Guide · Domain authority
What Is a Good Domain Authority? The Honest Answer for Small Businesses
A good domain authority score isn't a fixed number — it's one that's higher than the sites you're actually competing against. A DA of 30 might be excellent for a local plumber's website and far too low if you're competing with national media brands for the same keywords (Moz, 2025).
That's the short answer. The rest of this guide explains what domain authority actually measures, what scores small business sites typically have, and how to set a target that means something for your business — instead of chasing a number that looks good in a screenshot.
The basics
What domain authority is (and what it isn't)
Domain Authority (DA) is a score from 1 to 100, created by the SEO tool Moz, that predicts how likely a website is to rank in Google compared to other sites. Higher is better. It's calculated mainly from your backlink profile — the number of unique websites linking to you and how strong those sites are (Moz, 2025).
Three things matter when you read your score:
It's not a Google ranking factor.
Google does not use domain authority in its algorithm. Google's own search advocate John Mueller has said this repeatedly, and it's worth repeating here: DA is a third-party estimate, not something Google sees (Search Engine Journal).
It's relative.
Your score only means something when compared to similar sites. The scale is built so that a handful of giants (Wikipedia, major news sites) hold most of the high scores, which is why the same DA number can be "good" in one industry and "weak" in another (Moz, 2025).
It moves.
Scores change when your backlinks change, when competitors gain or lose links, and when the tool updates its calculation model. Small swings are normal and not a sign that something broke (Moz, 2025).
Different tools use different names for essentially the same idea: Moz calls it Domain Authority, Ahrefs calls it Domain Rating (DR). They will not match, and that's fine — pick one and track it consistently. We break down the differences in our guide to Domain Authority vs Domain Rating.
Benchmarks
So what's a "good" score? Benchmarks by site type
Because the metric is relative, the honest benchmark ranges are broad. Most published breakdowns land roughly here (Reflect Digital; Network Solutions; Wix, 2025):
| DA range | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| 1–20 | New or very small sites with few backlinks |
| 21–40 | Typical small-to-mid-sized businesses building their presence |
| 41–60 | Established sites with solid backlink profiles |
| 61–80 | Large brands, publishers, well-known companies |
| 81–100 | Wikipedia, Google, major media — a tiny club |
Reading this the wrong way is easy, so here's the right way: if you run a local service business, an e-commerce shop, or a niche B2B site, the sites you're fighting with in Google results usually sit between 20 and 50. Matching or beating those scores is the goal. Competing with a DA 90 news outlet for a national head term is a different game entirely.
One more scale quirk worth knowing: the score grows on a logarithmic-like curve. Going from DA 10 to 20 is much easier than going from 60 to 70, because each extra point demands a disproportionately stronger backlink profile (Crazy Egg, 2025). Small sites make visible progress in months; big sites spend years per few points.
How to benchmark
How to find the number that actually matters — your competitors' scores
The single most useful thing you can do with domain authority is benchmark it. Here's the practical version:
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List the 5–10 websites that rank on page one for the keywords you want. These are your real competitors — not necessarily your business competitors.
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Check each site's DA (or DR). For how, see our guide on how to check domain authority.
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Take the average of the top 3–5 results. That range is your realistic target, not "50+" pulled from a blog post.
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Look at the gap. If the ranking sites average 35 and you're at 15, most of your effort should go into links and content, not page tweaks.
Automated benchmarking
See the gap, and the links that close it
This is tedious by hand, which is where automation helps. Votrix AI's competitor analysis compares your site's authority and backlink profile against the sites actually outranking you, and shows the link gap — which sites link to them but not to you. That list is your link-building roadmap, built from live DataForSEO data rather than guesswork. You can see it in Votrix AI's SEO manager.
Priorities
When to care about your DA — and when to ignore it
Domain authority is genuinely useful in three situations (Crazy Egg, 2025):
Care about it when:
- Benchmarking against direct competitors over time
- Judging link opportunities — a link from a DA 60 industry site is usually worth more outreach effort than ten links from DA 10 directories
- Long-term reporting — quarterly or annual trends tell you whether your SEO is working
Ignore it when:
- Your site is under six months old. New sites start at DA 1 and stay low for a while no matter what you do (Moz, 2025).
- You're making day-to-day content decisions. A low DA should never stop you from publishing content that answers your customers' questions. Pages rank on relevance too — small sites outrank big ones on specific topics all the time.
- Traffic and rankings are already growing. If you're getting clicks and conversions with a "low" DA, the score isn't your problem.
Authority beyond Google
AI assistants read your backlinks too
A related gap most articles skip: authority increasingly matters outside Google too. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews favor sources that are widely referenced and linked across the web — meaning a stronger backlink profile can improve not just rankings but whether AI assistants mention your business at all. If you want to track that, Votrix AI monitors when ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Overviews mention your brand, so you can see whether your authority-building work is paying off in AI search as well as regular search.
The levers
How to actually raise your score
You can't buy a good domain authority, but you can earn one. The levers, in rough order of impact:
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Earn links from real, relevant sites. The number of unique linking domains and their quality are the biggest factors in DA (Moz, 2025). Ten links from ten respected industry sites beat a hundred links from low-quality directories.
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Create things people link to. Original data, genuinely useful guides, free tools, and detailed local resources earn links naturally. Generic blog posts rarely do.
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Clean up toxic links. Audit your backlink profile occasionally; if a large share of links comes from spammy, irrelevant sites, disavow them in Google Search Console (Google recommends disavowing only for serious spam problems) (Crazy Egg, 2025).
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Fix technical basics. A fast, crawlable, HTTPS-secured site supports everything else. If crawlers can't read your pages, nothing downstream works.
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Link your own pages together. Internal links spread authority from strong pages to weaker ones and help search engines understand your site.
The hard part isn't knowing these steps — it's executing them every week. Votrix AI automates a good chunk of the grind: it finds link and mention opportunities and sends the outreach emails itself, writes and publishes the kind of content that earns links, and rewrites pages that aren't ranking. It also runs crawl checks to confirm Google and AI crawlers can actually access your site. If you want the step-by-step manual version instead, see our guide on how to increase domain authority.
Set expectations honestly: meaningful DA gains take months, and for sites above DA 70, years (Crazy Egg, 2025). Track quarterly, not weekly.
Avoid these
Mistakes that waste your time
Chasing a magic number. "Get to 50" is meaningless without knowing your niche. "Beat the three sites ranking above me" is a real goal.
Comparing to irrelevant sites. Your bakery's DA next to Amazon's tells you nothing.
Buying links or "DA boost" services. Paid link schemes risk penalties and rarely produce durable gains (Crazy Egg, 2025).
Panicking over small drops. Scores fluctuate when the tool recalculates or competitors shift. Only a sustained multi-month decline deserves attention.
Judging a site by DA alone. A DA 25 site with content that perfectly matches a niche query will beat a sloppy DA 60 site on that query. Use the score as a compass, not a verdict.
The bottom line
A good domain authority is a moving target defined by your competition: check the DA of the sites ranking for the keywords you want, match or beat that range, and ignore everything else. For most small businesses that means landing somewhere in the 20–50 band while building links steadily — and remembering that Google doesn't use this score at all. Use it to measure progress and prioritize link opportunities, then keep publishing content your customers actually need.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is 20 a good domain authority score?
For a new or small site in a low-competition niche, yes — plenty of small businesses rank well at DA 20. It's only "low" if the sites you're competing against score 40+ (Moz, 2025).
Does Google use domain authority to rank sites?
No. Domain Authority is a Moz-created metric, and Google does not use it or anything like it as a single ranking factor (Search Engine Journal).
How do I find my domain rating?
Use a free checker: Moz's Domain Analysis shows DA, Ahrefs' Website Authority Checker shows DR. Our guide on how to check domain authority walks through it step by step.
Why did my domain authority drop when I did nothing wrong?
Most drops come from recalculation, changes to competitors' profiles, or lost links — not from something you did. Only worry about a sustained decline over several months (Moz, 2025).
What's more important: domain authority or page authority?
They measure different things — DA is your whole domain, Page Authority is a single page. A specific page can rank well with a low DA if it matches the search intent closely.
Does domain authority matter for AI search?
Indirectly, yes. AI systems like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews tend to reference sources with strong, widely linked content, so building authority helps your visibility in AI answers as well as classic search results.
Sources
Moz — Domain Authority: What is it and how is it calculated — https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority (updated March 2025)
Ahrefs — Website Authority Checker / What is a good Domain Rating — https://ahrefs.com/website-authority-checker (accessed October 31, 2026)
Search Engine Journal — Domain Authority as a ranking factor (John Mueller statements) — https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/domain-authority/ (accessed October 31, 2026)
Reflect Digital — What is Domain Authority, and Why is it Important? — https://www.reflectdigital.co.uk/blog/what-is-domain-authority-and-why-is-it-important (accessed October 31, 2026)
Network Solutions — What Is Domain Authority and How to Improve It — https://www.networksolutions.com/blog/what-is-domain-authority/ (accessed October 31, 2026)
Wix — What is domain authority and how to check it — https://www.wix.com/blog/what-is-domain-authority (accessed October 31, 2026)
Crazy Egg — Domain Authority Explained — https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/domain-authority/ (December 2025)