Glossary
Domain Authority
A third-party metric that predicts how well a website will rank in search engines.
Definition
Domain Authority (DA) is a proprietary metric developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank well in search engine results pages. It is scored on a scale of 1 to 100 — higher scores indicate greater ranking potential. Similar metrics include Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush's Authority Score.
Why It Matters
Domain Authority is widely used by SEO professionals as a benchmarking tool to compare the relative strength of websites and to evaluate the quality of potential backlink sources.
Examples
DA 1–20New or low-authority site
DA 30–50Established site with a decent backlink profile
DA 60–80High-authority site
DA 90+Domain authority of major publications like NYT or Wikipedia
Common Mistakes
Treating DA as a Google metric — it is a third-party estimate.
Obsessing over DA score instead of actual ranking performance.
Comparing DA across different tools.
Ignoring page-level authority (Page Authority).