Backlink management & creation is a very important strategy for off-page SEO. Various factors are taken into account when ranking a website. Some of the well-known factors are keyword optimization, dwell time, bounce rate, E.E.A.T., and, of course, backlink forum.
Table of Contents:
- DA, How it’s Measured For Backlink Management?
- What is DA?
- How is DA measured (MOZ algorithm, tool link)?
- What is a good DA while looking for backlink management?
- Conclusion
A backlink is just a hyperlink from a website that points to your website. Why do they matter in SERP ranking? Well, Google checks the quality and quantity of backlink forum to a website to gauge its authenticity.
Authenticity is very important to Google because they want to show the best search results to their users. A large number of authentic websites linking to another website is a sign that it is authentic as well.
Webmasters try all sorts of ways to get more backlinks (backlink management) for their sites, but as you may have noticed, the quality is more valuable than the quantity. And how do they know if a link (backlink forum) is of high quality? By checking the DA (domain authority).
DA, How it’s Measured For Backlink Management?
In this section, we will check out what DA is, why SEO specialists use it to ascertain the quality of a backlink, and at what DA is a backlink management considered “high quality”? Let us start with what DA is.
What is DA?
DA, as you know, stands for domain authority. It is a metric developed by Moz (an SEO and marketing tools company). DA is a metric used to determine the credibility and authenticity of a website. The higher DA, more authoritative that website is had. The score ranges from 0 to 100, and the higher the score, the better the DA.
It is important to note that DA is not a metric used for ranking websites. In fact, search engines do not use DA at all. But clearly, there are some similarities in the way DA and SERP rankings are calculated because, more often than not, they mirror each other. That’s why DA is so often used for determining the quality of backlinks and backlink management from a website.
Now that we have understood that, let’s see how DA is measured.
How is DA measured (MOZ algorithm, tool link)?
We don’t exactly know how DA is measured because the algorithm is the intellectual property of Moz. However, we do have some insights into what factors are considered when measuring DA, thanks to a community post on the Moz forums. Here is the comment in question.
“Domain Authority was calculated by evaluating the linking root domain, The number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust and more.—into a single DA score. This score just can be used when the comparing websites or tracking to “ranking strength” of a website over the time.”
From that comment, we can see that linking root domains, the number of links, and some Moz-specific metrics are used to find the rank.
Now, let’s talk about how you can measure the DA of your own websites (or any other website, for that matter). To do that, you can use Moz’s very own DA checker tool. It’s a free tool, but the caveat is that you only get three queries per day. Fortunately, other companies have cracked the code to measure DA and have made a free DA PA checker tool available online.
The good thing about these third-party DA PA checkers is that they are accurate. They provide the same results as Moz’s own tool, Moz domain authority checker. You can also see this in the following image.
Third-Party Tool
Moz
As you can also see, the scores are same. So, if you want to measure DA without limits, it’s a good idea to check out third-party tools.
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What is a good DA while looking for backlink management?
Now, we get to the real question. Everything else in this article was merely a preamble that set up this question. Now, the answer is not straightforward. Because the answer is “it depends”.
As a rule of thumb, you should always look for websites that have 50+ DA. But you may want to take a look at the following points as well:
- You may want to get backlinks from 0–20 DA websites if they are new and rapidly rising in rank. This is good for diversification and starting backlink management.
- Generally, you should get backlinks from 40+ DA websites because they can boost your own site’s authority.
- It is difficult to get backlinks from 80+ DA websites, as they are the cream of the crop. Only try to get backlink management from them if you are in a highly competitive niche. Stick to 40–60 DA sites if the competition is not too high.
So, that should answer your question about which DA should be considered when trying to get backlinks and start backlink management.
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Conclusion
We checked out what DA is, how it is measured, and how it is an important metric to check when getting backlinks to start backlink management. While there are specific things you need to consider when checking the DA of websites, generally you should just go for 40+ authority websites. They are the ones that are easy to get backlinks from and also boost your website’s authority, so you need to know all of the backlink forum.