What Are DA Links (& Why Do They Matter for SEO?)

Backlinks, external links, inbound links… whatever you prefer to call them, the more high-quality links you have pointing to your site, the better. Backlinks are a key component of any effective SEO campaign, and securing them is one of the activities that marketers and SEO specialists devote much of their time and effort to.

The important qualifier is “high-quality”. The value of a link can vary dramatically, and one of the important variables to consider when determining the worth of a backlink is the DA or domain authority.

Let’s get into what exactly is meant by the term DA link and how you can secure valuable DA links to your website.

What Are DA links?

The term DA link is a little bit misleading because there isn’t actually a special category of backlinks called DA links. What SEOs generally mean they talk about DA links is high DA links; in other words, links coming from websites with high domain authority.

What constitutes a high DA link can be subjective as well. Some might consider a DA of 80 or above high, while others may think the same of websites with a DA of 60 or above. This is sometimes quantified when marketers refer to securing DA60 links or DA80 links, for example. That number refers to the minimum domain authority of the page that is providing a backlink.

We’ll get into how much you should be taking domain authority into account in your backlink strategy and providing tips for how to land valuable DA links. But first, what exactly is DA?

Domain Authority

Domain Authority is a metric that is well worth knowing in the world of SEO, but it’s important to note that it isn’t actually a Google metric. According to Google, DA is not a ranking factor in their algorithm.

They don’t use the domain authority website to determine how high it should rank in the search engine results pages (SERPs) or how much link equity it should pass to the websites it links to.

Domain Authority was first developed as a metric by marketing analytics company Moz to predict the likelihood of a website ranking at the top of Google’s SERPs. A DA score can range from one to 100. The higher the score, the likelier a website is to rank.

Lots of other domain authority checking tools are available now, and they use a range of factors, including the total number of links to a website and the number of domains linking to it, to determine the score. DA is an interpretation of available data and of existing rankings that predicts how Google will rank a website.

However, just because it isn’t internal to Google, doesn’t mean it isn’t very useful. High DA does generally correlate with high Google rankings, so aiming to increase your DA score and obtain DA links—links from high DA sites—will generally correlate with SEO wins for your website.

Read more: How to Increase Domain Authority

What about Page Authority?

Domain authority is a website-level ranking, while page authority (PA) is an analogous ranking for specific web pages. For example, a high DA site may have several very high PA pages, in addition to some lower PA pages.

This matters when talking about DA links because DA links from high PA pages are more valuable than those from low PA pages. In other words, it’s not just the website that matters, but the specific page does as well.

DA Links And SEO

Alright, now you know what domain authority and page authority are, and that DA links are links that come from high DA sites, ideally from high PA pages on those sites.

What does all of this mean from an SEO perspective?The aim of all SEO activities, including link building, is to increase the likelihood that your website will appear at the top of Google’s search results when people search for terms related to your industry. The better you can perform in search, the more people can discover your business.

The purpose of link building is to obtain lots of links to your site. Backlinks function as recommendations on the internet, and the more recommendations people have made for your website in the form of links, the more Google can deduce that the content on your site is relevant, interesting, and valuable. Otherwise, why would people cast their vote of confidence for your businesses by providing you with a backlink?

When we receive personal recommendations, the person making the recommendation impacts how highly we value it. If the person is trustworthy and has relevant experience, you’ll value their recommendation more highly. If a dentist and a lawyer recommended electric toothbrushes to you, you’d be right to value the recommendation from the dentist more highly.

The same principle applies to DA links. While Google doesn’t use DA specifically, it’s a proximate value for Google’s ranking factors. Links from high DA sites pointing to your website tell Google that lots of trustworthy sources are recommending you.

All else being equal,10 links from DA70 sites will do more to help you climb the SERPs than 10 links from DA20 sites. It’s like being the most dentist-recommended toothbrush, instead of the most lawyer-recommended toothbrush.Alright, we’ll drop that comparison now, but hopefully, we’ve made our point: quantity does help, but when it comes to link building, quality is very important. A link from a higher DA source passes more link equity to your website.

Benefits of DA Links

Having high DA links in your backlink profile can help you reach your SEO goals faster. They may be more challenging to get, but the results can be well worth it. Consumers rely on search before making purchases, and over 90% say they click on results on the first page of Google. Getting one of those coveted top spots can meaningfully impact your business.

Here’s how getting more DA links can help boost our business.

1. Faster SEO success – While there’s no doubt that SEO management is a marathon, not a sprint, some things do help move the needle in your favor faster. DA links are among those things. Since they count as a more weighty vote of confidence to Google’s algorithm bots, they’ll help you climb the SERPs more quickly than if you were only building links from low DA sites.
2. More traffic and conversions – The ultimate goal of all SEO activities is to make your website more discoverable, so more traffic flows to it. Assuming a steady conversion rate, the boost in traffic from DA links to your site means greater revenue.
3. Reputation boost – Just as search engines “trust” high-DA sites more, so do most people. The people who see you mentioned on a large, reputable site will have a reason to trust your business, even if it’s their first time hearing about it.
4. Improve your DA – The more high DA sites link to your business, the more your DA will improve as well. This can help you score more collaborations, guest post opportunities, and more, as others see that your site is highly reputable.

DA Links Best Practices

Following general link-building best practices will help you when it comes to building DA links as well. However, you may have to work a little harder and be more persistent to score those DA links. Here are some of our tried and true best practices and methods for getting more DA links and doing so in a way that is both Google-friendly and user-friendly.

Aim for DA 50>

There isn’t necessarily a rigid rule for what constitutes high DA, but aiming for links from websites with a DA of 50 more is a good rule of thumb. This doesn’t mean that links from lower DA sites aren’t valuable, or that you shouldn’t spend any time earning those as well. However, when it comes DA links specifically, targetting sites with a DA over 50 will help you get more of the benefits associated with this type of link.

Try to get links from high PA pages

Pages with higher PA within a high DA site will have a greater positive impact on your website. Most DA tools also provide PA data. Just like domain authority, page authority isn’t fixed and can fluctuate. One way to boost the page authority of a low-PA page on a high-DA site is to build more internal links on that site linking to the page. This transfers internal link equity to that page. Links from “orphaned pages”—pages with no internal links pointing to them—may not be very valuable even if on a high-DA site.

Create high-quality content

Making fantastic, shareable content will help you earn more links of all kinds, including DA links. Content creation is a key component of any effective SEO strategy, enabling you to work relevant keywords into your site while creating content that others will find worthy of sharing.

Blog posts, ebooks, ultimate guides, videos, and interactive content like quizzes can all be a part of your overall content strategy.

One strategy you can use is to search Google for some type of content in your niche and look at the top hit. Then, challenge yourself to make a new, significantly improved version of that content.

Look for HARO link opportunities

HARO stands for “help a reporter out”. When reporters require expert input on a subject, they put our HARO queries and then use the best or most relevant feedback in their piece, linking to the respondent. By providing HARO feedback in your niche, you can secure high-quality DA links on reputable websites.

Promote your content

A high-DA website may be more than happy to link to your content if it’s relevant, but they can’t do so if they don’t know about it. Every time you create a piece of content, share it widely across all of your communication channels.

Alert high-DA sites of broken links

Nobody wants to have broken links on their website; in fact, having them can ding your SEO score. One practice that is worth getting into is looking for broken links on high DA sites that are relevant to your niche, particularly when they can link to something similar on your website.

They’ll appreciate the heads up about the broken link, and often will be happy to link to your website as a gesture of thanks provided that the link makes sense. You can use ahrefs free backlink checker to identify broken links.

Write guest posts

By writing guest posts on high-DA sites, you can effectively create your own DA links by linking back to your content in the body of the post. Just make sure to do this in a natural way that doesn’t feel spammy.

You’ll want to try to get our DA links in the body of the post since contextual links are valued more highly by Google’s bots than author bio links. Still, those author bio links don’t hurt.

Summary

SEO is about building a stellar online reputation so that Google determines your content should beat out all similar content in its SERPs. Part of how this reputation is determined is by other high-reputation websites casting a vote of confidence for yours by linking it.

DA links effectively pass more reputational points to your website than other backlinks do, helping you reach your SEO goals faster.

However, getting DA links takes time, resources, and effort. Let Loganix secure high authority links in your niche, and watch your website climb the SERPs.