Moz DA (Domain Authority) — What It Is, How It Works & DA vs DR

Moz is one of the absolute leaders in search engine optimization tools. Within Moz's SEO software environment, you'll come across several important metrics, including Moz DA. What exactly does it mean and how is it useful?

What is Moz DA?

Moz DA (Domain Authority) is a metric that expresses a site's "score" in the eyes of search engines. It predicts how likely a site is to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs). Moz DA values range on a scale of one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a higher likelihood of good rankings.

The Moz DA metric is based on data from the Link Explorer web index and is calculated based on dozens of factors. The actual calculation of the DA value for a specific site then uses a machine learning model. It always tries to use the most appropriate algorithm that correlates the link data as accurately as possible with the site's position in the actual search results.

So how is the Moz DA value calculated?

Several factors are used to calculate domain authority in the Moz environment, including root domains and total number of links. This score can be used to compare the "strength" of a website over time. However, keep in mind that the Moz DA value is not a Google ranking factor and has no impact on SERPs.

Domain Authority 2.0 (early 2019 update) calculates a domain's score from machine learning algorithm predictions about its usage in Google search results. If Domain A appears more frequently in Google's SERPs than Domain B, the DA of Domain A is likely to be higher than the DA of Domain B.

Given that the Moz DA metric is based on machine learning calculations, the site's score changes quite frequently. In each individual measurement, the amount of data points currently available is decided.

At the same time, established and authoritative sites with rapidly "swelling" link profiles take up a significant amount of space on the top scale (meaning DA values of 70 and above). As with some competing metrics (Ahrefs DR), it is therefore much easier to increase a domain's authority from e.g. 20 to 30 than from 60 to 70.

How to measure Moz DA?

Moz allows you to measure the strength of your site for free, using Link Explorer, MozBar or the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer. Domain Authority metrics are also included in Moz Pro, Moz API and dozens of other SEO tools.

Sites with a large number of high-quality external links (e.g., from wikipedia.com or google.com) are at the upper end of the Moz DA scale, while less authoritative sites with fewer incoming links typically have significantly lower DA scores.

The score of a new site is always 1. Over time - as more links are added - the value increases.

How to work with Moz DA?

Since the Moz DA metric is only a sort of predictor of a site's ability to rank within a unique competitive landscape, don't try to fixate on a value that is unreasonably high for your goals. Be interested in the scores of competing sites and try to strengthen the link profile to make it higher quality and stronger. And because it's a relative metric, there is no absolute "good", "average" or "bad" score. It always plays a role on the context of the specific competitive environment.

How to increase Moz DA?

The most effective way to increase Moz DA is to improve the overall SEO status for the site. Focus primarily on the quality and quantity of external links. A strong link profile and quality technical SEO will add authority to a site.

Why does the Moz DA score change?

The domain authority calculation relies on a number of metrics and calculations, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of the value change. If your score has increased (or decreased), there are several likely answers:

• Strengthening of the link profile has not yet been noticed by the robots.
• Sites with the highest authority have seen a noticeable increase in links, which has had an impact on the scaling process.
• You've gained links from sites that don't affect Google rankings.
• MOZ crawled (and included in their index) more (or fewer) linking domains than the previous crawl.
• Domain authority is at the lower end of the scoring spectrum and therefore more prone to fluctuations.

Fluctuations in scoring are best realized by understanding a basic principle of the relative nature of scaling: each domain's score depends on its comparison to other domains across the entire range of Moz DA values. In practice, this means that even if a site's SEO improves, the changes may not be reflected in the domain authority score.

The difference between DA and PA

While Domain Authority (DA) measures the predictive power of the ranking of an entire domain or subdomain, Page Authority (PA) measures the power of individual pages.