What is the difference between DA and DR (Domain Authority and Domain Rating)
DA and DR are two different metrics that establish the authority of a domain, authority rated with a number from 0 to 100, based on several criteria that we will discuss below.
DA – Domain Authority or site authority is a score determined by MOZ taking into account several internal and external factors. In other words, MOZ determines the DA score through a machine learning algorithm that calculates the number of backlinks, referring domains and other on-site factors.
DR – Domain Rating is the rating given to sites by ahrefs, based on the backlinks they receive from other sites, but also takes into account the backlink profile of the referring sites.
In short, the DR is calculated strictly with Off-Site SEO in mind and does not take into account aspects such as content, age of articles, number of articles etc.
The authority of a domain can be checked by accessing various online tools or directly at ahrefs.com and moz.com. More information about checking authority I wrote in this article.
Keep in mind that both DA and DR are notes given to the site by organizations not directly related to Google. Therefore they are not numbers that influence the Google algorithm.
DA and DR can be used to compare sites. Most often, high authority sites rank better although there is no direct link between DA, DR and SERP.
Along with DA and DR we find, also at MOZ and ahrefs, also PA and UR. Like the domain authority score, PA and UR were designed to determine the authority of a URL (of a page on a website). You should know that pages on a website are not equal in terms of authority, some will have higher or lower authority depending on the backlinks that link directly to them.
Although again there is no direct link between Google’s algorithm and PA and UR scores, pages with higher scores tend to rank better in the SERP than those with lower scores.
In conclusion, the authority of a domain or page is a starting point in link building campaign research. Also, there are indicators that can be used to analyse a site from an SEO point of view compared to the competition.
However, to determine the strength of a backlink, SEO specialists need to consider several factors, such as the niche of the site from which the links come, the quality of the content and the ratio of editorial content vs. advertorials.
