Digital Lab

What is Domain Authority (really)?

If you’ve paid attention to your website metrics you’ve probably heard of Domain Authority (DA), but I want to explain what it actually is and why most people have it wrong…

Most teams when they first learn about DA hail it as the #1 metric they should be using to validate if their site is performing well in search.

It’s easy to understand this misconception.

Domain Authority is:

• Easy to track
• Easy to read
• Easy to assume understanding
• Easy to compare to other sites

But Domain Authority doesn’t exist.

Let’s talk about it.

Domain Authority Isn’t Real

It’s a very common belief that DA is a metric measured by Google to determine where a website should be ranking for general terms.

But that’s not the truth.

Domain Authority was invented by SEO professionals and tools as a way to quantify thousands of metrics into one easily understandable score.

On a range of 0-100 your site will be granted a number that is a proxy for measuring the real metrics.

So instead of looking at thousands of data points to determine how you’re doing, DA is an estimate of the impact of all of them together.

The problem this brings up is that it’s easy to skew and there’s no true definition to how it’s calculated.

It’s mostly handled by complex algorithms that are looking for patterns within search platforms.

What Is DA Even Good For?

DA can be a good high-level indicator of improvements or declines in the quality of your sites performance via search.

But let’s be clear. It’s not perfect.

For example, let’s say you run a software company and you have 1000 web visitors per month through search.

Yet, only 10 people bought your software each month.

An SEO expert is going to look for ways to increase the purchases, not just the visitors.

So if the next month you only had 500 web visitors, but 20 purchases… an SEO pro would consider that a win.

Yet most search tools would show a negative hit toward your DA.

This is because the DA is purely a reflection of traffic/rankings not a measurement of how much your website is contributing to your business.

Take DA With A Pinch Of Salt

If you don’t have a SEO pro or you just want a general sense of how your site is performing then DA can be a great gut-check.

But if you want to understand how your sites performance is really trending over time, you need to consult with an expert.

A good SEO pro will know the difference between:

1. Good traffic vs bad traffic.
2. Meaningful metrics vs vanity metrics
3. Sales vs sessions

If you’re speaking to someone who knows SEO well, they’re likely to never mention Domain Authority.

And if they do, it’s in passing.

If you speak with someone who knows SEO and they regularly talk about Domain Authority (run in the other direction).

Are you measuring the metrics that matter?

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