Domain Authority (DA) Checker

What is Domain Authority (DA)?

Domain Authority (commonly abbreviated as DA) is an essential search engine optimization metric created by SEO software companies like Moz and Ahrefs. It exists to predict how well a specific website will rank on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) compared to its competitors. The score ranges from zero to 100 on a logarithmic scale; meaning it is much easier to grow your DA from 10 to 20 than it is to grow from 70 to 80.

Importantly, Domain Authority is not a metric used by Google itself. Google representatives have explicitly stated they do not calculate a singular sitewide "authority" score. Instead, DA is an industry standard used by SEO agencies to quickly vet the overall historical strength, backlink profile, and trust-level of an entire domain.

How is Domain Authority Calculated?

Because DA is a third-party metric designed to reverse-engineer Google's ranking algorithm, the exact formula is kept somewhat secret and changes periodically. However, the calculation relies heavily on several indisputable factors regarding your link profile:

• Number of Unique Linking Root Domains: Having 50 unique websites linking to you is far more valuable than having 50 links from one single website.
• Quality of Inbound Links: A backlink from The New York Times or a .edu university website carries significantly more weight than a directory link from a low-quality spam site.
• Link Diversity: A healthy proportion of follow vs. nofollow links and organic anchor texts across various IPs.
• Age and History: Older domains that have consistently grown their link footprint without experiencing penalizations generally boast higher scores.

Interpreting Your DA Score

When analyzing a domain's score, context is everything. There is no absolute "good" or "bad" score across the entire internet. You only need a DA high enough to beat your direct competitors in your specific niche.

• DA 0 - 20 (Beginner): Where all brand new websites start. To rank for keywords with this score, you must target ultra-low competition long-tail phrases.
• DA 21 - 40 (Developing): Sites with growing traction and a solid foundation of backlinks. Capable of competing locally or in sub-niches.
• DA 41 - 60 (Strong): Established businesses and popular blogs. Can aggressively target medium-competition short-string keywords.
• DA 61 - 80 (Authoritative): Highly trusted entities, major industry publications, and established e-commerce retailers.
• DA 81 - 100 (Unassailable): Tech giants like Google, Amazon, Wikipedia, and global news syndicates.

How to Increase Your Domain Authority

Improving your Domain Authority requires a multi-faceted approach centered on both off-page link building and on-page technical excellence. Since the scale is logarithmic, progress will slow down significantly the higher you go.

1. Publish Link-Magnet Content: If you want websites to link to you organically, you must provide something worth linking to. Original research data, definitive 5,000-word guides, and free software tools are excellent "link magnets."
2. Perform Active Outreach: Don't wait for links to come to you. Reach out to bloggers in your industry and pitch guest posts or notify them about broken links on their site that your content could replace.
3. Disavow Toxic Links: Periodically audit your link profile using our Backlink Checker or Google Search Console. If a malicious network points thousands of cheap links at your site, disavow them before they drag your authority down.
4. Nail Your Internal Linking: Pass the authority you earn from inbound links to deeper pages within your site using a smart, semantic internal linking structure.

Domain Authority vs. Page Authority

While Domain Authority measures the ranking strength of entire websites or subdomains, Page Authority (PA) measures the ranking strength of a single, specific URL. A newly published blog post on an authoritative domain will inherit some Domain Authority, but its individual Page Authority starts at 1 until it begins generating its own specific backlinks. You can utilize our dedicated Page Authority Checker Tool for granular, page-level URL auditing.