OSE: Missing back-links and High DA website with low DA backlinks
-
I have gone through a website with 81 DA; where its link equity back-links with highest DA of 70. Hardly 5 back-links 60 to 70 DA and just 25 root domains. This seems very unusual to me. Can someone clarify this for me? Can a website with low DA back-links can make high DA? If so what could be other major contributing factors for this?
-
Hi VtigerCRM!
Domain authority is made up of multiple factors, but just backlinks to the website. Here’s a good way to think of it: today’s SEO world is about quality, not quantity. For example, it’s not about how many links you can get to point back to your site—it’s about how good those links are. One link from a reputable, authoritative website is better than 20 links from a spammy website or site with a domain authority of 2. And although it seems daunting to a lot of people, there are ways to legitimately link build—guest blogging, broken link building, link requests, and even outbound linking
In a May 2013 video right before Penguin 2.0 rolled out, Matt Cutts put it pretty well: “We’re doing a better job of detecting when someone is sort of an authority in a specific space—you know, it could be medical, it could be travel, whatever—and trying to make sure that those rank a little more highly if you’re some sort of authority or a site that according to the algorithms we think might be a little bit more appropriate for users.”
Here are the most important SEO success tips (a lot of your competitors are probably using these tips already, so it’s time you joined in):
- Valuable content
- Outbound linking
- Blogging
- Social media
Along with building your backlink profile with quality backlinks, continue creating content that demonstrates you are the authority in this field.
-
Hi there! Tawny from Moz's Customer Support team here.
Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. It is made up of an aggregate of metrics (MozRank,MozTrust, general link profile, and more) that each have an impact on this score. it can be difficult to directly influence your DA, but one way to move toward increasing it would be to improve your overall SEO. A great place to start with that could be to focus on link building! You can learn more about link building here and get a more detailed explanation of Domain Authority through this resource.
In general, I'd recommend keeping in mind that all of these metrics are relative with respect to the other sites included in our index. The metrics will probably have some additional context when compared to sites similar to your own, including your competitors.
Open Site Explorer and the Link Analysis page of campaigns are both tied to our Mozscape index, which tends to update roughly once a month.
Just a few points on how we compile our index:
- We grab the most recent index.
- We take the top 10 billion URLs with the highest MozRank (with a fixed limit on some of the larger domains).
- We start crawling from the top down until we've crawled ~130 billion URLs
The idea here is that we're focusing on the highest-quality links we can find, coming from the most prominent pages of authoritative sites. So, while you may not see every link for a site within our index, we're aiming to report the most valuable ones available!
Most new sites and links will be indexed by our spiders and available in Mozscape and Open Site Explorer within 60 days, but some take even longer for many reasons - including the crawl-ability of sites, the number of inbound links to them, and the depth of pages in subdirectories.
You can see our most recently updated schedule here as well as some more technical metrics on our Mozscape API Updates page. You can also see when the last and next updates happened on the Open Site Explorer (OSE) homepage at any time.
Since Moz focuses on quality of links over quantity, we are always focused on the most relevant links to display to our users. It's possible that Moz's index will leave out some of the lower-quality (non-link juice providing) links out of our index because of this. So, that might explain why you may see some discrepancies with what other tools may be showing.
Rand does a great job of breaking down how to interpret DA fluctuations through this post. Give it a once over to see if it helps clarify some of your questions! I hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinks Indexed?
my question is that in Moz what is speed of Backlinks indexed, while ahref show indexed backlink after 2 or 3 days, but still Moz does not show that backlinks index or not Ahref has already increased site DR, while Moz still not increase Domain Authority or PA, I want to know the procedure how DA increase while I have high authority backlinks for my site [https://www.sipotek.net] Homepage
Link Explorer | | younus_51110 -
Why are my trackable links appearing in my site crawls?
Our Google-created trackable campaign URLs are appearing in site crawls and often triggering error warnings.
Link Explorer | | K.Reeves0 -
Can I change the Link Explorer from check with Google US?
I'm trying to check the ranking keywords for a specific article with the Link Explorer, but when I hover over Ranking Keywords on the Overview it tells me that it's looking on Google US. We're a UK based company and the keywords we're trying to rank for are UK based - is there a way of changing this to match?
Link Explorer | | Kestra0 -
Why Moz Link Explorer is showing wrong data?
Hi everyone. I am using Moz Link Explorer to find relevant links from competitors and when I narrow it down to Link Type: Follow Status: Active I get the list. All good here... BUT ... Inspecting the actual link on the page there is a no=follow attached to it. Is this feature still working properly on the new Link Explorer or is a bug? Thanks!
Link Explorer | | Sorin_T0 -
UPDATE: Rolling back an adjustment which had adverse effects on DA and PA scores.
UPDATE: Yesterday's (June 4, 2018) adjustment to our DA/PA metrics turned out to have some unanticipated adverse effects. We're rolling back the adjustment, so by midday tomorrow you should see your scores return to what they were earlier this week. We're also implementing some new procedural checks on our end to help make sure it doesn't happen again. We sincerely apologize for any stress or burden this may have caused. We also want to emphasize that DA and PA are relative metrics. The scores will fluctuate slightly with the index, and for that reason, should be used to compare your site with others. We realize this isn't always easy to explain to clients and stakeholders, so we're working on ways to help you all report these metrics in ways that minimize the potential for confusion. ****** We are continuing to improve our Domain Authority and Page Authority algorithms and strengthen our link index. As of today, June 14, 2018, You may notice a slight variation in current and historic DA/PA scores in Link Explorer and tools that incorporate our new link data such as Campaigns, Keyword Explorer, and MozBar. This is due to a planned adjustment on our end that could be more noticeable than our standard updates. We made this adjustment in order to account for the rapid growth of our link index over the past 6 months and and stabilize distribution of scores over time. For customers who have been tracking DA scores over time, you may want to make note of this adjustment date in your reporting. Rest assured that our DA and PA scores are still far more stable and accurate than they were previously in Open Site Explorer. Our index is now 20 times larger (and growing) and updating daily rather than monthly, therefore standard fluctuations in the index are far less noticeable in your score than before. DA and PA will still always fluctuate slightly and naturally with the index. As the landscape of the internet changes, so should our index to reflect those changes. Whenever we make an update on our end that could be noticeable on your end, we will let you know. Also, please remember that DA and PA scores should always be understood as relative to other sites’ scores in the index, and reported to clients in relation to their competition and not as a standalone metric of individual performance. If you have more questions about DA or the difference between the new score in Link Explorer vs. the old score in OSE, please read this FAQ page, or post a question below and I or a Mozzer will reach out. Thank you! Ian
Link Explorer | | IanWatson5 -
Change in OSE?
Hi My site http://sassandgrace.co.uk has a 301 direct from the www. version as recommended and, up until last week, OSE showed no results for the www version with a message of some kind saying about the re-direct. This week the message has disappeared and I have half my links (still v small) on www version and half on the non version. Has something changed? Should I be worried? And what, if anything, should I do? Thanks
Link Explorer | | Sassandgrace0 -
Can't make sense of OSE and MOZ.
I checked this site on my OSE and it shows only 7 inbound links a DA of 14 and no social activity whatsoever yet when I check it on Majestic it shows ExternalBacklinks 71 ReferringDomains 20 Referring IPs 19 Referring Subnets 19 . And.. the page is #1 on google search for hypnotherapy michigan. How can it rate so poorly on MOZ, show so much more on majestic and rank so high on google? I thought MOZ data was supposed to be among the best and that top rated pages on google should also rate high on MOZ. here is the site http://hypnotherapy-detroit.com Additionally, when i look at the site, i notice that most of the backlinks are exchanged links and this site's link exchange page isn't even linked from the home page. Now I thought that kind of link exchange game was now discounted by Google. I don't get it. No social pages at all... low page rank... no new content.. so by MOZ standards there is no justification for this page to be anywhere near page one let alone at position #1. Can someone help me make sense of all this?
Link Explorer | | HypnoPro0