Why Domain Authority (DA) & Domain Rank (DR) Are Overvalued

Here’s an unfortunate truth: Many marketers treat one metric like it’s the Holy Grail of SEO.

We’re talking about Domain Authority (DA)… or Domain Rank (DR), or whatever your SEO tool calls it (e.g., Moz, Ahrefs).

We’ve been in enough meetings to know that many marketers consider domain authority the leading SEO metric for their brand.

Here’s why it’s not:

It’s an arbitrary number, devised by whichever SEO platform you use

Objective domain authority does not exist – it’s up to whatever algorithm your SEO tool uses.

A higher domain authority doesn’t mean you’ll rank better

The algorithms involved are complicated, but bumping your domain rank by 5 points doesn’t have any guarantee that your content will jump, too. Correlation doesn’t mean causation.

It’s often used to fake success

If you have insight into the algorithms, domain authority can be easy to manipulate without generating any actual SEO success. For example, it’s easy to spam low-quality backlinks toward a domain and increase its DA.

As a result, it’s often pitched by snake-oil salesmen looking to fool you into thinking they did great work.

Final word

What we’re saying is, nothing good comes from focusing solely on this domain-related metric.

At best, it’s a quick-look number to check how easy it might be for you to rank on a topic.

Instead of focusing on vanity metrics, do real quality SEO work. Create great content.

And focus on the metrics that matter… like your KPIs, revenue, and so on.

That’s why your favorite SEO tools do have more than just Domain Authority or Domain Rank metrics…