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Moz’s Domain Authority (DA) is a third-party metric, not a Google ranking factor. You cannot directly optimize Google by raising the number. The useful goal is to build a more credible, relevant, technically accessible site that earns links and competes better in search. These eight steps can strengthen the signals authority tools measure, but no tactic guarantees a higher DA score or better rankings.
What Domain Authority means—and what it does not
Domain Authority is Moz’s proprietary score, reported on a 1–100 scale, that estimates how likely a domain is to rank relative to other domains. It is associated chiefly with a site’s link profile. The score is comparative and logarithmic: it is neither a percentage nor a grade, and moving from one score to another does not represent a fixed amount of SEO progress. Moz describes the metric and its methodology at its Domain Authority guide.
DA is not a Google metric, and Google does not use it to rank pages. Google’s Search Essentials describes Google’s own technical requirements, spam policies, and guidance on helpful, reliable, people-first content—not a DA target. Third-party scores can correlate with some competitive advantages, such as a stronger backlink profile, but correlation is not proof that changing the score causes a ranking change.
Keep DA distinct from similar-looking tools: Page Authority (PA) is Moz’s page-level metric; Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush Authority Score are each separate proprietary measures. Their scores use different models and should not be compared as though they were the same scale. See Ahrefs’ Domain Rating explanation and Semrush’s Authority Score documentation.
#1 Best Overall
What counts as a good DA score?
There is no universal cutoff that makes a DA score good. A score is most useful when you compare your site with domains competing for the same queries, in the same subject area and geography. Even then, compare the pages ranking in search results, not only their domain-level scores.
A DA of 20 could be competitive for a narrow local topic but not for a crowded national commercial query. A DA of 70 does not ensure that a particular page will rank if it is outdated, irrelevant, technically inaccessible, or a poor match for what searchers want. Use DA as a benchmarking aid, alongside relevant referring domains, page quality, organic visibility, and business results.
1. Audit your backlinks and your actual search competitors
Start with a baseline so you can distinguish useful progress from score fluctuations. In Moz Link Explorer, review your own domain and record the check date, DA, referring domains, followed links, lost links, and pages attracting links. Then inspect three to five sites that rank for the topics you want to win; a business competitor that rarely appears in those search results may not be a useful SEO comparison.
Look for patterns in how competitors earn attention: industry publications citing research, local organizations linking to members, resource pages, or practical tools people reference. The aim is to find credible opportunities you could earn—not to copy a competitor’s raw backlink count.
Rank #2
Assess links by relevance, editorial context, destination-page usefulness, and the referring site’s real audience. A modest local publication or niche community can be more relevant than a site with a larger third-party score. Do not label every unfamiliar or low-scoring domain harmful based on a tool’s “toxic” flag alone.
Track relevant referring domains, links to priority pages, organic impressions and clicks, target-topic rankings, and referral visits or leads. Moz’s Link Explorer can help inspect links; Google Search Console provides Google search performance data at its official site.
2. Publish something other sites have a reason to cite
Generic publishing volume is not a link-building strategy. A distinctive resource can be more cite-worthy than many interchangeable articles. Consider original surveys or data studies, detailed how-to guides, useful calculators, sourced statistics pages, case studies, visual explainers, expert interviews, comparisons, templates, and checklists.
Make the resource useful to a defined audience and add substance that is hard to get elsewhere: explain your method, show examples, identify who created or reviewed it where expertise matters, cite reliable sources, and state limitations. Keep it current when facts, products, laws, or procedures change. Do not add length simply to appear comprehensive.
Rank #3
Google’s Search Essentials recommends helpful, reliable, people-first content rather than material produced primarily to manipulate rankings. Creating a resource does not guarantee links, but it gives outreach and promotion something genuinely valuable to point to.
3. Earn relevant editorial backlinks
Editorial links are links a publisher chooses to include because a resource helps its readers. Useful approaches include pitching original findings to journalists, contacting publishers that cite similar work, suggesting a current replacement for an obsolete resource, contributing expert commentary when requested, and building genuine relationships with associations, suppliers, partners, or local organizations.
- Identify a relevant publication or page and understand its audience.
- Choose the exact resource on your site that adds value in that context.
- Write a concise, personalized message explaining the reader benefit.
- Make a clear request without demanding an exact-match keyword anchor.
- Follow up once or twice, then stop if there is no response.
Mass automated pitches are faster to send but less relevant and more likely to be treated as spam. A small number of well-matched conversations is a better bet than spraying generic requests across the web.
Google recommends creating unique, compelling content people may want to link to, and warns against unnatural link schemes in its site-position FAQ. Do not buy links intended to pass ranking credit, use link farms or private blog networks, automate link creation, demand followed links in exchanges, or scale guest posts mainly to place keyword-rich backlinks. Google lists these among examples of link spam in its spam policies. Paid sponsorship can still serve an advertising purpose, but qualify links appropriately as described in tip 7.
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4. Make important pages easy to find through internal links
Internal links do not add new referring domains, but they help people and crawlers navigate your site and reveal how its pages relate. Organize the site around a clear hierarchy—such as homepage, category or service pages, supporting articles, and conversion pages—and link relevant supporting content to the pages that matter.
- Link from useful, relevant pages to priority pages and related articles.
- Use concise anchor text that describes the destination rather than repeating commercial keywords unnaturally.
- Find and repair orphan pages that have no useful internal links pointing to them.
- Avoid irrelevant or excessive links added just to meet a quota.
For example, a link to a technical audit page can use an ordinary crawlable anchor: <a href="/seo-audit/">technical SEO audit</a>. Google explains that crawlable links generally use an <a> element with an href attribute, and that there is no magical ideal number of links per page, in its crawlable links guidance. Relevance and usability matter more than a fixed number of internal links.
5. Fix technical obstacles to crawling and indexing
Technical fixes do not guarantee a higher DA score. They can, however, help search engines access and interpret useful pages and help those pages serve visitors. Review the pages you need search engines to find for:
- Accidental
noindexdirectives or unnecessary crawl blocks. - Broken internal links, redirect chains, redirect loops, and important URLs returning errors.
- Incorrect canonical tags or duplicate URL versions.
- Soft 404s, orphan pages, and inaccurate sitemap entries.
- Mobile usability, slow or unstable page experience, and content that depends on inaccessible JavaScript rendering.
- HTTPS configuration problems or mixed content.
Check that important pages return the intended status and that internal links and canonical signals point to the correct URLs. For permanent URL moves, Google recommends 301 redirects; removed pages should generally return a genuine 404 rather than a misleading soft 404. Its getting-started guidance covers these basics. Do not redirect unrelated deleted URLs to the homepage: a redirect is appropriate only when the destination is a substantially relevant replacement.
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Unlinked brand mentions
Look for pages that mention your business, product, author, or research without linking to the relevant source. If a link would help that page’s readers find the reference, make a polite request. A mention does not obligate its publisher to add one.
Broken backlinks
Find external pages that link to URLs on your site that now return 404 errors. If the original resource still matters, restore it; if it moved, redirect the old URL to a relevant replacement; or contact the referring site with the correct destination. Do not send every broken URL to the homepage.
Lost links
Check whether a lost link followed a page deletion, URL change, site redesign, or intentional editorial update. Restore or redirect only when the replacement genuinely serves the same purpose. A publisher may have removed a link deliberately, and a request to reinstate it is not automatically warranted.
7. Avoid manipulative links and do not disavow by default
Google’s link-spam policy includes paid links intended to manipulate rankings, excessive exchanges, automated link creation, low-quality directory links, and manipulative guest-post links among its examples. Links can also be commercially useful as advertising or sponsorship; qualifying them makes their purpose clear. Google recommends rel="sponsored" for paid links, rel="ugc" for user-generated links, and rel="nofollow" where appropriate when you do not want to associate with or crawl a destination. See Google’s outbound-link qualification guidance.
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- Check Google Search Console for a manual action and assess whether you have a credible history of link manipulation.
- Review suspicious links manually rather than relying on a single tool label.
- Request removal where practical and correct links you control.
- Use disavow only if the circumstances warrant it, and review the file carefully before submission.
- Monitor Search Console and organic performance afterward.
Removing or disavowing legitimate links can discard useful signals. A low third-party score alone is not proof that a link is harmful.
8. Refresh important content and measure real outcomes
Choose pages that matter to your audience or business, then check whether their search intent, facts, examples, and advice remain current. Add missing information when it improves the answer, strengthen first-party evidence, consolidate overlapping pages where that makes the site clearer, update internal links, and promote genuinely useful revisions. Preserve the URL when possible. Updating a page can improve its usefulness and competitiveness; freshness alone does not guarantee a higher DA.
Review progress monthly or quarterly, rather than checking a score every day. Use one authority tool consistently and record the date, because scores may change when a provider updates its index or model, or when competing link profiles change. Combine the score with new and lost referring domains, links to important pages, Search Console impressions and clicks, target-query rankings, referral traffic, and leads, sales, or signups. Search Console is useful for Google search data, but it is not a substitute for a full backlink database.
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How to use authority tools without mistaking them for results
Use a third-party metric to benchmark comparable sites and spot link opportunities, not to certify that your site is trusted by Google. Keep comparisons within the same tool: Moz DA, Ahrefs DR, and Semrush Authority Score are not interchangeable. The tools help diagnose; improvements come from useful content, legitimate promotion, relevant editorial links, and a site that people and search engines can access.
Quick Recap
- Check Moz DA specifically: Moz Link Explorer, moz.com/link-explorer.
- Investigate backlink profiles and competitors: Ahrefs, including its backlink checker, reports DR rather than DA.
- Combine backlink analysis with broader SEO workflows: Semrush’s Backlink Analytics uses its own Authority Score.
- Measure Google search impressions and clicks: Google Search Console.
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