What is domain authority?

The phrase "domain authority" gets used in a lot of conversations about SEO, sometimes as a reason a site ranks well and sometimes as a goal to chase. Before you put time into improving it, it helps to understand what the number is measuring and, just as importantly, what it is not measuring.

What is domain authority?

Domain authority is a score, typically on a scale of 1 to 100, that predicts how likely a domain is to rank well in search engine results. A higher score suggests a stronger, more authoritative domain. A lower score suggests there is work to do before the domain can compete for competitive keywords.

The term was popularized by third-party SEO tools, and that is an important distinction. Domain authority is not a metric created or used by Google. It is a score invented and maintained by independent SEO tool providers to help brands and SEO professionals benchmark the relative strength of a domain. Different tools call it slightly different things, with names like "domain rating" or "site authority," but they are all trying to measure roughly the same thing.

Because the score comes from a third-party tool and not from Google's own systems, two different SEO tools can give the same domain two different scores. Neither is wrong, they are just calculated differently. What matters is the relative comparison within one tool, not the absolute number across tools.

How is domain authority calculated?

Every tool has its own formula, but most domain authority scores are built around a similar set of signals.

Backlinks and referring domains

The biggest factor in most domain authority calculations is the link profile of a domain. This includes how many other websites link to it and, more importantly, how many distinct domains those links come from. Ten links from ten different websites carry more weight than ten links from the same website. The quality of those linking domains also matters. A link from a well-established publication in your industry contributes more than a link from a low-traffic, unrelated site.

Link quality and relevance

Not all backlinks push the score up. Links from spammy, irrelevant, or low-quality sites can drag it down. Third-party SEO tools evaluate each linking domain's own authority and relevance before factoring it into your score. This is why a domain with 200 high-quality backlinks often outscores a domain with 2,000 low-quality ones.

Domain age and history

Older domains that have maintained a clean history tend to score higher than newer ones, all else being equal. A long track record of legitimate content and consistent link growth signals stability, and that factors into most authority calculations.

Is domain authority the same as a Google ranking factor?

No. Google has stated publicly that it does not use any third-party domain authority score as a ranking signal. Google builds its own understanding of a domain's credibility through PageRank and a range of other signals that are separate from anything a third-party tool calculates.

That said, the underlying things that drive a high domain authority score are also the things that generally correlate with strong Google rankings. Quality backlinks, a clean link profile, and consistent content matter for both. The score itself does not cause rankings. The inputs that produce a high score are what move rankings. This is a meaningful distinction if you are ever tempted to chase the number rather than the activities behind it.

Think of domain authority as a rough proxy. A site with a score of 70 has probably earned a lot of trust from across the web. A site with a score of 15 has not. That tells you something useful about relative strength, even if the number has no direct connection to Google's algorithm.

What does a good domain authority score look like?

There is no single "good" score. What matters is how your score compares to the sites competing for the same keywords. A score of 30 might be more than enough to rank for low-competition, long-tail keywords in a niche industry. That same score might not be competitive enough for broad, high-volume terms where established publications with scores of 60 or 70 are already ranking.

Here is a rough orientation for how scores tend to break down:

• 1 to 20. New domains and sites with few or no backlinks. Unlikely to compete for anything beyond very low-competition keywords.
• 20 to 40. Growing domains with some link activity. Can rank for long-tail and niche keywords if the content is strong.
• 40 to 60. Established domains with a solid backlink profile. Competitive across a range of mid-difficulty keywords.
• 60 to 80. High-authority domains, often media outlets, well-known brands, or sites that have invested heavily in content and link building over many years.
• 80 and above. Reserved for the most authoritative domains on the web, major news sites, universities, government agencies, and large established platforms.

For a new or growing brand, the most useful question is not "what is a good score?" but "how does my score compare to the sites I am competing against?" If your competitors are in the 25 to 35 range and you are at 20, you are in the game. If they are at 60 and you are at 15, you need a longer-term content and link strategy before you can realistically compete for their keywords.

How do you improve domain authority?

Improving domain authority is not something that happens overnight. The score is a reflection of your domain's credibility over time, and building that credibility takes consistent effort across a few areas.

Earn quality backlinks

The most direct way to raise your domain authority is to get more high-quality sites linking to yours. This happens when you publish content that other sites find worth referencing. Original research, useful data, in-depth guides, and free tools that solve real problems attract natural links. Guest posts, partnerships with complementary brands, and PR coverage also contribute when they result in links from real, established domains.

Buying links or participating in link schemes may produce a short-term score lift, but these tactics violate Google's guidelines and can result in ranking penalties that are far more damaging than a low authority score.

Remove or disavow toxic links

If your domain has accumulated low-quality or spammy backlinks, those links can suppress your score and potentially trigger a manual penalty from Google. Third-party SEO tools can flag these for you. In cases where you cannot get the link removed by contacting the linking site, Google's Search Console has a disavow tool that signals to Google to ignore specific links when evaluating your site.

Create content worth linking to

Every piece of content your brand publishes is a potential link target. A blog post that gives a thorough answer to a common question in your industry, a guide that covers a topic more completely than anything else online, or a free tool that solves a real problem are all the kinds of content that earn organic links over time. Learn what common domain name mistakes brands make when building their online presence, and you can see how easy it is to miss the basics that hold a site back.

Improve your site's technical health

A site that has broken pages, slow load times, or poor crawlability limits how well search engines can index and assess your content, and that affects the signals feeding into your authority score. A technically clean site gives every piece of content you produce the best chance of being found, indexed, and linked to.

Keep your domain long term

Domain authority builds over time. A domain that expires or gets abandoned resets the clock. Keeping a domain long term and maintaining consistent activity on it is one of the simplest things you can do to protect and grow the authority you have already built.

What does domain authority not tell you?

Domain authority is a useful benchmark, but there are several things it does not measure or predict reliably.

• It does not tell you whether a specific page will rank for a specific keyword. Page-level factors, including the quality of the content itself, on-page optimization, and the authority of that individual page, matter just as much as domain-level authority.
• It does not guarantee traffic. A high-authority domain that publishes content nobody is searching for will still get no traffic from search.
• It does not capture brand trust or conversion rate. A domain with a score of 20 can still convert visitors far better than a domain with a score of 60 if its content is better targeted and its offer is clearer.
• It does not reflect speed of change. If you have been building links aggressively for three months, your score may not reflect that effort yet. Authority scores are typically recalculated on a delay, so the number you see today may lag behind your actual link activity.

Understanding what a domain name is and how it connects to your broader web presence puts domain authority into the right context. The domain is the foundation. Authority is what gets built on top of it, through content, links, and time.

How WEMASY supports domain authority growth

WEMASY includes built-in SEO tools that support the on-site factors behind domain authority growth. Every page published through WEMASY can be configured with custom meta titles, meta descriptions, and canonical tags, giving you control over how search engines read and index your content. The platform generates clean, crawlable HTML that does not create technical barriers for search engines.

When you publish content that earns backlinks, having a stable, well-structured domain behind it means those links carry full weight. WEMASY also handles SSL by default, so every site on the platform benefits from the secure connection that search engines and visitors expect. See what is included across plans at WEMASY pricing.

What about 301 redirects and domain authority?

One situation that affects domain authority more than most brands realize is a domain change or URL restructure. When you move a page or change a domain and do not redirect the old URL properly, the authority associated with that URL is lost. A 301 redirect passes the majority of a page's link equity to the new URL, which means the authority built up at the old address is largely preserved. Skipping redirects when restructuring a site is one of the fastest ways to see authority scores drop.

The next chapter looks at how to buy an expired domain, including what happens to its authority, how to evaluate whether that authority is real or inflated, and what to watch out for before you spend money on a domain someone else built up.

Frequently asked questions about domain authority