Making the Call
Your SEO budget is being spent on the wrong audience
Six-figure B2B buyers do not pick vendors off page one. Where the SEO budget at established service firms tends to go wrong, and what to do about it.
Read More↗Domain authority
Domain authority is a third-party score (0-100, popularized by Moz) that estimates how likely a website is to rank in search, based largely on its backlink profile. It's a useful comparative gauge, but it is not a metric Google uses to rank pages.
In practice
The important caveat comes first: domain authority is a prediction made by an SEO tool, not a dial inside Google. Google has said repeatedly that it has no single "domain authority" score, and different tools produce different numbers for the same site (Ahrefs calls its version Domain Rating). Treat it as a weather forecast, useful and directional, not as the weather itself.
People use it anyway because it's a fast way to compare link strength between sites. A higher score generally means more, and more reputable, sites link to you, which does correlate with ranking ability. What moves it is the slow work of earning links from other credible sites, not anything you can change on your own pages this week.
For a small or mid-sized industrial company, the number is easy to over-worry. You will not out-score a national publication, and you don't need to. Specific, low-competition searches and AI answers are won on relevance and clear content, not raw authority; that's the whole premise of SEO for a focused business and of AI search optimization. A modest-authority site that answers a precise question better than anyone else still wins that question.
A test that keeps it in perspective: compare your score to two direct competitors, not to a national brand. The gap that affects your business is the one against the companies a buyer is actually choosing between, and that gap is usually closeable.
Common questions
Does Google use domain authority to rank sites?
No. Domain authority is a third-party estimate built by SEO tools. Google has stated it doesn't use a single domain authority metric. The score can predict ranking ability, but it isn't a factor Google reads.
What's a good domain authority score?
It's only meaningful in comparison. Rather than chasing an absolute number, compare yourself to the competitors a buyer is actually deciding between. Beating your direct peers matters; matching a national publisher doesn't.
How do I increase domain authority?
Earn links from other reputable, relevant sites over time, through work worth citing: original data, useful resources, genuine coverage. There's no shortcut, and bought or spammy links can hurt more than help.
Is domain authority the same as Domain Rating?
They're the same idea from different vendors. Domain Authority is Moz's metric; Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs'. Both estimate link-based strength on a 0-100 scale, but the numbers aren't interchangeable, so compare within one tool.