Prior to 2013, Google used to publish a measurement very similar to Moz.com’s Domain Authority (DA) called Pagerank. Because Google stopped publishing Pagerank, Moz developed their DA algorithm that they constantly tweak to try to mimic it.
Moz.com measures Domain Authority by evaluating over 40 ranking factors, including the quality and relevance of a piece of content to its topic, the quality and relevance of the external website pages that link to the piece of content, as well as the number of those links. Moz even employs machine learning technology that compares the external backlink profile of content with backlink profiles of other content on the internet to compare how they rank for their targeted keywords.
Individually, we can access Moz’s DA measurements for any given website by adding a Moz extension to our browser, such as Chrome or Firefox.
In this article, we will break down how Moz measures domain authority a bit further, and I will show you an example of how a Moz extension shows you the DA of a given website. You might also benefit from reading my two articles: “Is High Or Low Domain Authority Better?“ and “How to Get The Most Google Business Profile Backlinks!“.
The video below is a video that I did on how to increase the Domain Authority of a local business website.
What Are Moz’s 40+ DA Score Factors?
Well, the short answer is we don’t know them all exactly. I suspect that is part of Moz’s “secret sauce” because they don’t spell it all out when they talk about it on their website.
But we know that the whole point of the measurement is to try to predict what things will affect a website’s ranking for its targeted keywords, so we can be pretty sure that anything that significantly affects how a piece of content will rank, Moz includes in its DA score algorithm.
That being said, the Moz DA score is weighted very heavily by internal linking and external backlinking, where “authority” or “link juice” is passed from one piece of content through a link to the content it links to.
Moz’s heavy focus on this results from the fact that the major search engines like Google focus on these links so much. Moz does its very best to mimic Google’s algorithm so that it can predict effectively through its DA score.
Does Moz Mimic Google’s Pagerank Perfectly?
Moz is not perfect, for sure. In fact, other companies have produced their own measurements to compete with the DA score, such as Majestic’s Trust flow. However, Moz’s DA score does a pretty amazing job and is highly thought of.
A good SEO professional uses all of the best measurements as a gauge of how well they are doing in their effort to rank the websites they are working on for their targeted keyword.
A Look At Moz’s DA Measurement Tool
If you look at the above image, you will see what the Moz Chrome extension looks like. For example, I am looking at a local Alabama business, Rush Bail Bonds. The Moz extension is the grey bar above the website in the image that shows the PA (Page Authority) and DA (Domain Authority) measurements on whatever website you visit.
It is extremely handy to have. I use it all the time to check the DA score of websites.
I haven’t talked about the Moz PA score much. But it is an important part of their measurement. The PA score is basically the same as the DA score, just for a given page of the website. The DA score is for the whole domain, whereas the PA score is for a given page.
When I speak about either the PA score or the DA score, I always call them both. I use the term DA score for either one pretty interchangeably. I probably shouldn’t do that so that I can be more clear.
Now, please take a quick look at the above image. When you have this Moz tool showing, and you search on Google, it shows after each result in the search the DA score of each website listed.
I only had enough room to show just one business listing in this screenshot. But you can tell this was a Google search where this Rush Bail Bonds business showed up in the results.
If you could see the rest of the page showing my Google search, you would see that every local business website listed in the results had this little grey bar under the listing showing its PA and DA scores.
It doesn’t show this in the Google Maps 3 pack but in the regular organic section. However, this makes it really handy to do a local business search and compare all of the DA scores of your business’s competitors.
Final Thoughts
I would just like to encourage all of you to read my articles so that you can do your own local SEO. In these articles, I have to break things down into minute details so that you understand how to do everything, and it can seem like a lot of information.
Please don’t get overwhelmed. Once you read 20 or so of my articles, especially if you also watch a bunch of my videos, this will all come together for you, and you will realize this is actually pretty simple and no big deal. It will be a fair amount of work, but it is simple. And your results will be amazing. So, I encourage you to stick in there and do this for yourself!