Why is my Domain Authority dropping from 52 to 46 but my Keyword ranking has never been higher?

[CertificationEU]

At the start of August my Domain Authority was 52 but it has fallen to 46 over the course of 8 weeks.

At first this was credited to the smaller index that SEOMOZ has taken and when this was certainly in line with our rivals results as well who all suffered a drop. When the index issue was fixed we did see an improvement, back up to 51 at the start of September, pretty much in line with all of our rivals.

However our Domain Authority has dropped again and this time it is in complete isolation, none of our rivals have suffered anything like a 3 point drop.

Our SEO has never been better with 65% of our keywords ranking in the top 3 and 86% ranking in the top 10.

Im wondering what is causing this rapid drop in Domain Authority and what affect, if any, it was have on our future keyword rankings.

Thanks,

Emmet

[CertificationEU]

These links are not what I would called "money term" or anchor text" the links are all to a section of our site that offers a particular service.

Thanks for all your help on this.

[EGOL]

Could this be the cause of our falling Domain Authority and will it affect our keyword rankings.

I believe that it could have a slight positive impact on domain authority...

Google might not like links like that - especially if it is a sitewide and if it has a money term as anchor text.   However, I don't think that one site linking to you like this will tank your rankings.    If you are concerned about it you can get in touch with the webmaster and ask him to remove the link.

[CertificationEU]

Thanks for your feedback Egol,

I have been searching around and I am slightly worried that a recent back link from a guest blog on a website with lower domain authority could be dragging us down and it may have a long term affect on our rankings.

They have created a link to our site on their homepage so every article that they publish is sending us a link. They publish about 10 - 15 articles a day so we are now getting 15 links a day from a a site with domain authority of 25.

Could this be the cause of our falling Domain Authority and will it affect our keyword rankings. I have worked pretty hard to get them ranking so highly and I want to nip any negative affects in the bud ASAP.

[EGOL]

Our SEO has never been better with 65% of our keywords ranking in the top 3 and 86% ranking in the top 10.

Nice work.  Celebrate then get back to work!

However our Domain Authority has dropped again and this time it is in complete isolation, none of our rivals have suffered anything like a 3 point drop.

Im wondering what is causing this rapid drop in Domain Authority and what affect, if any, it was have on our future keyword rankings.

In my opinion, these numbers are highly volatile and are not part of the google algo for determining your rankings.

Use them to chart your long-term progress.   Instead of focusing on them spend your time improving your website and doing great SEO.  Spend your 100% of your mental energy there.