Seeing steady drop in Domain Authority?
-
Hi!
I'm working with a client that has seen a steady drop in their domain authority over the past year and a half. They were at 75 in October '13 and now they're down to 67. The drop seems rather steady over this time, no big dip.
They've actually worked their crawl errors during this time and have reduced a ton of them. I can't figure out why this metric would be dropping. Anyone know of something measurable I can look at to help pinpoint the problem (and of course actions to fix it)?
Thanks so much!
Becky -
Hello Becky, Yes it could be interpreted as their gaining links and your not. But it could also be interpreted as the sites their backlinks are on are gaining links, and the sites your backlinks are on are losing links.
If your backlink is on my site and my site's DA goes up by 30 points, then your site's DA will also go up by a certain number of points. Your DA increase would be dependent on where your backlink is on my site. If your backlink was on my homepage, then I'd say your DA would probably go up by about 4 points.
And yes Becky, the only way to increase DA is via inbound links. But I would also try to move my clients focus away from this metric as it's not that relevant to traffic or rankings. In many niches, I see sites with lower DA dominating the rankings and getting more traffic.
-
Thanks Andy and Richard!
That all makes sense and is helpful to think about the 100 cap.
Their competition actually has gone down a little bit over that time, but only a point or two vs. our larger drop. Could that be interpreted as they're gaining links and we are not?
Tactics for improving this number are all focused on link building?
Thanks!
Becky
-
As DA has a limit of 100, drops aren't always a bad indication and should really be compared against competition. Lets say the competition has dropped from 76 to 61, then in theory you have gained by 7.
Richard is also correct, but you can only really measure DA in comparison as their is a ceiling of 100 - so you can't always keep on improving.
I would start to the DA against the competitors and report that way - rather than just showing how they have dropped.
-
Hi Becky, The domain authority is dropping because the site is either losing inbound links or the sites linking to your site are losing their domain authority. Crawl errors will have nothing to do with the issue because Moz is crawling the sites that link to you to calculate your DA.
If you run the site through ahrefs I'm sure you'll see a gradual decline in your site's overall inbound links.
Remember there are two types of Domain Authority (DA). There is good DA and bad DA. The Moz DA algorithm has difficulty defining the wheat from the chaff. Spammy links can contribute to your DA. In a recent test, I was able to take a brand new domain name to a DA72 in less than 50 days. But that domain is now useless, and it's DA of 72, and Page Authority of 68 aren't true representations of the quality of that domain.
There could be many scenarios where your DA goes down, but your rankings go up. This could occur if you were removing all of your bad links manually. Your DA would go down, but your ranking might actually go up in some scenarios.
High DA only correlates to high rankings when the link profile contributing to the high DA is clean, (well most of the time). There could also be crawl errors on the sites linking back to you, and this would cause a drop in your site's DA too. The only way to raise your site's DA is with new links. If your site naturally gains links over time, then your DA will remain stable and possibly continue to grow. If there's no influx of new links, then chances are that you'll naturally lose some of the old links you've previously had causing your DA to drop gradually.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Moz Domain Authority 27
Hi there, I have been reading up about Domain Authority being important to rank though I have a question about it. When trying a few google searches and using a tool to see the Moz Domain Authority i notice the following. I won't mention sites or keywords, happy to send them via private message if required. A site ranks 1st position for most keywords including the main keyword that related to their industry, a highly competitive keyword. Their Moz Domain Authority 27, Est. Visits: 265,000, Pinterest shares 72, Facebook shares 191 and unique domains that point to it are 55. Yet when I look at another site, optimising for the same keyword, Moz Domain Authority 50, Est. Visits: 60,000, Pinterest shares 35000, Facebook shares 20000 and unique domains that point to it are 521. I would have thought that the second site ranks 1st for the keyword and the first one mentioned which is in 1st position I would have expected to be on page two or three. as I scroll down the first page for the term, all sites except for one have higher DA, visits, shares and so on. If a high PA is required can someone help me to understand the above example? Whn a low PA site ranks much better for a primary keyword than all other sites that have a higher PA than it?
Moz Pro | | IvanaDaulay1 -
One Follow Link from each subdomain/domain best for SEO?
Hi there, we have a lot of customers linking to our homepage from a subdomain of our domain or from an external domain. From SEO point of view is it best that they all only have one DoFollow Link and the rest of the links are NoFollow? Or does this have no matter at all? The problem is that we have like 900.000 links but only from round about 1000 different root domains. If we put like half of the links on NoFollow our ratio of links/ different root domains gets better. Thanks for answering! Sebastian
Moz Pro | | Sebastian230 -
Domain / Page Authority - logarithmic
SEOmoz says their Domain / Page Authority is logarithmic, meaning that lower rankings are easier to get, higher rankings harder to get. Makes sense. But does anyone know what logarithmic equation they use? I'm using the domain and page authority as one metric in amongst other metrics in my keyword analysis. I can't have some metrics linear, others exponential and the SEOmoz one logarithmic.
Moz Pro | | eatyourveggies0 -
What Exactly Does "Linking Root Domains" mean??
What Exactly Does "Linking Root Domains" mean?? And how does it affect your ranking for certain Keywords?? Thanks
Moz Pro | | Caseman57 -
Which Moz Rank and I'm seeing External or both external and internal?
I found this on the MOZ site. It confused me. "Whereas MozRank measures the link juice (ranking power) of both internal and external links, external MozRank measures only the amount of mozRank flowing through external links (links located on a separate domain). Because external links can play an important role as independent endorsements, external mozRank is an important metric for predicting search engine rankings." In the tool bar and other places in Moz am I seeing the combo Internal or the External and how do I get to each? Maybe I'm just reading this wrong. 🙂
Moz Pro | | RustyF0 -
I made a mistake on my root domain, how can I change it.
I just signed up for SEOmoz and already goofed up on setting up my root domain, I left out www. part. I can't find a way to edit it. Can I change it, or do I need to start a new campaign and delete this one?
Moz Pro | | ArenaS0 -
Can I track the Domain MozRank over time?
I got my pro account a few months ago and now wondering if the Domain MozRank has changed much since when I first started. How can I see this?
Moz Pro | | SharpKiwi0 -
SEOMOZ Competitive Domain Analysis
Hi, I am just trying to get to the bottom of why I am seeing such wildly different figures in the SEOMOZ link analysis. The SEO company that we use is saying that we have around 331 external links to our website, when I check on Yahoo site explorer, it returns 264 external links, but in my SEOMOZ campaign manager, it says I have 4 external links? I fully appreciate that none of these methods are going to be wholly accurate, and are going to produce different results, but I can't understand why the SEOMOZ results are so vastly different. I also know for a fact there are a number of Followed links that I have added to a couple of websites, that Google has now indexed (as they appear in search results), but don't appear in the campaign manager results. If SEOMOZ use a different method to assess an external link, then no problem - my main concern here is that as a Newbie I am doing something wrong within the SEOMOZ tools, and don't want to take action based on results that may be incorrect because I have set things up incorrectly? Any help is greatly appreciated. Many thanks, Gareth
Moz Pro | | gdavies090319770