Domain authority is a numerical score, between 1 and 100, that is assigned to websites as a measure of how authoritative they are.
This metric was created by Moz, back when they were SEO Moz, when search engine optimization was in it’s infancy.
The metric is assigned to an entire website, independent of the topic or topics the website is about.
The metric is calculated from a series of inputs, which includes:
- The number and quality of links to the website from others websites.
- The number of unique domains those links originate from.
- The number of unique top level domains (.com, .org, .uk, etc) those links originate from.
A key feature of domain authority is that it is a comparison of websites against each other, which is to say it’s a relative measurement, not an absolute one.
It’s important to note that domain authority is not THE metric which determines where in a search engine result page (SERP) webpages from the website appear, but rather is one of many factors.
Featured image credit: What is Domain Authority and Why is it Important?