Why Domain Rating trumps Domain Authority when it comes to backlinking?

Domain Rating vs Domain Authority

In today’s world, every industry has set essential principles or methods to examine a business’s reputation and credibility while comparing them with its competitors. In the world of SEO, Domain Rate (RT) and Domain Authority (DA) are the two leading criteria that allow the analysis of a website while comparing it with others of the same category or niche.

Domain Rating is Ahrefs‘ proprietary ranking metric that quantifies the strength of a target website or URL’s complete backlink profile measured on a scale of 1 to 100. In contrast, Domain Authority (DA) is a predictor developed by Moz that acts as a ranking metric for how websites rank on search engine result pages.

But to truly understand why one is superior to the other, we have to go back to the first parameter that started it all.

 

Yes, we mean PageRank

PageRank (PR) was the first algorithm used by Google to rank web pages in their SERPS as a way of gauging the importance of these websites. 

It worked by measuring the quality and number of links pointing to a target website to determine an approximation of how important the page is. Its underlying assumption was that better and more reputable websites would have more referring domains linking to them. Plain and simple, the more backlinks, the higher the rank.

Now we all know that, organically, you need more than just lots of links to build credibility online. That’s why PageRank is no longer the algorithm used by Google to index its search results. 

But it was the first one, and it did set the stage for what came after, an evolution of a continuously adjusted set of factors that shape Google’s indication of its assessment of a web page’s reputation. These factors, like PageRank before, are the most influential parameters that will affect your Link Building strategy, and considering them when aiming to climb the SERPs is vital.

 

Domain Authority, in-depth

Popularly known as Moz DA, Domain Authority is a logarithmically scaled calculation from 1 to 100 used to indicate backlink quality and relevance of a specific website. This calculation is based on the Moz web index and used to predict a website’s probability of ranking when compared to other web pages in the same niche.

Considering 40 factors, which few are known while others are unknown, to check the quality of a website. Some of these few known factors are:

• Age of a domain
• Website traffic volume
• Total number of backlinks, qualitative and quantitative
• Spam score
• Social signals
• Linking root domains

It does not account for any on-domain factors like content quality or keyword relevancy and is not used by Google as a ranking factor. It’s just an indication that a page with higher DA has increased raking probability over other sites with lower DA. 

For this reason, DA doesn’t always provide accurate estimates of ranking power, and since it doesn’t take into account factors that differentiate organic traffic from paid traffic, it can be manipulated to reflect artificially high scores. 

So, it’s best used just as a broadly descriptive metric of the highest predictive relevancy when compared to similar web pages.

 

Domain Rating, what is it about?

In contrast to Domain Authority, Domain Rating is a data point that shows the strength of a specific website’s backlink profile on a scale of 1 to 100 and can quickly make a temporary evaluation on whether said webpage is a suitable candidate for a link.

DR calculation looks at how many unique domains have do-follow links to a website, taking into account the DR values of those linking domains, and how many unique domains each of those websites link to. Making it a key indicator when looking to get backlinks from several websites and getting organic traffic from Google searches.

These organic search results are links on a SERP earned through various factors, including:

• Relevant content/keyword optimization
• Links and domain Rating
• Engagement 

Domain Rating is a specific logarithmic scale aimed at backlink profile quality. It allows solid Link Building strategies with a handful of backlinks from highly relevant websites that outweigh hundreds of backlinks from low-quality pages. 

This higher DR target website, in theory, will yield higher credibility and relevance to a target site when getting a backlink from them. 

 

Domain Rating’s trump card

Since a high DR can only be achieved through a strong backlink strategy and real organic traffic, DR is also an important metric that can help measure a site’s individual URL power. This allows you to build content-relevant and effective connections between sites to improve search ranking and enhance the overall Domain Rating of a website when building links. AHREFs also update their database quite often which is good.

This makes Domain Rating a ranking factor that more closely aligns with Google ranking parameters and cannot be manipulated to reflect artificially high scores rank a website on SERPs. 

The importance that Domain Rating has makes finding experts that understand this vital when considering an Agency to take over Link Building for you. It ties you to the right links for your site that’ll bring organic traffic and lead your business to reach a broader audience and higher profits.

 

The expert Link Building agency for you

Whether you’re DYI-ing for your website or you’re a consummated marketing agency, Link Building can be a VERY challenging endeavour that requires relationship-building, know-how, and hard and smart work that takes time to get right.

Here at Searcharoo, we have a full team of outreach link building professionals, ready to help you develop quality links with adequate Domain Ratings that make your website earn meaningful organic traffic and improve its rankings in Google SERP. 

We are professionals with proven SEO and Link Building expertise that understand how important it is to work with the right metrics and highly targeted links and offer you high-value editorial edits placed on websites relevant to your niche. 

We can take over the Link Building for you, provide you with the high-quality links you or your customers deserve, and make the hard work go away.  

Please take a quick look at our highly targeted Link Packages and our professional-quality Guest Post. Alternatively, schedule a 15-minute strategy call with our SEO experts, and see how we can take your SEO strategy to the next level. 

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