Your success in SEO depends on various metrics and factors. While the largest search engine Google claims these metrics as irrelevant for considering ranking, SEOs consider them as the basis of ranking.
Domain Rating (DR) and Domain Authority (DA) are two such metrics. While both of these metrics show your site's authority and popularity, these two have opinionated differences.
Let's understand the difference between the two terms and how they matter in SEO.
What is Domain Rating?
Most SEOs use Domain rating as the metric to determine the website's quality. Depending on the number of quality backlinks, domain rating is calculated by third-party tools like Ahrefs.
DR is measured on a scale of 0-100. The more the number of quality links, the higher the DR.
However, links from spammy sites will adversely affect the site authority.
If you are getting backlinks from a site that has a higher DR, then your site's DR will likely increase. We used Ahrefs to check the DR of our website: Allseenalliance and it was 66 at the time of publishing this article.
How to increase the DR of your website?
To boost the site DR, keep the following factors related to SEO in mind:
- Increase the number of do-follow links to the website.
- Link to websites that have high DR (domain rating.)
- Increase the number of websites that link to your website. (Quality of backlinks).
Besides the above points, make sure to keep a check on spammy backlinks. Spammy links tend to damage the website DR.
The only way to get quality backlinks is by creating high-quality and data-rich content. You can either contact the site owner or editor for the links or use SEO practices to get them visible.
How do these tools calculate the Domain Rating of a website?
Tools like Ahrefs take the above-mentioned factors into consideration. Then, it uses these coding algorithms to calculate the rankings of a web page.
Aherfs uses backlink quality to calculate the final DR.
What is Domain Authority?
DA or Domain authority is a metric that is calculated by the position of your pages in the search engine results pages. The metric is calculated on a scale of 0 to 100.
A website with a higher DA will have better chances of ranking on the SERPs. If your website has a higher DA, it will likely outrank others on the SERPs. There are a number of tools to check for the DA of your website.
You can the Moz DA/PA checker to find your page authority. You can also make use of SEMRush to check for the DA.
At the time of publishing the post, the DA of our website was 57.
How to increase the DA of your website?
Like DR, the site DA also depends on various factors that contribute to improving the page ranking.
- As the domain age increases, the domain authority of your website increases.
- The quality of backlinks is yet another factor affecting the site's DA. A single backlink from one website holds the same value as multiple backlinks from the same domain.
- One factor that affects DA is the mobile-friendly interface. A mobile-friendly website tends to have a higher DA than a non-mobile-friendly page.
- Content quality also impacts the DA of your website. A website with high-quality content and a lower bounce rate will have a higher DA.
- Social signals are yet another factor affecting site authority. A page with more social shares will have higher domain authority.
Major Difference Between Domain Rating & Domain Authority
Though both these metrics analyze website SEO, they have got some differences in the approach:
- While DR depends on the quality of backlinks, DA depends on a lot of other factors. Domain authority includes factors like the age of the domain, traffic of the website, and spam links.
- You will get data metrics such as connecting root domains, domain authority, spam score, ranking keywords, top pages by link, and top-ranking keywords when you check the DA of a website on Moz.
- Website with high DA will have a higher DR. But, a website with high DA will sometimes have a low DR.
Similarities Between Domain Rating & Domain Authority
The two metrics domain authority and domain rating are similar in a lot of senses. A website with high DR and DA will be perfectly optimized for search engines.
Hence, the DR and DA are the reflections of quality backlinks. Both DA and DR consider the spam links, lost links, and top backlinks of a website.
Which is more important: Domain Rating vs Domain Authority?
Most SEOs believe DR is more important than the DA of a site. Before DA and DR, there was a Page Rank that determined the quality of backlinks and analyzed which page should rank on the SERPs. This algorithm is no more relevant.
While DA can be manipulated, it is the DR that has some credibility. DR focuses on the backlinks whereas DA depends on various factors that can be easily manipulated.
Conclusion: Domain Authority vs Domain Rating
In a nutshell, DA and DR are both metrics that the SEO communities use for their website's authority. Google has never considered such metrics vital for deciding the ranking of a webpage.
Lastly, it depends on the quality content. Create content that satisfies the user's intent. Make sure to employ the on-page SEO techniques to gain higher page rankings and boost visibility.
I hope the definition of DR and DA are clear now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Domain Authority a ranking factor?
Domain authority is not a ranking factor as it is a third-party metric. DA only shows that your site is authoritative and can be trusted.
Is DA and DR relevant?
Both DA and DR are still relevant despite being the ranking factor. SEO communities use these metrics to boost authority and site trust.
Is Domain rating important in SEO?
Though DR does not directly impact the ranking, it is still relevant in SEO. A website with high DR has better chance of ranking as it is more trusted by others.