Date First Published: 17th August 2022
Topic: Web Design & Development
Subtopic: SEO
Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions
Difficulty: MediumDifficulty Level: 6/10
Learn more about what domain authority is in this article.
Domain authority, also known as DA, is a metric developed by Moz that measures the search engine ranking score of a certain website based on factors, such as backlinks, ranking keywords, the total number of links, the authority of those linking domains, and other factors. This estimates how likely a website is to rank high on the search engine results page. The score can range from 1 to 100. The higher the score, the greater probability of a website ranking. This metric is not only used by Moz. Different SEO tools, such as SEMrush have developed their own authority metric. 'Authority' is used to measure the relative strength of a domain name.
For example, if Website A is appearing higher up on the search engines than Website B when lots of other websites use similar keywords, it is likely that Website A has a higher domain authority. However, when fewer websites are competing for specific keywords, even websites with a low page ranking can appear high on the search engine results page if they match specific search words. For example, if the search engines had only indexed three pages from three different websites about how to install a software program, those three pages would appear high on the results page as fewer websites would be competing for those keywords.
Domain authority can increase or decrease over time. An increase in domain authority is usually due to more backlinks from websites with high domain authority and the work website owners have been putting in. However, it can also go the other way. A decrease in domain authority is often caused by a website losing backlinks, having broken links, and links to spam or malicious websites.
Domain authority is different from page authority. Domain authority gives a measure of an entire domain name, whilst page authority only focuses on the likelihood of an individual page ranking in the search engine results page.
Even though the domain authority score is not used as a ranking factor by Google or Bing to determine the order of pages in the search engine results page, it is a useful metric that will help determine the performance of a website compared to its competitors. Some of the factors used to measure the domain authority, such as the number of backlinks, are factors that search engines use to rank indexed pages.
On Moz, you can check the domain authority of a website by entering the domain name, such as 'www.youtube.com' here and the score will instantly appear. This tool also provides additional information, such as the top linking domain names, top ranking keywords, top search competitors, and more. As shown below, YouTube has a score of 100 as it is one of the most popular websites on the internet with millions of backlinks and ranking keywords. Smaller websites with fewer backlinks will have a lower domain authority and new websites always start with a domain authority of 1.
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