Here’s an unfortunate truth: Many marketers treat one meaningless metric like it’s the Holy Grail of SEO.
We’re talking about Domain Authority. …or Domain Rank, or whatever your SEO tool calls it.
Is domain authority important for SEO?
We’ve been in enough meetings to know that many marketers consider domain authority the leading SEO metric for their brand. Here’s why you should ignore it:
It’s an arbitrary number
No domain rating is fixed. It’s set by the SEO tool that you use.
Objective domain authority does not exist—it’s up to whatever algorithm your SEO tool uses.
A higher domain authority doesn’t mean you’ll rank better
The algorithms involved are complicated, but bumping your domain rank by 5 points doesn’t have any guarantee that your content will jump, too.
It’s often used to fake success
If you have insight into the algorithms, domain authority can be easy to manipulate without generating any actual SEO success.
As a result, it’s often pitched by snake-oil salesmen looking to fool you into thinking they did great work.
Don’t put all your eggs into DA basket
What we’re saying is, nothing good comes from focusing on domain-related metrics.
At best, they’re quick-look numbers to check how easy it might be for you to rank on a topic.
Instead of focusing on vanity metrics, do real quality SEO work. Create great content. And focus on the metrics that matter… like your KPIs, revenue, and so on.
