Link Building
Domain Authority
Quick definition
Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's 0–100 score predicting how well a website will rank in search results based on its backlink profile.
Domain Authority (DA) is a proprietary metric from Moz. It uses a logarithmic 0–100 scale, so moving from DA 20 to 30 is easier than moving from DA 60 to 70.
Why Domain Authority matters
DA is helpful for comparing sites and qualifying outreach prospects, but Google does not use DA directly. It's a third-party prediction, not a ranking factor.
How Domain Authority works in practice
Most agencies and tools today use DR (Ahrefs) or AS (Semrush) alongside DA. Treat all three as directional, and always pair them with traffic, relevance, and content quality checks.
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Related terms
Domain Rating (DR)
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' 0–100 score measuring the strength of a website's backlink profile relative to others in its index.
Page Authority
Page Authority (PA) is Moz's 0–100 score predicting how well a specific page will rank in search results.
Backlink
A backlink is an inbound hyperlink from one website to another, used by search engines as a vote of confidence in the destination page.
Nofollow Link
A nofollow link uses the rel='nofollow' attribute to tell search engines not to pass ranking authority through that link.
Link Juice
Link juice is the informal SEO term for the ranking authority a hyperlink passes from one page to another.
Tiered Link Building
Tiered link building is a strategy where lower-quality links (Tier 2, Tier 3) are pointed at higher-quality links (Tier 1) to boost their authority.