How to Increase Domain Authority (DA)

Domain Authority gets confused with Domain Rating constantly, and understandably so, since both are 0-100 scores meant to estimate a site’s overall authority from backlinks. They’re calculated differently (DA comes from Moz, DR from Ahrefs), and they move somewhat independently, but the strategy for raising either one overlaps quite a bit. Here’s the honest breakdown of what actually moves DA, and what’s just noise.

Clients often ask us to explain why their DA and DR don’t match, sometimes by a wide margin, even though both are supposedly measuring a similar thing. The short answer is that they’re built by different companies with different crawlers and different formulas, and neither one is the “real” number in any objective sense. Both are estimates, and both are useful for slightly different purposes.

What DA Actually Measures, and Its Real Limits

Moz’s Domain Authority estimates how likely a site is to rank in search results, based primarily on the size and quality of its backlink profile. Like DR, it’s not a Google ranking factor. Google has stated directly that neither DA nor DR factor into its actual ranking algorithm, since both are third-party metrics built by SEO tool companies, not by Google itself. DA is still useful as a rough, comparative gauge, particularly when evaluating potential guest post or partnership sites, but it shouldn’t become the primary goal of your SEO strategy on its own.

Backlinks Remain the Core Lever

The same fundamental driver behind DR applies to DA: the quantity and quality of sites linking to you. Guest posts on established, relevant sites ($75 for DR 50+) pass real authority, and a steady cadence of these over months moves DA gradually, the same way it moves DR. We also offer packages specifically calibrated for this goal, including Increase DA 30 ($45), Increase DA 40 ($65), Increase DA 50 ($95), and Increase DA 60 ($135), each built around a link mix specifically selected for measurable DA impact.

Why Moz’s Crawler Behaves Differently Than Ahrefs

Moz and Ahrefs use different crawlers with different update frequencies and slightly different weighting formulas, which is why a site’s DA and DR scores rarely match exactly, and why one can move before the other even when you haven’t changed your link building approach at all. If you’re specifically targeting DA (say, because a guest-posting partner or directory requires a minimum DA threshold), make sure the links you’re building are actually being picked up by Moz’s crawler specifically, since a link that’s fully indexed by Google and Ahrefs can still take longer to register in Moz’s own index.

Internal Linking Plays a Bigger Role Than Most People Realize

DA calculations do account for how authority flows through your own site’s internal link structure, not just external backlinks pointing in. A site with strong external links but poor internal linking (orphaned pages, no clear hierarchy connecting your best content to your other pages) doesn’t distribute that authority as effectively across the whole site. Fixing your internal linking structure, making sure your highest-authority pages link down meaningfully to relevant supporting content, is a genuinely underused lever for improving overall site authority, and it costs nothing but time to fix.

Content That Earns Links Naturally Compounds Faster

The same principle that helps DR applies here too. Content genuinely useful enough that other sites reference it without being asked earns backlinks passively, for years, without ongoing outreach cost. A single well-built, thorough resource, a genuinely useful calculator, a data study, an unusually complete guide, can quietly out-earn an entire month of paid link building, purely because people find it and link to it on their own. This is slower to pay off than active outreach, but it compounds in a way paid links alone don’t, and it keeps earning links long after you’ve stopped actively promoting it.

What Actively Hurts Your DA

Toxic or spammy backlinks drag down your overall link profile quality, and both Moz and Ahrefs’ algorithms factor this into their respective scores. If your site inherited a messy backlink history from a previous owner or a past agency’s aggressive, low-quality link building, cleaning up those toxic links can improve your DA alongside your overall site health. Buying obviously low-quality bulk link packages does the opposite, dragging your average link quality down even as raw link count goes up, which is precisely why volume alone was never the right goal.

How Long Realistic DA Growth Actually Takes

Similar to DR, meaningful DA movement takes months, not days. A jump of 10-15 points from a low starting baseline is realistic over 6-12 months of consistent, legitimate link building and content work. Faster movement is possible through aggressive tactics, but it tends to be the least durable kind of growth, prone to reversing if the underlying links get devalued or removed later. Consistency beats intensity here, the same way it does with DR and with rankings generally. There’s no shortcut that skips this timeline without introducing the exact risks discussed above.

Should DA Be Your Actual Goal?

For most businesses, DA is best treated as a diagnostic tool rather than a target. It’s genuinely useful for sizing up a competitor’s overall link strength or vetting a potential guest-post partner site before you commit budget to a placement there. It’s less useful as the single number you’re optimizing your entire strategy around, since a high DA with poor content and weak on-page optimization still won’t rank well, while a moderate DA paired with excellent content and technical health regularly outranks “more authoritative” competitors in real search results, which is the clearest proof that the number itself was never the actual goal. The exception is genuine, specific cases: agencies with DA minimums for partner sites, or businesses preparing a site for sale where DA affects perceived value to a buyer.

A Combined Approach Works Best

Rather than choosing between chasing DA, DR, or rankings as separate goals, the most efficient path treats them as connected outcomes of the same underlying work: solid technical health, genuinely useful content, and a steady, legitimate link building cadence. Do that consistently and DA, DR, and actual rankings tend to move together, roughly in the same direction, over the same realistic timeline. Chasing any one of them in isolation, especially at the expense of actual content quality, tends to produce a site that scores well on paper and underperforms where it actually counts.

Comparing Your DA to the Right Benchmark

A common mistake is comparing your DA to a completely different category of site. A national news outlet or a decades-old university site can sit at DA 80-90+ purely from scale and history that has nothing to do with the actual SEO tactics available to a small business today. Compare yourself instead to real competitors in your specific space, businesses your actual size, in your actual industry, competing for your actual customers. If you’re a local plumbing company sitting at DA 25 while the top three local competitors sit at DA 20-30, you’re actually in a competitive position, regardless of how far that number sits from a major media outlet’s score.

A Practical Monthly Routine

Rather than treating DA growth as a one-time project, build it into an ongoing monthly routine: a couple of guest posts on relevant, reasonably authoritative sites, steady foundational link additions, and periodic content pieces designed to attract natural links on their own. Check your DA and DR alongside actual traffic and ranking data once a month, not more often, since both metrics update on their own schedule and checking daily just creates noise without any actionable signal behind it.

What a Reasonable Budget Looks Like

For a small business specifically prioritizing DA growth alongside general SEO work, budgeting $150-300/month toward a mix of guest posts and foundational links over 6-12 months is a realistic, sustainable range. Larger, more competitive businesses chasing bigger authority gaps against well-established competitors should expect to budget more and commit to a longer timeline, since closing a large authority gap against sites with years of head start takes proportionally more sustained effort, and there’s no realistic shortcut around that math.

Get an Honest Read on Where You Stand

Before committing budget specifically toward DA, it’s worth understanding your current profile and what’s realistically achievable given your niche and competition. Get a free SEO audit and we’ll show you exactly where your DA, DR, and overall link profile stand today, alongside a realistic plan for what to prioritize first based on your actual competitive picture, not a generic target pulled from an industry average that has nothing to do with your actual market.