Domain Rating
Also called DR, Domain Authority, DA.
Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' proprietary metric that scores a website's backlink profile strength on a 0-100 logarithmic scale, widely used as a proxy for a site's ability to pass link equity.
What it means
Domain Rating (DR) is one of the most-referenced metrics in link building, despite not being a Google metric. Developed by Ahrefs, it scores the relative strength of a website's backlink profile on a 0-100 logarithmic scale — higher is stronger. The logarithmic scale matters: moving from DR 70 to DR 80 requires significantly more link acquisition than moving from DR 10 to DR 20.
DR is a proxy, not a direct ranking signal. Google doesn't use DR; it uses internal authority signals. DR correlates reasonably well with ranking ability because sites with strong backlink profiles tend to rank well — but that's correlation, not causation. A DR 60 page on a topic-relevant site in your niche frequently passes more real ranking value than a DR 80 link from an off-topic domain.
Moz's Domain Authority (DA) and Semrush's Authority Score serve the same function with different methodologies. All three are useful as relative benchmarks, but shouldn't be mixed in the same analysis. The metric matters far less than the underlying content: does this site have a real audience, real editorial standards, and topical relevance to the linked page?
Key takeaways
- DR is Ahrefs' metric — Moz's equivalent is Domain Authority (DA), Semrush's is Authority Score
- All three are proxies for link strength, not direct Google ranking signals
- The scale is logarithmic — gaining DR 10→50 is far easier than 70→80
- Topical relevance of the linking site matters more than raw DR for most link decisions
- DR
- Domain Authority
- DA
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Link Equity
Also: Link juice, Authority transferLink equity is the SEO value that flows from one page to another through a hyperlink, reflecting the linking page's perceived authority and topical relevance.
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Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink — and the words used as anchor text are one of the strongest topical relevance signals search engines use to understand what the linked page is about.
Link buildingRead moreBacklink
Also: Inbound link, External link, Incoming linkA backlink is a hyperlink on one website that points to another — one of the strongest ranking signals search engines use to assess the authority, trustworthiness, and topical relevance of the linked page.
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