A score (developed by SEO tool providers, not by search engines themselves) predicting how well a website is likely to rank in search results, based largely on the quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to it.
Why it matters
Domain authority is a useful proxy for a site's overall search strength and is commonly used to benchmark a site against competitors, though it's important to know it's a third-party metric, not an official signal used by Google or other search engines directly.
In a sentence
"The competitor's domain authority is much higher than ours, which makes it harder for us to outrank them on competitive terms even with similar content quality."
Related terms
- Often confused with: Search ranking (domain authority is a predictive proxy score from a third-party tool; actual search ranking is determined by the search engine itself using many additional factors beyond what domain authority scores capture).
- Synonyms: DA (shorthand, specific to certain SEO tools).