If you’ve spent any time in SEO, you’ve heard the phrase “increase your domain authority” thrown around like it’s a simple checkbox. It’s not. DA is a moving target, a relative score that shifts based on what your competitors are doing just as much as what you’re doing yourself.
Here’s the honest truth: Domain Authority (DA) is a metric created by Moz to predict how likely a website is to rank in search results. It scores sites on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100. Getting from DA 20 to DA 30 is relatively achievable. Getting from DA 60 to DA 70 is a completely different challenge that can take years of consistent effort.
The real reason most DA improvement guides fail: They focus on one or two tactics (usually “get more backlinks”) without addressing the full picture. In 2026, with Google’s AI-driven search overviews prioritising cited, trusted sources, domain authority is more closely tied to genuine credibility signals than ever before. Gaming it with bulk link schemes doesn’t just fail, it actively hurts you.
This guide covers 10 strategies that actually work, drawn from what’s moving the needle for real websites right now. Each one includes specific, actionable steps you can start this week.
Key takeaway: Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor. Google doesn’t use Moz’s score. But the underlying signals that drive DA (quality backlinks, topical depth, technical health, and brand trust) are exactly what Google does care about. Improve those signals and both your DA and your rankings will follow.
What this guide covers:
- What domain authority actually is and how it’s calculated
- The 10 proven strategies to increase it in 2026
- A comparison of DA vs Domain Rating vs Authority Score
- How long it realistically take to see results
- Frequently asked questions
What Is Domain Authority and How Is It Calculated?
Before diving into tactics, it’s worth understanding what you’re actually trying to move and why.
Domain Authority is calculated by Moz using a machine learning algorithm that analyses your backlink profile, the number of unique referring domains, the quality and relevance of those links, and other signals that correlate with real search rankings. The score is logarithmic, which is why early gains come faster than later ones.
What DA Actually Measures
According to Moz, DA is designed to reflect how often a domain appears in Google search results relative to other domains. It’s a comparative metric, not an absolute one. This matters because your score can drop even if your backlink profile improves, simply because other sites in your niche grew faster.
The four core inputs that drive DA:
- Linking root domains – The number of unique websites linking to you. 100 links from one site count as one root domain. Diversity matters far more than volume.
- Link quality – Links from high-authority, relevant sites carry significantly more weight than links from low-DA directories.
- Spam score – Moz calculates a spam score for your backlink profile. A high spam score actively drags your DA down.
- Topical relevance – Links from sites in your niche carry more weight than links from unrelated domains.
DA vs DR vs Authority Score: What’s the Difference?
Different tools measure “authority” differently. Here’s how the three main scores compare:
| Metric | Tool | Primary Inputs | Best Used For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain Authority (DA) | Moz | Linking root domains, link quality, and spam score | Benchmarking against competitors in your niche |
| Domain Rating (DR) | Semrush/Ahrefs | Unique referring domains, DR of referring sites, and outbound links | Evaluating backlink profile strength |
| Authority Score (AS) | Semrush | Link quality, organic traffic, spam indicators | Holistic view combining backlinks and traffic signals |
The practical implication: None of these scores directly affect your Google rankings. But improving the signals behind them (quality links, clean technical SEO, genuine traffic) does. Treat DA as a health indicator, not the goal itself.
10 Proven Ways to Increase Your Domain Authority in 2026
These strategies are ordered by impact and practicality. Start with the ones that match your current situation, but don’t skip the foundational ones at the end. They support everything else.
1. Build High-Quality Backlinks from Relevant Domains
This is the single biggest lever for DA growth. Not just any backlinks, but links from websites that are authoritative, relevant to your industry, and editorially earned (not bought or swapped).
The number that matters most is the unique referring domains. According to Moz’s research, the diversity of your link sources is a primary driver of DA. Getting 500 links from 10 websites is far less valuable than 50 links from 50 different relevant domains.
Practical link-building approaches that work in 2026:
- Guest posting on industry publications – Write genuinely useful articles for credible sites in your niche. Focus on sites with real audiences, not link farms dressed up as blogs.
- Broken link building – Find dead links on reputable sites in your industry, then offer your content as a replacement. It’s a win-win that editors actually appreciate.
- Digital PR and data-led content – Original research, surveys, and industry reports attract editorial links from news sites and publications. McKinsey’s 2025 AI research report earned over 105,000 backlinks from 18,500 domains, according to Semrush data. The mechanism is simple: give journalists something worth citing.
- Resource page outreach – Many industry sites maintain curated resource pages. If your content genuinely belongs there, a polite, personalised email often works.
- Competitor backlink analysis – Use Google Search Console to identify who links to your competitors but not to you. Those are warm prospects.
Pro tip: Prioritise relevance over raw DA score. A link from a niche-specific site with DA 35 in your industry often carries more real-world weight than a generic link from a DA 75 site with no topical connection to your business.
2. Create Linkable Assets (Content That Earns Links Naturally)
The most sustainable link-building strategy is creating content so useful or data-rich that other sites want to reference it. These are called linkable assets, and they do the heavy lifting over time without constant outreach effort.
The most link-attractive content formats:
- Original research and industry data – Surveys, studies, and proprietary datasets that journalists and bloggers can cite
- Comprehensive guides – In-depth resources that cover a topic more thoroughly than anything else available
- Free tools and calculators – Interactive resources that solve a real problem (ROI calculators, cost estimators, comparison tools)
- Infographics and visual data – Complex information presented visually, easy to embed and reference
- Case studies with real numbers – Before-and-after results with methodology and measurable outcomes
The key is creating content that is harder to recreate than to link to. If someone can summarise your content in a paragraph, it’s not a strong linkable asset. If your content contains original data or a proprietary framework, it becomes the primary source that other sites reference.
3. Fix Your Technical SEO Foundation
Here’s something most DA guides skip: your technical SEO is the infrastructure that either amplifies or undermines everything else you do. Authority signals can’t flow properly through a site with crawl errors, broken redirects, and slow page speeds.
Technical SEO checklist for DA growth:
- Core Web Vitals – Google’s page experience signals. Use Google PageSpeed Insights to audit and fix LCP, INP, and CLS scores.
- HTTPS across every page – Non-negotiable in 2026. Mixed content warnings signal an untrustworthy site.
- Fix crawl errors and redirect chains – Broken internal links and long redirect chains leak authority. Audit quarterly with Google Search Console.
- XML sitemap and robots.txt – Ensure your most important pages are crawlable and indexed.
- Mobile-first performance – Google indexes the mobile version of your site first. If it’s slow or broken on mobile, your authority signals take a hit.
- Schema markup – Structured data (Organisation, Article, FAQ, HowTo schemas) helps search engines understand your content and establishes entity associations that support E-E-A-T signals.
The honest reality: A technically clean site won’t dramatically increase your DA on its own. But a technically broken site will cap your progress regardless of how many backlinks you earn. Fix the foundation first.
4. Build Topical Authority Through Content Clusters
In 2026, Google doesn’t just reward individual pages. It rewards domains that demonstrate deep, comprehensive expertise in a specific subject area. This is called topical authority, and it’s become one of the most important drivers of both DA and organic rankings.
Google’s December 2025 core update reinforced a clear pattern: sites that cover a topic from every meaningful angle consistently outrank sites with scattered, unrelated content.
How to build topical authority:
- Choose 5-10 core topics that are directly relevant to your business and audience
- Create a pillar page for each core topic (a comprehensive, 2,000+ word guide that covers the subject broadly)
- Build cluster content around each pillar (supporting articles that go deep on specific subtopics)
- Link the cluster to the pillar and back using descriptive anchor text
- Fill the gaps – use Google Search Console to find questions your audience asks that you haven’t answered yet
The result is a content hub that signals to Google: “This site knows this subject thoroughly.” That topical depth is one of the clearest paths to sustainable DA growth.
5. Strengthen Your Internal Linking Strategy
Internal links are the most underestimated DA lever available to you, and they’re entirely within your control. When you link from a high-authority page to a newer or lower-authority page on your site, you pass link equity through your domain and help Google understand your content hierarchy.
Internal linking best practices:
- Link from your highest-traffic, most-linked pages to content that needs a boost
- Use descriptive anchor text that clearly signals what the linked page covers (avoid “click here” or “read more”)
- Ensure every page has at least one internal link pointing to it (orphan pages receive no authority)
- Build a logical URL hierarchy:
/services/seo/not/page-123/ - Don’t overlink to the same page repeatedly from the same article
A flat, well-connected site architecture distributes authority more evenly and helps crawlers index your full content library. Moz’s research confirms that improving internal linking alone can gradually lift DA, even without new external backlinks.
6. Audit and Remove Toxic Backlinks
This one is often overlooked until it’s too late. A backlink profile full of spammy links from link farms, irrelevant directories, or penalised domains actively drags your DA down. In some cases, it can trigger a manual penalty from Google.
How to audit your backlink profile:
- Open Google Search Console and navigate to the Links report
- Export your referring domains list
- Look for patterns: irrelevant niches, foreign-language spam sites, sites with suspiciously high outbound link counts
- Attempt to manually request removal from the linking site’s webmaster
- For links you can’t remove, use Google’s Disavow Tool to tell Google to ignore them
Run this audit at least quarterly. Spammy backlinks accumulate over time, especially for older domains, and a clean link profile is as important as a growing one.
7. Leverage Digital PR and Brand Mentions
One of the fastest ways to earn high-authority editorial links is through digital PR. This means positioning your brand (or your team’s expertise) as a credible source for journalists, industry publications, and news sites.
Practical digital PR tactics:
- Expert commentary and quotes – Respond to journalist requests via platforms like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) or Sourcebottle (popular in Australia). When journalists quote you, they link back to your site.
- Pitch original data – If you have industry data, survey results, or unique insights, pitch them to relevant publications as story angles. Data gets cited.
- Monitor unlinked brand mentions – Use Google Alerts or a tool like Brand24 to find mentions of your brand that don’t include a link. Reach out politely to request one. These are warm prospects because the site already knows and values your brand.
- Thought leadership content – Publish opinion pieces on industry platforms, contribute to roundup articles, and participate in podcast interviews. Each appearance builds brand recognition and often generates a backlink.
Why this matters for DA: Links from news sites and established publications carry significantly more authority weight than links from directories or low-traffic blogs. One link from a national publication can do more for your DA than 20 links from average-quality sites.
8. Demonstrate E-E-A-T Signals Across Your Site
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s Google’s framework for evaluating whether content comes from a credible, real-world source. In 2026, with AI-generated content flooding the web, E-E-A-T signals have become a critical differentiator.
How to strengthen E-E-A-T on your site:
- Author bios with credentials – Every article should have a named author with a bio that demonstrates relevant expertise. Include qualifications, years of experience, and links to their professional profiles.
- About page that builds trust – List your team, your history, your certifications, and any awards or media mentions. Make it easy for Google to verify you’re a real, established organisation.
- Cite your sources – Link to reputable external sources when making factual claims. This signals trustworthiness and positions your content as well-researched.
- Schema markup for authors and organisations – Use Author and Organisation schema to give Google a structured, machine-readable identity card for your brand.
- Real testimonials and case studies – Social proof from named clients and documented results builds trust signals that generic content can’t replicate.
The 2026 context: AI can produce content at scale, but it can’t produce genuine experience. Original insights, real case studies, and documented expertise are the content signals that both Google and AI search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity) increasingly prioritise when deciding what to cite.
9. Improve Page Speed and Core Web Vitals
Page speed isn’t just a user experience issue. It’s a direct signal to Google about how much you’ve invested in your site’s quality. Slow sites get crawled less frequently, rank lower, and earn fewer backlinks because people don’t share content that takes five seconds to load.
Benchmark targets for 2026:
| Metric | Good | Needs Improvement | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) | Under 2.5s | 2.5s – 4s | Over 4s |
| Interaction to Next Paint (INP) | Under 200ms | 200ms – 500ms | Over 500ms |
| Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) | Under 0.1 | 0.1 – 0.25 | Over 0.25 |
Quick wins for page speed:
- Compress and serve images in modern formats (WebP, AVIF)
- Implement a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like Cloudflare
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files
- Enable browser caching
- Upgrade from shared hosting to cloud or managed hosting
Use Google PageSpeed Insights for free diagnostics. It tells you exactly what to fix and in what order.
10. Be Consistent and Patient (The Strategy Most People Skip)
This one isn’t glamorous, but it’s the most honest thing in this guide. Domain authority is built through sustained, consistent effort over months and years. Not weeks.
Here’s what realistic DA growth looks like based on industry data:
- New sites (DA 1-20): 6-12 months of consistent effort to reach DA 20-30
- Growing sites (DA 20-40): 12-24 months to meaningfully progress, assuming active link building and content production
- Established sites (DA 40-60): Progress slows significantly. Each point requires more effort than the last.
- High-authority sites (DA 60+): Growth is mostly driven by large-scale content and PR. Takes years.
What consistency looks like in practice:
- Publish new content regularly (at a minimum, 2-4 pieces per month)
- Conduct a backlink audit every quarter
- Refresh and update existing content annually with new data and insights
- Monitor your DA trend monthly, but don’t panic over small fluctuations (Moz updates its index regularly, and short-term drops are normal)
- Track referring domain growth as your primary leading indicator, not the DA score itself
The mindset shift: Stop chasing the number. Focus on building a site that genuinely deserves a high DA: credible content, earned backlinks, clean technical performance, and a real brand presence. The score follows the work.
Quick-Reference: All 10 Strategies at a Glance
Use this table as a working checklist. The effort and timeline columns reflect realistic expectations for most small-to-medium websites.
| Strategy | Primary Impact | Effort Level | Time to See Results |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Build quality backlinks | Very High | High | 3-6 months |
| 2. Create linkable assets | Very High | High | 6-12 months |
| 3. Fix technical SEO | High (foundational) | Medium | 1-3 months |
| 4. Build topical authority | High | High | 6-12 months |
| 5. Strengthen internal linking | Medium | Low | 1-3 months |
| 6. Audit toxic backlinks | Medium | Medium | 2-4 months |
| 7. Digital PR and brand mentions | High | High | 3-6 months |
| 8. Demonstrate E-E-A-T | High | Medium | 3-6 months |
| 9. Improve page speed | Medium | Medium | 1-2 months |
| 10. Consistency over time | Critical | Ongoing | 6-24 months |
Where to start if you’re new to this: Start with strategies 3, 5, and 6. These are largely within your control, cost little to nothing, and create the foundation that makes everything else more effective. Once your technical house is in order, move to content and backlink building.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good domain authority score?
It depends entirely on your niche. A DA of 30 might be excellent for a local business competing against other local businesses, while a DA of 50 might be considered average for a national media publication. The most useful benchmark is your direct competitors, not an absolute number. If your competitors have DA scores of 25-40 and yours is 20, you have a clear, achievable target. Chasing a DA of 70 when your competitors sit at 35 is wasted effort.
How long does it take to increase domain authority?
Realistically, expect 6-12 months of consistent effort before you see meaningful movement. New sites can move from DA 1 to DA 20-25 within 12 months with active link building and content production. Established sites moving from DA 40 to DA 50 may take 18-24 months. The logarithmic scale means each additional point gets progressively harder to earn. There are no legitimate shortcuts.
Can you increase domain authority without backlinks?
Not significantly. Backlinks, specifically from diverse, relevant, high-quality referring domains, are the primary driver of DA. You can improve your technical SEO, internal linking, and content depth without external links, and those improvements do matter. But to meaningfully move your DA score, you need external sites linking to you. The good news is that creating genuinely useful, original content is the most sustainable way to earn those links without cold outreach.
Why did my domain authority drop?
Several things can cause a DA drop, and most of them are not cause for panic:
- Moz index updates – Moz regularly refreshes its web index, which can cause fluctuations even if your backlink profile hasn’t changed
- Competitor growth – DA is relative. If sites in your niche grew their link profiles faster than yours, your relative score drops
- Lost backlinks – If a high-authority site that linked to you removed or updated their page, you lost that link equity
- Toxic links – New spammy backlinks pointing to your site can drag your score down
- Algorithm updates – Moz periodically updates its DA algorithm, which can rescore all domains
Check your referring domains trend in Google Search Console. If your referring domain count is stable or growing, a temporary DA dip is likely a Moz index refresh, not a real problem.
Is domain authority the same as Google PageRank?
No. Domain Authority is a proprietary metric created by Moz. Google’s PageRank is Google’s internal algorithm for evaluating page-level link authority, and Google no longer publicly shares PageRank scores. They measure related but distinct things, and neither is the same as the other. Improving your DA will generally improve the underlying signals that correlate with rankings, but DA itself is not a Google ranking factor.
Does social media affect domain authority?
Indirectly, yes. Social media doesn’t generate direct backlinks in the traditional sense (most social links are nofollow and don’t pass link equity). However, social media amplifies content reach, which increases the likelihood that journalists, bloggers, and other site owners discover and link to your content. Strong social presence also contributes to brand recognition, which influences branded search volume, a signal that correlates with domain trust. So while social media won’t directly move your DA, it’s a useful amplification channel for your content and link-building efforts.
What’s the difference between domain authority and page authority?
Domain Authority (DA) measures the overall strength of your entire domain’s backlink profile. Page Authority (PA) measures the strength of a specific page’s backlink profile. A page on a high-DA domain can still have low PA if it has few or no external links pointing to it. Both metrics are calculated by Moz using similar methodology. For most SEO purposes, DA is the more commonly referenced metric when evaluating a site’s overall strength.
How do I check my domain authority?
You can check your DA for free using Moz’s Link Explorer or the MozBar browser extension. Simply enter your domain URL and you’ll see your current DA score, the number of linking root domains, and your spam score. For ongoing monitoring, set a monthly reminder to check your DA and track the trend over time rather than fixating on any single reading.
Final Thoughts
Increasing domain authority is not a campaign. It’s a commitment. The sites with the highest DA scores didn’t get there through a three-month link-building push. They got there by consistently publishing content worth linking to, maintaining technically sound websites, and building genuine credibility in their industries over the years.
The 10 strategies in this guide aren’t secrets. They’re the same fundamentals that have always driven authority in search, just with 2026-specific context around AI search visibility, E-E-A-T, and topical depth. What separates sites that grow from sites that stagnate is execution and patience.
The most important things to take away:
- DA is a comparative metric. Benchmark against your competitors, not an arbitrary number.
- Unique referring domains matter more than raw link volume.
- Technical SEO is the foundation. Fix it before scaling content or link building.
- Topical authority and E-E-A-T are now as important as backlinks for long-term growth.
- Track referring domain growth monthly. It’s a more reliable leading indicator than DA itself.
If you’re an Australian business looking for hands-on support with SEO strategy, link building, and content that actually moves the needle, the Global Genie team has been helping businesses grow their organic presence for over a decade. Sometimes the fastest path to a higher DA is having the right strategy from the start.
