Domain Authority? Why is it declining according to Moz?

[D4Creative]

So I know what good SEO is, I am performing very well for this client but for some reason Moz Pro is saying their domain authority is declining with each index? Anything I can look into specifically to stop this from happening?

[EGOL]

Because domain authority is capped at 100, it has to be a comparison of how the assets of your website compare to the assets of every other website out there.

To increase your domain authority, you must increase the assets of your site faster in comparison to all of the other sites on the web.   So, a person could be working to improve their website and actually make progress, but domain authority could drop because other websites are doing more.

Rankings operate the same way.  If you improve your website, but your competitor improves his more, then you will not advance to a position above him, even though you might have done a ton of work.

This is a very simplified explanation.

[donford]

You may want to rely on more then just one site's DA metric to make your actual assessment. Moz's number while helpful is just a very educated guess; which can not take into account all the factors. What is most important is conversion rates, sales, or keyword rankings depending on what your goal is.

It is not uncommon for our DA to go up or down a few points month to month. This usually has a correlation to how many linking domains and the like the crawl comes back with. Not ever site will get scanned every crawl, so this number doesn't play a huge role in how successful I view my efforts.

Hope that helps,

Don

[max.favilli]

In addition to the good things said by others

check your backlink profile versus your competitors, probably they are getting more backlinks or more authoritative ones, or maybe your old backlinks are poor quality and dropping in value,

check your backlink profile for anchor diversity and cross check with your competitors

are you having traffic drops? Maybe not overall, but hidden in some traffic segments? are those drops linked to a dropping ranking for some keywords? If so why? Increasing competition? Due to some backlink related issues? See above.

is your content quality dropping compared to your competitors? are you serving pages with thin content and your competitors are offering better content? Less duplicate? More targeted?

i could go on, but this is at least where I would start my homework

[MattAntonino]

I think you may also need to look into what Rand said here: http://moz.com/community/q/have-questions-about-the-jan-27th-mozscape-index-update-get-answers-here

According to Rand, Moz is indexing a bit of different stuff lately. This means that DA & PA will change depending on the link comp of your site.

I would start there - and not worry much about it. PA & DA are guides but don't determine your rankings.

[MattRoney]

I agree with everyone here (thanks, guys!), and I want to add that DA and PA are both most useful when benchmarking against competitors, not as an absolute value.

Take this scenario—a high-authority industry site links to a large number of other sites in the same industry, and they all benefit from its authority. But if for whatever reason that site goes down or loses authority, all sites it links to could be affected. That could conceivably bring down the DA of a major portion of the vertical.

None of those sites did anything wrong, and since they're each others' main SERP competitors, their rankings may not change at all. But they'll now all have lower DA.

Does that help at all?

[D4Creative]

Thanks everyone, every bit of info was very much appreciated!