Domain Authority
Domain Authority (DA) is a proprietary score developed by Moz that estimates how likely a website is to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs), on a scale from 1 to 100.
The higher the score, the greater the predicted ability to rank. DA is calculated using multiple factors, most significantly the number and quality of backlinks pointing to the domain. It is a relative, comparative metric: a DA of 40 means more in a niche where most competitors have a DA of 20 than in a category where the leaders have a DA of 80. It is not a metric used by Google itself, but is widely used by SEO practitioners as a proxy for a domain’s overall link authority.
Domain Authority changes slowly and is influenced primarily by the breadth and quality of your backlink profile. Earning links from authoritative, relevant domains over time, through content marketing, digital PR, and editorial coverage, is the primary way to build DA. Acquiring low-quality links in bulk can harm it. And losing high-quality links, for example, when a publication that linked to your content changes its URL structure without redirects, can cause a drop.
For B2B content marketing teams, DA is useful as a benchmarking metric for assessing the competitive landscape and as a guide for prioritising link-acquisition efforts. A new domain will typically have a low DA regardless of content quality, and building it takes time. Understanding where your domain sits relative to the sites competing for the same search terms helps you set realistic expectations for organic ranking timelines and informs decisions about how aggressively to invest in link building.