Ask ten SEO professionals what “Domain Authority” means and you’ll get ten slightly different answers. That’s not because the concept is complicated — it’s because the term is used loosely to refer to several different metrics from different tools. Understanding exactly what you’re measuring, and what actually moves the needle, is foundational to building a competitive site.
DA vs. DR: Two Metrics, Two Companies
The two most widely used domain-level authority metrics come from different companies and are calculated differently.
Domain Authority (DA) is a metric created by Moz. It scores websites on a 0–100 scale and is designed to predict how well a site will rank in search results relative to competitors. DA is calculated using factors including linking root domains, the quality of those links, and Moz’s own link index data.
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs’ equivalent metric. Also scored 0–100, DR specifically measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile — how many unique domains link to it and the quality of those linking domains. DR is widely considered to be one of the most transparent and reliable third-party authority metrics available.
The critical point: Neither DA nor DR is a Google metric. Google does not publish a public score for domain authority. These are proprietary third-party approximations — useful benchmarks, but not direct signals Google uses in its ranking algorithm.
What Google does use is the underlying data these tools approximate: the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to your site. DA and DR are just convenient ways to measure that.
Which Should You Use?
Both are valid. Ahrefs’ DR tends to update more frequently and is often favored for link prospecting (evaluating whether a site is worth getting a link from). Moz’s DA is still widely used in agency reporting and client dashboards.
In practice, use whichever your team or clients are accustomed to — just be consistent and never compare DA from one tool to DR from another.
What Actually Affects Your DA/DR
Both metrics are driven primarily by your backlink profile. Specifically:
Backlink Quantity
The number of unique domains linking to your site is one of the strongest factors. Getting ten links from one domain has far less impact than getting ten links from ten different domains. Diversity of referring domains is a core metric in both DA and DR calculations.
Backlink Quality
Not all links are weighted equally. A single link from a DR 80 national newspaper carries more authority than 100 links from DR 10 directories. Both tools look at the authority of the sites linking to you when calculating your score.
Linking Site Relevance
Topical relevance plays a supporting role. Links from sites in related industries tend to carry more meaningful weight than links from unrelated domains, because relevance signals that your site is an authoritative source within a specific topic area.
What Doesn’t Directly Affect DA/DR
On-page factors (title tags, content quality, page speed) don’t directly move DA or DR. Those metrics are almost entirely a function of your backlink profile. That said, great on-page content makes earning links much easier — so it matters indirectly.
Realistic Timelines for Improving DA
This is where many site owners get frustrated. Domain authority does not move quickly, and it shouldn’t — a metric that changes overnight would be trivially easy to manipulate.
Here’s what realistic progress looks like:
- DR 0–20: Achievable within the first year for sites actively building links. A few dozen referring domains from relevant sites will get you here.
- DR 20–40: This is where most active mid-size blogs and content sites sit. Getting here requires consistent link building over 12–24 months.
- DR 40–60: This range is typical for established industry publications, respected niche blogs, and regional business sites with active link profiles. Expect 2–4 years of consistent effort.
- DR 60+: Reserved for major brands, national publications, and sites with years of high-quality link acquisition. Not a realistic 12-month target for most sites.
The logarithmic scale matters: moving from DR 60 to DR 70 requires dramatically more link acquisition than moving from DR 10 to DR 20.
Actions That Increase Your DA/DR
Earning High-Quality Editorial Backlinks
Links that come naturally from relevant, authoritative sites — because your content is genuinely useful — are the most impactful. This happens through creating resources that journalists and bloggers want to cite, such as original research, comprehensive guides, and free tools.
Consistent Guest Posting
Guest posting on quality sites in your niche is one of the most controllable ways to build referring domains. Aim for 2–4 guest posts per month on sites with genuine audiences and meaningful DR scores.
Digital PR
Earning coverage and links from news publications, industry media, and popular blogs through press releases, data studies, and media pitching can produce significant jumps in DR in a short time window.
Internal Link Optimization
While internal links don’t directly affect DR, they distribute your existing link equity to the pages you want to rank — which improves rankings and often leads to more organic backlinks from users who discover and cite your top content.
To understand the full range of tactics available, review our overview of link building strategies for approaches you can implement at different stages of your site’s growth.
Actions That Decrease Your DA/DR
Domain authority can also fall — particularly if your link profile deteriorates.
Toxic and spammy backlinks from low-quality or irrelevant sources can drag down both DA and DR if accumulated in large numbers. While Google’s algorithms are reasonably good at ignoring these, a heavily spammy profile is worth addressing via Google’s Disavow Tool.
A competitor earns more links faster than you. Because both metrics are relative, if your competitors are aggressively building links while you’re not, their scores rise even if yours stays flat — your relative competitive position weakens.
Losing existing backlinks. If sites that previously linked to you remove those links, your DR can drop. This is worth monitoring in Ahrefs’ “Lost Backlinks” report.
Putting DA/DR in Context
Domain authority is a useful competitive benchmark, not a target to optimize in isolation. The real goal is to rank for the keywords your audience searches for — DA and DR are proxies for your ability to do that.
If your DR is 25 and you’re consistently outranking DR 40 sites for specific keywords with better content and strong on-page optimization, your authority score is working. If your DR is 40 but you’re targeting keywords dominated by DR 70 brands, you need a different keyword strategy regardless of your score.
Pair your authority-building efforts with smart keyword selection. See our foundational guide on what is link building to understand how the entire process fits together.
Domain authority is a long game. The sites that win are the ones that treat link building as a sustained, ongoing investment rather than a campaign with a start and end date.
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