving your website SEO – this can be done by gaining more external links or investing in more high-quality external links as well as improving the quality of your existing links. This is not a guaranteed way of improving your score however due to the scale being one of a comparative nature and therefore always fluctuating. It can be rather difficult to improve your domain authority due to many factors influencing the score. It can take between 1-3 years to build a better domain authority due to the ever-changing landscape of Google and what they are looking for. 

The top end of the scale is dominated by high-ranking websites such as Wiki and Google due to the abundant number of high-quality external links. Moz suggests looking directly at the scores of the websites you compete with and aim higher than their score as this is going to be more effective for your website. 

It’s important not to confuse domain authority with page authority because although similar, they are different. Page authority refers to how well a single page of the website ranks through SERPs rather than the whole website like domain authority. Even though they are different, they are calculated using the same algorithm and methodology.