DA/DR – Does It Matter?

If you’ve been blogging for any amount of time and/or if you’ve taken SEO courses (other than mine), you’ve probably heard the term DA (or DR).

But what exactly is it and does it really matter for Christian bloggers?

Spoiler Alert – It is NOT as important as you might think!

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What is DA/DR

DA is short for “domain authority.” DR is short for “domain rating.” So what is the difference?

Nothing really. They are the same thing.

DA/DR is simply a ranking that SEO “expert” sites such as Moz, Ahrefs, etc., give websites to predict their ability to rank. The premise is that the higher your score, the more easily you can rank your content.

It is important to note that these are ratings provided by a 3rd party – not the actual search engines (such as Google). They are simply a predictor based on many factors.

Factors that impact your DA/DR score:

  • the age of your site
  • backlinks from higher DA/DR sites in your niche
  • quality of your content
  • much more

Does a low DA/DR score mean you can’t rank? Does a high DA/DR score mean you WILL rank?

The thing is, DA/DR is really only important for blogs in very competitive niches such as finance, tech, food, etc.

For the most part, the Christian blogging niche is not considered competitive.

There are MANY low DA/DR Christian blogs ranking on Page One and surpassing sites with much higher DA/DR scores.

In this example, Once Exceptional Life only has a DA score of 21 and is ranking above iBelieve (DA 51).

page one google results example

The truth is that having a higher DA/DR score is not really something to worry about if you are a Christian blogger. What IS important is that you are targeting a specific audience, writing content that satisfies their search queries and is optimized for SEO.

The Truth About Backlinks

A few years ago, I did a very popular SEO Course and the topic of gaining quality backlinks was a huge part of the training. I didn’t really worry about trying to get backlinks and just focused on writing solid content for my site.

I did see many of the other students in my particular class obsess over the next year about getting those backlinks. They were able to put those “As Featured On” banners on their homepage and all that.

But the funny thing was that when I went to check their site traffic, sure, they had higher DA scores than I did – but they had almost zero organic traffic coming to their sites!

Isn’t traffic the whole point? So, all that effort to get a higher DA score didn’t really help them with the most basic goal of getting visitors to their site.

I’m totally not trying to shame anyone who has focused on backlinks! You don’t know what you don’t know!

But I’m here to tell you – focus on building a solid foundation for YOUR site first! Get the organic traffic coming to your site because that is how you are going to reach your audience. The next “level” would be to then start building those backlinks.

The same goes for guest posting for other blogs. If you are writing more for other blogs than for your own, you seriously have your priorities wrong! Build YOUR foundation first!

But back to DA/DR…

Don’t worry about your score. Just keep writing solid content that is optimized for SEO and satisfies the search queries of your target audience.

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