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Grow your business quickly with paid search (SEA).
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Domain Authority (DA) is a metric used to assess the credibility of a website in the eyes of Google. Domain Authority is often expressed as a score between 0 and 100. It’s just an indicator, and having a high Domain Authority score is not synonymous with good search results.
The authority score was originally invented by Moz, which introduced it in 2005 in its famous “MozMetrics.” But since its creation, many SEO software companies have decided to introduce their own version of Domain Authority. The principle remains the same, but the methods of calculation differ from one company to another. We will look at them in more detail later.
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Domain authority is an important metric to consider today, especially in the field of digital marketing and SEO. Taking this indicator into account is very important, especially when wanting to measure the overall “strength” of a site. Here are some examples where domain authority is important:
It has been known for some time that Domain Authority is determined by the quantity and quality of backlinks that a domain receives. Therefore, a high score is indicative of the quality of your website’s link profile.
This indicator is used to evaluate the credibility of your site in the eyes of Google. A high score suggests that search engines consider your site to be trustworthy. However, remember that it does not come directly from Google and does not offer absolute reliability.
Domain authority is a widely used indicator for collaborations and partnerships between companies. A website with a high score is more attractive for partnerships, collaborations, and link buying and selling activities, as they are perceived as credible and powerful sites.
In the case of link buying and selling activities, a site with a high Authority score will sell its links at a higher price than a site with a low score. The higher the domain’s Authority score, the more powerful its outgoing links will be.
Your domain authority score is a perfect indicator for measuring the results of your SEO actions, such as backlink creation or your general off-page SEO efforts.
If you have access to tools like Moz, Semrush, or Ahrefs, you will be able to observe the Authority scores of your competitors. It’s a good way to evaluate and compare yourself with your competitors.
As mentioned before, domain authority is measured on a scale of 0 to 100. The closer to 100, the better, although reaching that level is ambitious.
The authority score, as an indicator, varies depending on the SEO tools used. Each software has its own calculation method, hence the variations in the results obtained. Below, we detail the criteria considered by the most recognized SEO software to evaluate the domain authority score.
When calculating the DA of a webpage, Moz takes into account several factors such as the number of external and internal links that the page receives, as well as the values of Moz Trust and Moz Rank.
According to an article by Moz, since the Domain Authority update in 2019, the DA calculation also comes from predictions made by a machine learning algorithm about how frequently Google uses a domain in its search results.
For more information about this update, check out this presentation by Moz.
The calculation method of Semrush is similar to that of Moz. According to the company:
The authority score is the result of calculations using AI and machine learning to measure a domain’s authority based on three facets.
These three facets are:
Strength of Links: Quality and quantity of backlinks.
Organic Traffic: Estimated average monthly organic search traffic.
Spam Factors: Indicators of a fraudulent link profile versus a natural one.
The element that carries the most weight in calculating the DA is the strength of the links, followed by the organic traffic generated by the page. As for the spam factor, if signs of fraudulent links are detected, Semrush will reduce your site’s score. You can find the list of indicators in this Semrush blog article.
Just like Semrush and Moz, Majestic’s domain authority scores are calculated based on the quality and quantity of incoming links. Unlike the previous tools, Majestic uses two indicators to evaluate the quality of your domain: Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
It’s important to analyze these two indicators together when examining a page’s link profile. A page with a very high Citation Flow but a low Trust Flow does not have a healthy and attractive link profile.
For example, online casino pages often have a very high Citation Flow but a low Trust Flow because they receive many incoming links, but of very poor quality.
Ahrefs also has its own domain authority indicator: DR (Domain Rating). To determine your DR, Ahrefs looks at the number of domains that link to your site through at least one link. Each referring domain is assigned a DR based on its position in search results. Ahrefs then calculates your Domain Rating taking into account the authority (DR) of the domains linking to your site.
The principle is simple: the DR value of a source domain is distributed among the sites it provides dofollow links to.
According to the Ahrefs method, a backlink on a site with a DR-30 that is linked to 3 other domains is more powerful than a backlink on an 85 DR domain that is linked to hundreds of domains.
You can check a site’s Domain Authority in Moz using 4 different tools:
The first three are paid tools, while the last one is free and provides an overview of the page’s Authority score.
To obtain a Domain Rank with Ahrefs, simply enter the desired domain name into the tool’s search bar. For example, to analyze the Apple domain, enter “apple.com” in the search bar. See the following example:
To check the Authority Score in Semrush, simply follow the same procedure as in Ahrefs: enter the domain name you want to analyze in the search bar of the “Domain Overview” section. See the example below:
To check the Citation Flow and Trust Flow of a domain name in Majestic, follow the same approach as with the previous tools: enter the domain name into the search bar of the tool.
Majestic offers a free search on its website, providing an opportunity to explore this SEO tool and its features.
The Authority Score is of great importance in SEO. It informs you about the quality of your links as well as the overall health of your site. Techniques to improve your Domain Authority primarily involve:
If you want to learn more about link-building techniques, check out our dedicated glossary on backlinks.
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