Ahrefs developed Domain Rating (DR), a ranking metric that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile. It can be used to measure anything from 1 to 100. Domain Authority (DA) is a Moz metric that predicts how websites rank in search engines.

To be clear, Domain Rating does not directly affect a page’s Google ranking, and Websites with high DR rank higher on SERPs because they score well in Google’s ranking algorithms. (It’s a correlation and not causation). However, DR can still be used to gauge a website’s popularity and its ability to get traffic from Google searches.

Ahrefs can calculate the website’s DR in many ways. These include the number and DR values of linking domains to the target website and the number of unique domains that have at least one do-follow link.

Domain Authority (DA):

Moz developed Domain Authority (DA), a search engine ranking metric that predicts a website’s ranking in search engine result pages. Domain Authority scores can range from 1 to 100, and higher scores indicate a higher rank. Moz calculates a DA score by combining multiple factors, such as the linking root domains and the quality and quantity of incoming and exiting links.

Domain Authority is only meant to give an idea of a site’s ranking ability. Therefore, having a high DA score should not be your sole goal, and DA should not be used as a way to predict your SERP rankings. If you own a gym and want to rank your site higher than others, it would be smart to check the DA scores of your competition’s sites and try to get a higher score. 

However, this is not the right amount of DA you should be obsessing about. Ranking at the top of SERPs does not just mean Domain Authority.

• Domain Rating (DR), which gives you an indication of a site’s strength in backlink profiles, and 
• Domain Authority (DA) gives you an indication of which site will rank highest on SERPs.
• Backlinks measure Ahrefs DR. Moz scores DA based on linking root domains and the quality and quantity of incoming and external links. Domain age is also considered.

Link Building HQ: How Do You Use DR and DA?

Link Building HQ uses Domain Rating (DR) and Domain Authority (DA) as tools to determine the strength of a target website before deciding where to place your backlink. We go beyond DR and DA to consider the ranking difficulty of vertical markets to determine our LINK PRICE STRUCTURE. Our pricing takes into account the “authority” of the blog and the level of competition within that industry.

Conclusion:

Domain Rating vs. Domain Authority is a clear comparison, and both are useful indicators to predict better SEO performance. Both DA and DR have a positive relationship and generate more organic traffic to a domain.

Both metrics can be used for SEO and comparative analysis. Increasing domain authority scores can lead to positive relationships with other SEO metrics such as total keyword rankings and higher organic traffic. It is important to understand that every web admin should keep a pulse on domain rating by doing 24/7 backlinks profile monitoring.