What is Moz Domain Authority?
Your Moz Domain Authority (DA) is a measure of your website’s power. Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc. — into a single DA score. This score can then be used when comparing websites or tracking the “ranking strength” of a website over time. It’s important to remember that it is significantly easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it is to grow from 70 to 80.
Low Authority DA 0 to 20: Most websites that score between 0 and 20 are either new sites or older sites that have not accumulated very many backlinks. Smaller local businesses that have domain authorities in this range can rank well for very specific local keyword searches that have to do with their business or niche but website’s in this range are going to have a difficult time ranking for anything but the most specific local keywords.
Average Authority DA 20-40: This is a very typical domain authority score for a website that has existed for several years and acquired some backlinks. Usually at this stage you will start to see that if you add relevant content to your website your traffic and rankings will increase. If you target specific keywords and utilize content silos to maximize your website’s backlink power you can even rank for some more difficult terms.
Above Average Authority DA 40-60: At this stage you usually either have a website that is a few year old that you have actively been doing SEO on or a much older website that is relatively well known in your space and has naturally become an authoritative website. We always recommend an aggressive content deployment schedule centered around the keywords you want to rank for and periodic checks of your backlinks to make sure none are going to ding you.
High Authority DA 60-80: A website with a domain authority above 60 is well on its way to becoming a nationally recognized brand! Typically a platform with this much Domain Authority is receiving a lot of “non-branded” organic traffic. This means you are ranking for terms that don’t include your brand name. If you are not getting at least several thousand visitors a day you may want to schedule an SEO or content audit as the potential for significant organic traffic at a low cost certainly exists. (examples: Hitachi.us, Dog.com, Blueapron.com).
Extremely High Authority DA 80-96: A domain authority above 80 means your website is likely well recognized either nationally or internationally. If you haven’t deployed an aggressive content strategy yet you are most likely missing out on significant traffic from search engines. (examples: Chase.com, Ford.com, Vodafone.com)
World Class DA 96 to 100: Websites in this category tend to be associated with brands that are household names and often have a global presence (examples: Amazon.com, Wikipedia.org, Apple.com, bbc.co.uk).
Remember, increasing your domain authority takes time. There are no shortcuts and if you try to artificially increase it by engaging in activities like buying backlinks you will likely do more damage than good. Keeping your visitors engaged with interesting and fresh content and building authoritative backlinks from relevant websites will always improve your Moz domain authority over time.