Domain Authority by Moz
Domain Authority measures a site's strength based on its incoming link profile. Still useful, but easier to manipulate than the alternatives.
Domain Authority gauge in a dashboard
What does DA mean?
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric built by Moz. It scores how strong a website is based on its incoming link profile. PageRank used to be the standard. Algorithm updates have eroded that relevance over the years.
At Backlink we prefer Ahrefs Domain Rating over DA because Domain Authority is easier to inflate through paid link buying. DA behaves like a credit score. Higher means more trusted, lower can suggest weak or questionable content.
DA has two components: domain and page. The domain side comes from the URL hosting the page and is calculated by counting referring domains. If the homepage has 100 referring domains, DA = 100/100 = 10.
How does Domain Authority differ from Page Authority?
Domain Authority
Measures external domains linking to your website. Does not correlate directly with visitor traffic. A high DA does not guarantee traffic, a low DA does not block it. It also does not reflect link quality. Premium sources like CNN provide more SEO value than low quality blogs, but DA does not weight that difference cleanly.
Page Authority
Based on internal links and total page traffic. More precise than Domain Authority. Reveals how individual pages perform and how they rank across multiple keywords.