Domain authority refers to a singular number that attempts to replicate how Google assesses the quality of a site.

For those that have been at this for more than 10 years – you may recall in Google Webmaster Tools where Google would show authority scores to site owners. They scrapped that because they didn’t want to make it too easy for SEO’s to be able to experiment and learn what SEO techniques were the most effective.

Many SEO’s were upset by that change – they loved that tool! So did we! What was the result of that? We saw the birth of all these ‘SaaS’ providers trying to replicate that with their own authority metrics. Whether calling it ‘Domain Authority’ or ‘Domain Rating’ – each site such as Moz, Ahrefs or Semrush – lists exactly how they calculate those metrics. However, these platforms have far less info and do far less good a job as Google. Those tools really oversold how valuable their metric was – and we don’t blame them – they’re in the business of selling subscriptions to their tool. Of course they need to talk up the importance and value of their metric scores. Think about it – if these tools knew what metrics to look for to determine the most trustworthy site, they would be more profitable building a competitor to Google or simply building sites themselves that would rank on profitable keywords.

Yet, there is still some value in these metrics, although it’s far less value than most believe it is. We see it in the data each day. While competitors focus on DA as the ‘be all and end all’ – we know from our data that it’s just one of many factors that go into developing quality backlinks. Here is a bit of a peek into some of the metrics we utilize (we can’t share all without giving away our ‘special sauce’):

‘Domain authority’ generally refers to the fact that some sites are considered more powerful or beneficial in Google’s eyes. However, Google themselves do not operate off any domain authority numbers. They look at a complex set of factors to determine which sites they like and don’t like – and they keep that information to themselves.

Tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz plus a dozen others are in the business of providing SEO tools in exchange for an (often hefty) monthly fee. Users of their tools care about ‘trust and authority,’ so these providers include a number in there too.

These tool providers are well aware of needing to have a number to estimate ‘authority’… otherwise their clients may not be happy.

“Hey, Semrush… I want to see a number that shows my site’s authority, otherwise I’m moving to Moz…” however from an experienced SEO perspective these numbers can be highly misleading.

We are not saying the numbers these tools have are not useful. They are useful – however they need to be viewed for what they are. The tool providers themselves are quick to point out the inadequacy of such numbers. Why? Because these tools are not Google, and even if they had the engineering team, processing power and desire to replicate how Google categorizes websites – the numbers would always be off.

Whether Domain Authority or Domain Rating (each provider has their own method and own name for how they come up with this metric) most of the tools rely on looking at the quantity of links coming to a site. Double the site’s links – the score will go up. Some links stopped linking to your site? Your score would go down.

One really easy way to build domain authority is to point 1,000,000 links at a site. Doing so will virtually guarantee your rankings will plummet because it is black hat SEO and highly ineffective.

These tools are not able to assess (nor do they try to assess) the relevancy of the links, seeing who else the sites that link to you link out to, and if those sites are considered valuable and trustworthy in Google’s eyes.

So in short – these tools and their metrics have their place, and when doing SEO the right way numbers will move in the right direction. However the main thing to focus on is who is coming to my site, for what keywords and is the trend of that going up or down. Having a high DA score does not put any money in your pocket – having a trustworthy and authoritative site that Google likes to send visitors to does put money in your pocket. And only Google knows which websites it likes and the way they show that appreciation is by rewarding your site with visitors.