What Is Domain Authority and Why Does It Still Matter

Your primary issue regarding SEO isn’t just fluctuating keyword rankings; it’s the uncertainty of your website’s overall stability and long-term potential. You need a reliable metric to measure your competition and justify budget allocation. This is where Domain Authority (DA) comes into play.

Google explicitly states it does not use a metric named “Domain Authority” in its ranking algorithms. However, DA remains the single most important benchmark that every SEO uses. It helps you assess your website’s competitive strength and link acquisition opportunities.

Along with that, it maintains overall credibility of the website in for eyeballs and, indirectly, search engines.

Part 1. Behind the Metric: Understanding Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority (DA) is a score that determines the position of your website on Search Engine Ranking Page (SERPs). Moz is an SEO suite company who first introduces this factor. The score ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.

You can think of DA as a website’s overall digital reputation score, similar to a personal credit score. A high credit score (high DA) allows you to secure better loans (rank for tougher keywords) and signals reliability to partners.

Part 2. Climbing the Curve: Understanding DA’s Logarithmic Nature

When you launch a website, it is easier to achieve a DA of 30 than moving from 70 to 80. The DA scale that Moz developed is logarithmic, meaning:

1 to 30: A score in this range means that your website is performing better as compared to other new or small websites in your niche. This score is often achievable through good On-Page SEO and basic link building.
30 to 50: This means that you have now entered the competition and must keep an eye out for it. It requires consistent, high-quality content targeted at DA backlinks acquisition. The content can be in multiple forms, like blogs, media, graphics, and free resources.
50 to 80+: This is where it gets challenging because this means you are fighting not only to gain but also to maintain. It requires high-level Digital PR, earned mentions (earned media or backlinks) from authority sites.

What counts as a ‘good’ DA varies based on your industry or niche. For a B2B SaaS company, a DA in the 40-55 range is often the threshold for serious competitive play. However, for Finance, a strong DA score falls between 60-80.

Part 3. The Core Components that Fuel Domain Authority

For calculating Domain Authority, there are several link metrics combining into a single score. While Moz doesn’t reveal the exact metrics, the primary ones fall into two categories:

The Quality and Volume of Backlinks

The formula analyzes both the quantity and the quality of the incoming links pointing to your domain. Here is how it measures quality:

Relevance: A link from a highly relevant industry blog (even with lower DA) is worth far more than a link from a massive but irrelevant news site.
Authority of Linking Domain: A backlink from a high-DA site (e.g., DA 80+) transfers significantly more “link equity” than one from a low-DA site. This is why targeted DA backlinks acquisition is central to any SEO strategy.
Link Diversity: These links backing your website should come from a broad range of individual and high-quality root domains. Additionally, they should be a natural and organic addition to your website’s growth.

2. Other SEO Factors

While mainly link-driven, other factors are also considered for maintaining high domain authority:

Linking Root Domains: It’s the total number of unique domains linking to your site (not the total number of links).
Search Engine Friendliness: This involves technical functionality of a website, like site structure, site speed, and user experience.

Part 4. Why DA Still Matters to the Strategist

If Google doesn’t use the metric, why should you, as a strategist, still obsess over Domain Authority? You can think of it as a three-part answer: Competitive Benchmarking, Risk Mitigation, and Opportunity Vetting:

1. Competitive Benchmarking (Knowing the Playing Field)

A website’s DA helps us assess the SEO landscape in a standardized way, accepted universally:

Keyword Difficulty: An anchor keyword currently dominated by sites with DA 70+, you know that ranking requires a significant, multi-year investment. If your competitors are only at DA 45, the playing field is far more manageable.
Goal Setting: DA serves as an actionable and measurable goal. Instead of saying “get more traffic,” you say, “increase our Domain Authority from 38 to 45 by Q4,” which dictates a clear link-building and content strategy.

2. Link Acquisition and Vetting (The Risk Factor)

For the link-building outreach and content teams, DA is a necessary filter because of two main factors:

Prioritization: It helps you select and prioritize pursuing links from sites with a higher DA than your own. Such type of backlinks directs more traffic towards your website and boosts visibility.

Differentiation: The DA score helps you determine which websites to avoid, as they may have low DA or use black hat backlinking.

3. Business Credibility and Sales Enablement

In the B2B SaaS space, your DA often translates into tangible business benefits:

Partnerships: High Domain Authority is standard for successful partnerships and co-marketing with other leading industry platforms. A DA 60 company is far more likely to agree to a cross-promotional deal than a DA 20 site.
Sales & Trust: Prospects researching your company will often see a high DA as a subtle, yet powerful, sign of authority and E-E-A-T factor. It validates your expertise before they even read your first case study.

Part 5. The Strategic Path to Increasing Your DA

A focused strategy based on getting DA backlinks for scalable results is the only way to effectively increase Domain Authority.

Auditing Your Website for Low Quality Backlinks

Use tools to identify and eliminate any spammy or low-quality DA backlinks that may be dragging your score down. A few bad links can negate the effect of dozens of good ones.

Invest in Creating Linkable Assets & Resources

Invest in 10x content: proprietary data, industry research, free tools, and unique case studies. These assets naturally attract high-DA links because they solve an industry-wide need.

Targeting Relevant DA Backlinks

Focus your link-building outreach exclusively on domains with contextual relevance and a DA higher than yours. Adopt the mindset: “I will not pursue a link unless it is valuable for my target audience and a clear upgrade to my current profile.”

Technical Foundation

For a good DA, you must never undermine your website’s technical SEO. Technical aspects mainly include fast loading speed, mobile-friendliness, clean site map. A poor technical SEO increases bounce rate (audience not staying on your site because of poor speed or interface), so the DA backlinks can’t do much in such cases.

In Essence

While Google doesn’t grade you on the Moz scale, every action you take to improve your Domain Authority, like acquiring high-quality DA backlinks and creating authoritative content, is precisely what Google’s algorithms are designed to reward. It remains your most major strategic benchmark for guaranteed, long-term SEO success.

Buy Permanent BackLinks From $4.99. Order Now