Domain Rating vs Domain Authority: What Are The Differences?

Confused between Domain Rating (DR) and Domain Authority (DA)? Check out this comparison between Domain Rating vs Domain Authority to know the difference between them.

Ranking your pages on Google is a challenging task because a lot of factors are in play when it comes to ranking. SEO plays the most critical role in ranking on Google. But you need to keep on checking your website’s progress through a website analysis tool. Domain Authority and Domain Rating scores are two data metrics that show your website’s popularity.

But one can get easily confused between them. Both have the domain in their name; that’s why people can’t differentiate between them. That’s why we are here to clear your confusion about Domain Rating and Domain Authority.

So let’s get started right away.

Domain Rating: Overview

Domain Rating is a metric that is completely related to a website’s backlinks. If a website has quality backlinks, then its DR will be higher. The DR is measured in numbers, and it can be between 0 to 100. If your website is getting backlinks from high DR websites, then your DR will automatically increase.

You need to keep track of your DR to figure out whether your plan is working or not. If your website is getting backlinks from low DR websites, then it will not affect your website’s DR. You can check your website’s DR from various tools, but the best tool for checking DR is Ahrefs’ website authority checker.

We have also checked our website’s DR with this tool. It shows that our website, DemandSage has a domain rating of 36, and this number is increasing because of our strong backlink profile.

Domain Rating vs Domain Authority - Domain Rating

Domain Authority: Overview

Domain Authority is a metric that is related to your website’s ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). DA is also measured in numbers, and it can also be between 0 to 100. If your website has higher DA, it has better ranking potential for most keywords. With DA, you can figure out how many pages of your website appear in the search results.

If a website has higher DA, then it will most likely outrank low DA websites in SERPs for a keyword. It will always not be the same because having high DA means your website’s pages are ranking at the top of search results. If a website’s pages start ranking higher in SERPs, then its DA will increase automatically.

If you want to check your website’s DA, then you can use Moz’s free domain SEO analysis tool. According to this tool, our website’s DA is 25, and it has 46 ranking keywords.

Domain Rating vs Domain Authority - Domain Authority

Difference Between Domain Rating and Domain Authority

Domain Authority and Domain Rating are almost similar, but they still have some significant differences. They both are essential scores to analyze a website’s SEO.

  • Ahrefs introduced Domain Rating, and Moz introduced Domain Authority. According to Ahrefs, the Domain Rating of a website reflects its authority, but it is different from Moz’s Domain Authority.
  • Its backlink profile measures a website’s DR. It does not consider factors like age of the domain, traffic of the website, and spam links on the website.
  • Many factors come into play when it comes to the DA of a website. A website’s ranking pages decide the DA of a website.
  • When you check the DA of a website on Moz, you will get data metrics like linking root domains, domain authority, spam score, ranking keywords, top pages by link, and top-ranking keywords.
  • When you check the DR of a website on Ahrefs, you will get data metrics like Domain Rating, the total number of backlinks, and the total number of linking websites.
  • If a website has high DA, then it will also have high DR. But in some cases, a website can have high DA and low DR.

These are a few differences between Domain Rating and Domain Authority.

Similarities Between Domain Rating and Domain Authority

Two different SEO companies introduced DA and DR, respectively, and both are related to the SEO of a website. If a website has high DA and DR, then it is perfectly optimized for search engines. Both DA and DR focus on the links of a website. DR shows unique backlinks of the website but, most importantly, do-follow backlinks.

DA shows spam links, lost links, and top backlinks of a website. Both DA and DR can have the same number. They both don’t have any impact on search engines. They just predict how well your website is doing on search engines. To rank a certain content, it must have unique backlinks to it. But backlinks do not always impact the ranking on Google.

Domain Rating vs Domain Authority: Which One Is More Important?

Most digital marketers believe that Domain Rating is much more important than Domain Authority. Before DR and DA, PageRank was the only algorithm that decided which website would rank higher on Google. It entirely depends on the backlinks of a website. The better the backlinks, the higher it will rank on Google.

But this algorithm is no longer in use for Google. Still, Backlinks play a significant role in ranking on Google. The DA score doesn’t focus on the backlinks. It is figured out based on various factors such as spam score, domain age, traffic of the website, and the website’s social presence. Some people believe that the DA of a website can be manipulated.

Let’s take an example of a website with a high DA score, but it is not ranking on SERPs or a website with good paid traffic that does not come from Google. DR of a website can not be manipulated because it focuses on the backlinks only. Overall, you should focus on DA or DR rather than you should focus on improving the SEO of your website. You will automatically get high DR or DA.

Domain Rating vs Domain Authority: How To Increase

Let’s take a look at how you can increase your website’s DA and DR.

How To Increase Domain Rating

To increase your website’s DR, you need to get unique do-follow links for your website. You will not see any effect on your DR score if you are getting backlinks from a low DR website. You also need to make sure the backlinks you’re getting are pointing toward the relevant pages of your website.

Spam backlinks can damage the DR of your website. If the links are relevant & unique, then you will definitely get more traffic on your website. But it is not easy to get quality backlinks. The only thing you can do is create unique content that people want to link to. You can also contact high DR websites and ask them to link to your pages.

You should also focus on improving your website’s internal linking and external linking because it will also increase your website’s DR.

How To Increase Domain Authority

Moz considers a lot of factors to calculate the DA of a website. So it is not easy to increase the DA of the website. But you can try out a few techniques. Try getting unique high authority backlinks from high DA websites. It will help you in ranking on SERPs. You should also avoid getting spam links because they can damage your website’s DA.

Linking Domains

You should also focus on improving SEO. Try optimizing your website for SERPs. Do not try any black-hat SEO techniques to rank higher on SERPs because it will not work in the long run. It would be best if you tried doing it the legitimate way.

How Does Domain Rating (DR) Impact SEO?

One of the most important parts of any SEO strategy is Domain Rating (DR), but how does it impact SEO? That’s the real question most online digital marketers are asking themselves. Google takes a lot of factors into account when ranking websites for specific queries, but Domain Rating is not one of them.

However, a website with a higher Domain Rating shows more authority over lower DR websites, and it gives an edge to websites with high DR over lower DR websites. DR shows a website’s trustworthiness and quality, which affects SEO in many ways. So, in conclusion, if your website has a higher domain rating, it will likely rank higher for many queries if the content is also providing quality to the readers.

Should You Care About Domain Rating And Domain Authority?

You’re wrong if you have the misconception that Google ranks a website for a certain keyword based on its Domain Rating and Domain Authority, then you’re wrong. So you don’t need to focus on DA and DR completely, but you can’t ignore them completely as well. DR helps you recognize which website is good for you to take links from. DR metrics help you in link building and getting quality links for your website.

Domain Authority helps you assess the overall performance of a website. But you should not only focus on improving the DA and DR of your website. You should only focus on improving the SEO of your pages and building quality links, and these metrics will increase automatically.

Conclusion: Domain Rating vs Domain Authority

So this was our comparison of DR and DA. Now the only question remains: Which one should you focus on?

In our opinion, you should neither focus on DR nor DA because these are just numbers; they don’t have much influence on search engines. It would be best to focus on creating unique content that solves users’ queries. You should also try optimizing that content for search engines as well. People will automatically link out to your content if it is unique and better than other websites.

We hope that your confusion is gone with this Domain Rating vs Domain Authority comparison. Let me know your thoughts on DA and DR in the comments section below.

FAQs

Is Domain Rating important for SEO?

The Domain Rating of your website is one of the biggest factors in ranking your website on search engines. If your website has a higher Domain Rating, then it is possible that your website will rank on the first pages of search engines for specific queries.

How can I see the Domain Rating of my website for free?

To check the Domain Rating of your website for free, you need to use Ahrefs’ Webmaster Tool, where you will need to verify the ownership of your domain after that, you can check plenty of metrics of your website, including Domain Rating.

Is Domain Authority a Google ranking factor?

No, Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor per se because it does not have an effect on SERPs. It only shows that your website is performing well and it can be trusted.

How can I increase my website’s Domain Rating?

The best way to increase the Domain Rating of any website you need to create unique problem-solving content and build quality links. You can also improve your website’s loading speed and performance to increase the DR of your website.

Is Domain Authority relevant?

Yes, Domain Authority is still pretty relevant. Google may not use it as a ranking factor, but it does establish the trust factor between your website and your readers.

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