Domain Authority vs Domain Rating: Understanding the Key Differences

Seasoned SEO professionals regularly rely on domain authority and domain rating to measure website performance and reputation. But if you’re new to the SEO game, telling the two metrics apart, identifying what they offer, and how to make them work for you can be confusing.

You might wonder which metric is more important for your website and growth ambitions, whether they truly matter as much as people claim, or how much effort you should devote to monitoring and tweaking them.

In this article, I will explain:

• What domain authority and domain rating mean
• How these metrics are calculated and their impact on SEO
• The strategies to implement to improve these metrics and boost your rank potential.

Understanding Domain Authority and Domain Rating

Although Domain Authority and Domain Rating share some similarities and are sometimes used interchangeably, they are not the same. Let’s explore what these SEO concepts mean.

What is domain authority (DA)?

Domain Authority (DA) is a measurement system created by Moz that determines the ranking potential of a website compared to other websites in the same industry or niche. It uses data pulled from Moz’s web index and dozens of factors like spam score and linking root domains to gauge the likelihood of a website ranking in search engine results pages (SERPS).

Source: Moz

Domain Authority is measured on a scale from 1 to 100. A low score indicates that your website has a poor chance of ranking against other websites in its category. On the other hand, higher domain authority scores mean that your site is likely to secure a good rank in search results.

One thing to note is that domain authority is not one of Google’s ranking factors. It’s a predictive model meant to give you a sense of how well your website will perform in relation to competing domains, so you can take necessary action to improve your score and SEO strength.

What is domain rating (DR)?

Domain Rating (DR) is an SEO scoring system developed by Ahrefs to assess the value of a website’s backlink profile using a scale ranging from 0-100. To evaluate your website’s DR, Ahrefs sources data from its robust link index and looks at the quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to your site.

Source: Ahrefs Website Authority Checker

Put simply, the more high-quality backlinks your website has from unique referring domains, the better it will score on Ahrefs’ DR scale. Higher DR scores signify that your website has a healthy and extensive backlink profile, which could improve its performance in search engine results.

Knowing your DR score can help you see how your website’s authority and link strategy measure up against competing sites in your industry. It can also enable you to pinpoint and leverage link-building opportunities to boost your search visibility and rankings.

Domain Rating, like domain authority, is not a metric Google uses to decide rankings. However, they both take some of the same factors into consideration that Google and other search engines use in their ranking system. 

How Domain Authority and Domain Rating Are Calculated

Knowing how your DR and DA metrics are calculated can help you understand how best to optimize them.

Calculation methods for domain authority

The main factors that Moz uses when calculating DA include:

Source: Moz Domain Authority Checker

• Linking root domains: This refers to the number of unique websites that are linking to your site. More high-quality unique domains sending links your way indicates to Moz that your site is considered authoritative and trustworthy.
• Backlinks quality: The authority of the sites linking to your domain matters. An overwhelming number of links from low-authority sites can negatively impact your domain authority score.
• Quantity of backlinks: This looks at the total number of backlinks your website has received, including both low-quality and high-quality backlinks. It tells Moz how popular your website is amongst its peers.
• Domain age: Older websites are generally seen as more reliable and trustworthy, so the older your domain, the better your chances of landing a high DA score. However, newer domains can boost their authoritativeness and earn high scores with a powerful backlink profile.
• Website traffic volume: A high traffic volume suggests that your website is popular, reputable, and packed with relevant content, which bodes well for your DA score.
• Social signals: This has to do with the number of shares and level of engagement that your domain and content gets on social media platforms. Higher numbers signal greater confidence in your website and its activities.
• Spam score: If you have a high percentage of irrelevant domains, banned or penalized domains, and domains with questionable content pointing to your site, it can increase your spam score and affect your DA.
• SEO performance metrics: This takes your general SEO activities and that of your competitors into consideration. If your SEO efforts are outperforming your competitors, you get extra points. But if their SEO strategies are beating yours, your DA score might drop a few points.

Calculation methods for domain rating

Ahrefs’ DR calculations are based on these key influences:

Source: Ahrefs Website Authority Checker

• Quality of backlinks: Ahrefs evaluates the quality of the inbound links you’re getting. Links from high-authority sites are far more valuable to your DR than links from low-authority sites.
• Total number of referring domains: The number of unique websites that are linking to your domain is a significant DR scoring factor. A backlink profile with lots of dofollow links from a wide range of linking root domains will result in better DR scores. Ahrefs only counts backlinks from a domain once, so even if you get 50 more backlinks from one domain, it won’t increase your site’s DR, but another link from a different domain would lead to improvements.
• Authority of linking domains: One link from a high-quality site will do more for your DR than a dozen links from low-quality sites. This also means that as the Domain Rating of a linking domain improves, so will yours. So if you get a link from a website with a DR score of 20 today, but that site builds a strong backlink profile that increases its DR score to 50 later on, the quality of the link you got from it would increase, boosting your DR score along the way.
• Link juice distribution: The number of websites that a referring domain links to can influence the link equity that it passes on to linked sites. The higher the number of linked sites, the lower the link juice shared amongst them. A backlink from a high-quality domain that links to 10,000 sites will have a lesser impact on increasing your DR score than one from a reputable domain that links to 2,000 websites. 

Impact on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

Although domain authority and domain rating don’t directly influence SEO, they can still contribute to your website’s overall performance, traffic, and positioning in the SERPS. 

For starters, high DA and DR scores can help your site earn more high-quality backlinks, which can send more organic traffic your way and boost your link profile, leading to more visibility and potentially higher search engine rankings for your domain. 

Ahrefs used its Website Authority Checker tool to examine 218,713 domains and it discovered that there was a strong correlation between a website’s domain rating and keyword rankings. As you can see from the graph below, keyword rankings rose as DR scores increased. Low DR sites secured the lowest rankings, while high DR sites received the top rankings. 

Source: Ahrefs

This is because, in addition to robust backlink profiles, authoritativeness, and significant traffic, websites with high DR or DA scores are more likely to offer positive user experiences and quality content, factors search engines pay attention to when determining rankings.

Domain Authority and domain rating are also useful for performing competitive analysis to see how your SEO tactics compare with that of your competitors, what you’re getting right, and where there’s room for improvement.

In addition, these metrics can function as simple ROI measurement tools for assessing the success of your link-building activities or investments. If your DA and DR scores go up after launching a link-building campaign, it means your efforts are paying off. If they remain stagnant or drop, it could signal that your backlinks aren’t coming from high-quality sources or that you need to work on improving other aspects of your SEO.

Bear in mind that high DR and DA scores don’t automatically mean that your site will rank well. You can still be outranked by other sites with similar or lower scores because search engines weigh other factors like the competitiveness of targeted keywords, quality and relevance of content, technical SEO profile, and user experience when deciding search rankings.

For best results, DA and DR shouldn’t be used in isolation, but as part of a holistic SEO strategy that prioritizes creating valuable content, building strong backlinks, tweaking technical SEO, and delivering satisfying user experiences.

Actionable Tips for Improving Domain Authority and Domain Rating

What counts as good, bad, or average domain authority and domain rating score is relative. While 100 is the maximum score you can achieve, it may not be realistic for you. 

So how do you decide what score to target when working on increasing your DA and DR? By taking your resources, ranking objectives, and the competing websites into account. Take a look at the DA and DR scores for your competitors’ domains, then aim for a score above theirs. 

Let’s say most of the websites in your niche, locality, or ranking for the same keywords you’re targeting have DA and DR scores ranging from 30 to 40. In that case, a good score to aim for to boost your chances of ranking higher than them would be 40 to 50 and above.

With that in mind, here are some best practices you can implement to improve your domain authority and domain rating:

1. Acquire high-quality backlinks

Write guest posts for high-authority sites within your industry and weave in links to your website in the content or your author bio. Look for broken links to other websites that you can claim for your domain.

Create better versions of existing content and pitch it to relevant and authoritative websites currently linking to the original content. Alternatively, you can enlist the help of a link-building professional or service to help you develop and implement an effective link-building strategy that will bring you a rich variety of dofollow links from reputable sources.

2. Create engaging, link-worthy content:

Investing in producing original, relevant, evergreen content that people will want to link to. This includes case studies, research papers, in-depth guides, explainer videos, data-driven infographics, and well-researched podcasts.

Regularly update your content with new information to keep it fresh and enhance its value. The better your content is, the more organic traffic and backlinks it will attract, which spells good news for your DA and DR.

3. Optimize on-page and technical SEO

Make sure you’re targeting the right keywords and satisfying the search intent behind them with your content. Include the targeted keywords in your meta descriptions, title tags, and headers to enable search engines to crawl the content and understand what it’s about.

Source: Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Keep your website’s navigation structure consistent and clear. Use schema markup to communicate the meaning of your page content to search engines and help them locate the different types of information on the page. 

Compress images and videos to enable them to load faster and optimize them with relevant alt text. Lower bounce rate and increase time on site by improving your page load speed and ensuring your site is responsive and easy to navigate.

4. Leverage internal linking

Use internal linking to circulate link equity across your website and grow the authority of pages that you want to rank. Internal linking can also provide search engines with a better understanding of your content hierarchy and site structure, all of which can enhance your overall SEO performance and impact DA and DR.

5. Increase social media engagement:

Improving social signals like content shares, comments, and likes can help with raising your DR and DA scores by boosting website and content visibility and attracting backlinks from quality sources.

Create content that’s shareable, promote it across your social media platforms, and encourage your audience to share it with their network if they find it useful or enjoyable. Drive engagement by responding to your audience’s mentions, messages, and comments on social media. Finally, don’t forget to make the sharing buttons on your site intuitive.

6. Perform regular audits and updates:

Carry out regular SEO audits to monitor website performance and diagnose issues that could be affecting the way users and search engines experience your website. Fix broken links, give outdated content a facelift, and address any other concerns that your analysis reveals.

Use tools like Moz and Ahrefs to comb through your backlink profile, spot links from spammy, questionable, or low-quality sites, and get rid of them. If left to remain, these links can drag your DA and DR scores down.

The SEO landscape is constantly changing, so be on the lookout for the latest techniques, trends, and updates to search algorithms and tweak your approach accordingly to ensure you’re getting optimal results.

Limitations and Misconceptions

As useful as domain authority and domain rating can be for monitoring the impact of your SEO efforts, there’s a limit to the benefits they bring. Here are some of the limitations and common misunderstandings about these metrics to keep in mind when using them:

Limitations of domain authority and domain rating

There’s no denying the usefulness of DA and DR metrics in evaluating the authority and ranking potential of a site and vetting prospective websites to collaborate with for link-building campaigns. However, they are not without flaws, and understanding their limitations can help you make the best of them.

Source: Link Builders

1. Domain Authority and domain rating are not direct ranking factors: DA and DR are metrics developed by third parties to help website owners and SEO professionals determine how popular their website is in comparison to other sites in their industry. They’re not definitive factors that search engines use in determining rankings, so they cannot conclusively measure the SEO strength of a website or predict where it will appear in the SERPS.
2. DA and DR only show one side of the picture: Knowing where your DA and DR stand can give you a sense of how well your website is doing in terms of building links and authority. But if you want a comprehensive overview of your site’s SEO performance, you must look at other influential factors like audience engagement, content quality, technical SEO, and on-page optimization.
3. DA and DR scores fluctuate a lot: Because the factors used to calculate these metrics are subjective and prone to manipulation, they tend to vary and fluctuate. For instance, your website may get a domain authority score of 30, yet still be ranking at the top for targeted keywords. Your site may also receive a high domain authority score, but a low domain rating and vice versa. This may not necessarily mean that you have anything to worry about, which is why it’s important to look beyond these metrics when analyzing the strength of a website.

Common misconceptions about domain authority and domain rating

Here are some incorrect beliefs and common misunderstandings about DA and DR that can hinder your ability to effectively apply these metrics and build successful SEO operations:

• DA and DR are the same metric: While they are both used to measure website authority and capacity to rank, DA and DR are calculated differently using a different set of factors and can sometimes produce discrepant results.
• High domain authority or domain rating guarantee SERP rankings: Although there’s a correlation between higher DR or DA scores and better search engine rankings, this correlation doesn’t equate to causation. There are lots of other SEO factors that search algorithms take into consideration and should be used in conjunction with DA or DR metrics to increase your website’s chances of winning top SERP spots.
• DA or DR can increase overnight: Don’t expect your link-building and overall SEO strategies to start paying dividends and improving your DR and DA right away. It’s going to take some time for the backlinks you build and the optimizations you implement to start impacting your DR or DA.
• DA and DR are scored on a linear scale: Moz and Ahrefs grade domain authority and domain rating on a logarithmic scale. This means that increasing your scores gets harder the higher up you go on the scale, so a difference of 5 to 10 points may not mean much for websites in the same lower range, but it can indicate a huge gap in authority and backlink profile strength between websites in the higher range.
• DA or DR is the only measure of site authority and backlink quality: The DR or DA score of a website pointing links to your site or a website you’re considering for your link campaign can provide some insight into the value of a link from that domain. However, it’s wise to consider other crucial factors like the website’s organic traffic volume, topical relevance, content quality, longevity forecast, and number of linking root domains before making a decision.

Can DR Be Manipulated?

Yes, it’s possible to artificially inflate your domain rating and domain authority and manipulate the algorithm behind both metrics into awarding you higher scores. There are several ways you can go about this. 

For starters, you can buy backlinks from high-authority sites or domains with a high DR score. While this practice can lead to a faster increase in your DR score, it may not bring worthwhile or long-lasting SEO results if it’s not combined with a broader SEO strategy.

Source: Moz Link Explorer

Another way to manipulate DR is by generating backlinks through private blog networks (PBNs) or by participating in link exchange schemes with other website owners. Accumulating a large number of low-quality links from different sources can boost your DR, but unfortunately, these types of links won’t do much to help your rankings or site authority.

You can also artificially raise your DR score by redirecting backlinks from old, inactive, or expired domains to your site.

Manipulating your DR or DA is a high-risk adventure. It may bring you little to no long-term SEO value beyond the increased scores and you can be penalized by Google and other search engines for engaging in unscrupulous link-building practices that contravene their guidelines.

Getting a penalty can have a devastating effect on your rankings and even result in your site being dropped out of SERPs completely, so think twice before resorting to DR or DA manipulation.

How to Help Low DA or DR Sites Rank Well

A site with a low domain authority or domain rating isn’t necessarily destined to spend its days buried in the deep, dark corners of the SERPs where no one will likely ever find it. You can still rank at the top or on the first page of search results for keywords that matter to your business.

Hard to believe, right? 

Well, here are some steps you can take to overcome the limitations of a low DA or DR score and secure strong rankings:

• Focus on high-quality, relevant content that incorporates target keywords naturally and addresses user intent.
• Create a strong internal linking structure to spread link juice across your website and improve the authority of key pages.
• Optimize on-page SEO elements such as headers, meta tags, and image alt text, to boost visibility in search engines.
• Improve user experience by ensuring fast page load times, mobile friendliness, and intuitive site navigation.
• Implement local link-building strategies such as optimizing for local or region-specific keywords and creating a profile on Google My Business to appear in local search results.
• Utilize content marketing and social media outreach to draw more organic backlinks from reputable sites.
• Regularly update and refresh content to keep it relevant and aligned with current search trends and algorithms.

How GrowthOG Approaches DA and DR and Integrating It into Your SEO Strategy

As link-building experts, GrowthOG recognizes the significance of domain authority and domain rating in assessing a website’s authority, backlink strength, and SEO potential, yet we don’t pay sole attention to these metrics.

To guarantee truly impactful and long-lasting results that contribute to SEO success, our link-building campaigns emphasize comprehensive measures and target other vital factors beyond DA and DR. We strategically improve your DA and DR and drive SEO performance by:

• Ensuring backlinks come from websites with relevant content and target audience alignment to maximize SEO impact.
• Avoiding link schemes and manipulative practices, such as buying links or using private blog networks (PBNs), to maintain long-term SEO success.
• Helping all our existing clients reach a point where they eventually attract organic backlinks.
• Regularly auditing your backlink profile to identify and disavow toxic or low-quality backlinks that may harm DA and DR.
• Incorporating internal linking strategies to pass on link equity effectively across the client’s website.
• Monitoring competitor backlink profiles to identify potential link-building opportunities and stay competitive in the industry.
• Adapting link-building strategies based on changes in search engine algorithms and industry trends to maintain high DA and DR scores.
• Collaborating with you to create high-quality, valuable content that naturally attracts backlinks from reputable sources.

Over to You

Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating DR() can provide insights into how competitive your website is and its chances of succeeding in the SERPs. Still, they’re not treated as all-important metrics and obsessed over while neglecting other SEO practices.

Understanding how domain authority and domain rating work can be useful for informing the approaches you take to refine your website performance and ultimately generate more online traffic and conversions for your business.

By prioritizing building high-quality backlinks from authoritative and niche-relevant domains and combining this with your general SEO strategy, you can grow your brand’s authority, improve search engine visibility, and outrank your competitors.