What is domain authority?

Domain authority is a score that third-party SEO tools came up with to estimate how strong a website is in search engines. It is mainly based on the number and quality of the backlinks pointing to your site. Important to know: Google does not use this score itself. It is a helper, not an official ranking factor.

How is domain authority calculated?

Different tools each have their own version of the score, usually on a scale of 0 to 100. They mainly look at your link profile:

• How many other sites point to you.
• How trustworthy and relevant those referring sites are themselves.
• How natural and varied your link profile looks.

A higher score often correlates with better positions, but correlation is not cause. The score is a snapshot, not a guarantee. How you truly strengthen your authority is set out in our guide on increasing domain authority.

Should I worry about my domain authority?

It is a handy compass for comparing your site with competitors, but it is not a goal in itself. Your site does not become better because a tool shows a higher number. What counts is whether the right people find you and send enquiries.

Steering on the score itself easily leads to the wrong choices, such as chasing links that look good on paper but bring no relevant traffic. The number then goes up, your revenue does not.

How do you build real authority?

You build authority by creating content others naturally want to mention, and by earning references from sites that count in your field. One relevant link from your sector weighs more than ten random ones.

At Customer Impact we do not steer on vanity metrics like an authority score, but on references that genuinely deliver traffic and enquiries. We work exclusively in B2B and always look at what a stronger link profile delivers in concrete customers, not at a number in a tool.