Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is one of the search engine ranking developed by Moz.

In other words, we can say that domain authority is a machine learning that is developed to learn Google’s algorithm in ranking a website.

Moz created this DA as a matrix based on study and analysis on how Google’s algorithm works in scanning which website to rank best.

For instance, if website A is more likely to appear better than website B in the search engine, then the domain authority will predict that website A has a higher DA than website B.

Domain Authority Score

Domain authority score range from 0 to 100. Moz stated that the higher the DA score, the more likely your site will rank higher.

You can check your domain authority here.

The higher your DA, the harder for you to increase it. For instance, it is easier to increase DA 0 to 20 than 20 to 40, and so on.

Baby Stage: DA 0 – 20

When you had just created a new website, your DA will begin with 0.

At this point, your site don’t have any authority over the search engine. And none of the link builder or advertiser will look on your site.

In average, website owners can get from 0 to 20 DA around 1-2 years. The timeline here depends on the effort of link building that you do.

If you can get massive authority links, you’ll definitely go faster than the average timeline.

Teenager Stage: DA 21 – 50

Once you get DA 20, congrats! Well, this is only the beginning of your journey.

Things will get harder from now on.

Based on our research, collecting from 100 different sites, webmasters approximately take around 3 to 5 years to get from DA 21 to 50.

Established Stage: DA 51 – 70

Now that you’ve reached DA 50+ after blood and tears of link building effort that you’ve done all the way.

At this stage, a lot of brands and link builders will come to look for opportunity on placing link on your site.

We can say that at this stage, your site is well established with tons of sponsored, and link building requests.

If you think that DA 50 is big enough, check out the below illustration:

Getting to DA 70+ is a huge leap, and it is much harder as compared to getting DA 20-50.

The Big Fish Stage: DA 70+

Achieving DA 70+, now you’re at the same stage as big fishes out there (Forbes, NyTimes).

While getting the perfect score 100 is the ultimate goal for everyone, it is quite impossible. As per today, there are only 3 giant sites which had the perfect score of 100, ie YouTube, Apple, and Google itself.

Why is Domain Authority Important?

Some of the SEO analysts and brands use domain authority (DA) score to evaluate and measure the site worthiness.

Although, domain authority is not the only factor to determine the site’s quality, the level of the DA can sometimes affect in determining how much a website owner can charge the backlink.

Since domain authority is quite popular nowadays, you’ll find a lot of link builders, brands, and businesses rely much on DA when they’re looking for a website to build their link.

Shall You Focus on Domain Authority?

Domain authority is not a definite factor to rank on the search engine.

In so many cases, there are a bunch of lower DA sites that outrank higher DA sites in the search engine.

Recently, there are a bunch of black hat SEO that offer a DA increase service in a short period of time.

As the result, there are premature sites (with domain age less than 1 month) with DA 50+.

This is why whenever you want to do a link building, always check the other website’s matrix as well.

In conclusion, do not only rely on increasing your domain authority. Focusing more on building high quality links that will increase all your website matrix and traffic is also an important matter to take note.