Domain Authority is a proprietary score developed by Moz that estimates your site's ranking potential on a 1–100 scale. It's not a Google metric and doesn't directly influence rankings, but it correlates with how competitive your backlink profile is compared to other sites. Your DA combines factors like total backlinks, linking root domains, and the authority of those linking domains. To find your DA, go to Moz's Link Explorer and enter your domain. The free version shows your score immediately. Alternatively, install the MozBar browser extension to see DA while browsing any site. Competitors like Ahrefs use Domain Rating (DR) and Semrush uses Authority Score—all measure similar concepts with different algorithms, so your score will vary between tools. DA is logarithmic, meaning jumping from 20 to 30 is far easier than 70 to 80. Most new sites start between 1–10. A local Ottawa business might realistically reach 25–35 with solid local links and consistent content. Regional news sites often sit at 50–65. National brands and major publications score 70+. Getting above 90 requires backlinks from extremely authoritative domains and usually takes years. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we track DA across our 500+ domain portfolio, but we never optimize for DA itself. It's a lagging indicator—focus instead on earning links from relevant, trusted sites in your niche. A site with DA 28 and highly relevant backlinks from industry publications will outrank a DA 35 site with spammy or irrelevant links. Google uses its own proprietary authority signals that these tools try to approximate. Check your DA every quarter to spot trends. If it drops suddenly, you likely lost important backlinks or competitors gained strong links. If it plateaus, you need more high-quality referring domains, not just more links from the same sources. Use DA for competitive benchmarking and setting realistic link-building targets, not as a success metric by itself.