What is Domain Authority?

Domain authority (DA) represents how authoritative a website is on a scale of 0-100. It describes the relevance and credibility of the website in a related niche. Having a high domain authority score is important because it directly impacts the ranking potential of the website on SERPs. 

Third-party SEO tools like Moz, SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Majestic calculate DA.

You can calculate domain authority score with the help of free tools available online. The score is solely based on the quality of links going to a website.

It’s important to remember that the domain authority score is an estimate made by a third-party company and NOT Google. When you use Domain authority checker tools like this, it’s always from a third party.

What is Page Authority?

Page Authority is a metric similar to domain authority used to estimate how a page or a specific URL from the site will rank in search engine results.

Many domain authority checkers will also evaluate page authority.

The Difference Between Domain Authority & Page Authority

Both terms may sound similar, but there's a difference between them. Page authority is concerned with a particular web page ranking, while domain authority is concerned with the overall domain authority of a website, which encompasses all of the web pages on the site.

Website authority checkers and page authority checkers follow the same approach to evaluate Page authority and domain authority.

Why Are Authority Metrics Important for SEO?

There are one hundred trillion (that’s one followed by 14 zeros) web pages indexed on Google alone.

There are bound to be more than ten (the number of pages included in the first page of the search results) good answers for each search query.

Search engines predominantly rely on the authority of pages and websites along with domain age to identify which pages to rank above the others.

According to search engines, the more authoritative a web page (and the website to which it belongs) is, the more likely it is to offer reliable answers to its visitors.

In SEO, this authority is determined by links—more specifically, quality links from other sites to yours.

The problem is that search engines are not public about how they authority, so several tools have developed their metrics for these.

That’s what the Domain Authority and Page Authority metrics you’ll see on this place are.

In general, here’s how you think about authority:

• A page with a higher page rating score is more likely to rank higher than a page with a lower page rating score
• If two web pages have similar page rating scores, the domain rating score can break the tie.

However, you’ll find this is often not the case—domain rating is a relative metric that is not possible to judge in absolute terms. There is a huge number of ranking factors and SEO metrics that search engines consider to rank pages among competitors on the search engine results pages.

What Influences Domain Authority?

In SEO, links determine authority—more specifically, links from other sites to yours.

You can think of a link as a vote.

When a site links to your site, the search engine algorithm will view that link as an endorsement of the content on your site.

Off-page optimization, also known as link building, is the process of strategically acquiring links from third parties to your site to increase the authority of your pages.

Generally speaking, more links = more high domain authority.

However, not all links are created equal—here’s the summary:

• Links from unique root domains are more valuable than the number of backlinks from the same domain (for example, ten links from ten different sites are better than ten links from a single website)
• Links that come from high-authority referring domains are considered high-quality backlinks (that is, pages and sites that also have a lot of links pointing to them)
• Links that come from sites that are relevant to the theme or topic of your content are more valuable (that is, links from sites about a similar topic are better than links from sites about a completely unrelated topic)
• Links that include relevant keywords along with domain name are more valuable (for example, the link that contains your target keyword is considered high-quality and better than one that only reads “click here”)
• Links that are placed in the higher parts and inside the body of the page are more valuable (vs. links that are lower in the page, in the footer, sidebar, or header)

Remember domain rating is NOT Google Rating, and thus, it has NO effect on your Google ranking.

Link building is considered to be a complicated part of SEO—which is why, if you manage to master it, you’ll have an unfair advantage against the competition.

Learn more about how to build links in the link-building section of our SEO Checklist.

How Do I Improve My Domain Authority?

Now that you know everything about Domain Authority- let's see how you can improve your website domain ranking.

We have a few tips for you to implement on your website and improve your website’s domain authority.

1. Publish Fresh and High-quality Content

        There is nothing more substantial than meaningful and updated content to improve your website authority. The better your content, the more likely it is to be shared by readers and receive backlinks from other websites.

To improve your content quality, keep in mind the following tips:

• Create relevant and engaging content for linking domains to find it worthy to share.
• Regularly update your content to make sure they stay relevant.
• Make your content easy to read with images and relevant links.

Do your keyword research and write content based on the keyword research but avoid stuffing keywords into your content.

2. Earn Backlinks and Provide Relevant Internal links

As mentioned earlier, earning external links is difficult, but it is not an impossible task.

Follow these tips to get backlinks and bring readers to your site:

• Again, high-quality content is the priority in receiving external links.
• Link relevant web pages on your site with your content.
• Promote your content on relevant forums and social media channels.
• Link other high authority websites in your posts.
• Write guest posts on other websites and provide a link to your web page.

That is the way to go to generate backlinks to your site.

How Do I Check Domain Authority?

Enter your URL into the input box above and click Go Fetch to check its domain authority.

You will then be able to see your score in the DA PA column. If you want to do a bulk domain check, enter one URL per line.

We recommend that you start by checking a page on your site vs. a page on a competitor’s site.