Domain Authority (DA)

Why does the *Niagara Falls Review* rank higher than your personal blog for local news? The answer often lies in Domain Authority (DA). Developed by Moz, DA is a search engine ranking score that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). It scores domains on a scale of 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank.

In this section, we break down how DA is calculated and, more importantly, how you can improve yours. While you cannot simply “buy” a higher score, you can influence it by earning high-quality backlinks, creating shareable content, and fixing technical issues on your site. We discuss the difference between “Domain Authority” and “Page Authority” and help you set realistic benchmarks for your industry. For a small business in Niagara, you don’t need a DA of 90; you just need to be higher than your local competitors.