What is Domain Rating (DR)?
Domain Rating (DR) measures a website’s backlink strength on a scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the strongest.
Why is Domain Rating Important?
Ahrefs says research shows a strong DR often means more keywords the site ranks for, this gets you more organic traffic from Google.
Logarithmic Scale of DR
DR uses a logarithmic scale it isn’t linear.
Increasing DR from 75 to 76 is gonna be a tad bit harder than 20 to 21. Higher DRs require more effort to improve- as they should because once you have more authority you should have to hold yourself to high standards of good content and traffic that loves your site.
Domain Rating vs. URL Rating
Domain Rating applies to the entire domain, unlike URL Rating, which is specific to individual pages.
Factors Influencing Domain Rating
- Unique Referring Domains: More unique referring domains linking to your site send the DR through the roofs.
- Quality of Referring Domains: Higher DR of referring domains means more DR passed to your site.
- Outbound Links of Referring Domains: More sites a referring domain links to, the less DR each linked site gets.
- Nofollow Links: These don’t mean anything to the DR.
Why is Domain Rating Important?
- Google trusts your website more if it has a higher DA because it seems to have more authority. You become the authority figure in your niche- that one website people go to for for good advice on <insert a particular topic>.
- Google favored websites get more organic traffic.
A Good Domain Rating Score?
The higher the “authority” of your domain, the better it is. However it’s hardly possible to say that a Domain Rating of 30 is good, or 50, or 60, or 70.
Determining a good Domain Rating score can be relative like everything else relative in this reality:
- Do not let the importance of DR fool you into thinking it is an absolute metric- it is not.
- A higher DR gets more traffic.
- Aim for a high. Aim higher actually! You’ve to overtake competitors in your industry.
- Content is king so make it high-quality!
- Get the visitors the smoothest user journey on your website!
How to Check Your Domain Rating
Get the paid subscription of a domain rating checker tool. Some popular tools are: Ahrefs, Moz, and SEMrush. You can do a DA check in here and get insights on competitor performance and more.
Where to Check Domain Rating
Use Ahrefs to check a website’s DR. This tool analyzes millions of websites and their links.
How Ahrefs Calculates DR
– Referring Domains: The number of unique websites linking to your site. Each unique site counts as one referring domain, no matter how many links it has to your site.
– Backlink Quality: Not all backlinks are equal. Ahrefs considers the DR of the sites linking to you. A link from a high-DR site is more valuable than one from a low-DR site.
– Total Backlinks: The total number of links to your site matters, but quality is more important than quantity.
– Anchor Text: The text used for the link helps search engines understand the page’s topic.
– Link Diversity: Links from different types of websites (blogs, news sites, forums, etc.) contribute to a higher DR.
– Link Location: Where the link is placed on the linking page can also matter. Links in prominent positions, like the header or sidebar, might be valued more.
Ahrefs uses a complex algorithm to combine these factors and calculate a website’s DR.
Remember: DR is just one factor in search rankings. While a high DR often means good rankings, it’s not the only thing that matters. Build high-quality content and optimize for relevant keywords.
Want to Improve Your DR?
Focus on getting backlinks from authoritative websites in your industry.
Improving Your Domain Rating
Here are the key strategies to improve your Domain Rating:
- Earn Quality Backlinks: You should get backlinks from strong pages on reputable sites.
- Content Creation: Develop high-quality, and content people would fight for -this helps attract natural backlinks.
- Optimise User Experience: Your website is gonna be used by humans so make sure it is user-friendly and provides information people would appreciate.
Constantly adding and improving your Domain Rating gives better SEO results. So do not slack on it!