Is 20 Domain Authority Good? What a Good DA Score Is

A Domain Authority of 20 is good for a site under a year old, ordinary for a small business, and low for a site competing on national commercial terms. There is no absolute "good" score because DA is a comparative metric on a 100-point scale, and Google does not use it. Judge a score against the pages that already rank for your keywords, not against a chart.

The moment this question comes up is usually a free checker tool. You paste in your domain, it says DA 20, and it offers no idea whether that is a reason to celebrate or to worry. The honest answer depends on three things: how old the site is, who you are competing with, and whether the number is moving.

Is a DA of 20 good or bad?

It is neither on its own; it is good or bad relative to the sites you need to outrank. Domain Authority is a score from Moz, which Search Engine Journal summarises in Moz's own words as a score that "predicts how likely a website is to rank," shown out of 100. It is built mostly from the quantity and quality of links pointing at a domain, and it ranks the whole web against itself. The top of the scale is crowded with sites like Wikipedia and major news publishers, so each point gets harder to earn as you climb.

That makes the useful question "DA 20 compared with what?" A site in a local service niche where the top results sit at DA 12 to 25 is competitive at 20. The same site trying to rank for "best credit cards" against sites in the 70s and 80s is not, and no amount of on-page work changes that.

What is a good domain authority score?

A good domain authority score is one at or above the scores of the pages ranking in the top five for your target keyword. That is the only definition that predicts anything. Charts that call 20 to 40 "average" and 60 plus "excellent" are not wrong exactly, but they describe the whole web, and you are not competing with the whole web.

A worked example (invented numbers to show the method): you want to rank for "payroll software for restaurants". You pull DA for the top five ranking domains and get 18, 24, 31, 27 and 22. Your site is at 20. You are inside the range, so links are not the main thing holding you back; content and intent match are. Now swap the keyword for "payroll software" and the top five come back at 58, 71, 64, 77 and 69. Your 20 is not in the conversation, and the practical move is to target the narrower phrase first.

How many links does it take to outrank a competitor turns that comparison into a link target.

Is 20 DA good for a new website?

Yes. New domains start at zero, and most spend their first months in single digits. Reaching 20 means the site has collected a modest set of real referring domains, usually a few dozen, which is where most honest small sites live for a long time. The sites that jump from 0 to 40 in six months either bought links or are part of an existing brand's network, and neither is a model to copy.

If you are at 20 after a year of steady publishing, you are on schedule. If you are at 20 after four years, the link profile has stalled and low domain authority: how to fix it is the page to read next.

What is the average domain authority?

Nobody has a trustworthy average, because the scale is relative and the web is dominated by sites that nobody links to. Any average pulled from a backlink tool's database is an average of the sites that tool decided to crawl, which skews towards sites with at least some links. Treat any "the average DA is X" claim as a tool vendor's sample, not a fact about the web.

A better reference point is the median score of the sites in your own niche, which you can measure yourself in ten minutes with a free domain rating check on twenty competitors.

How much DA and PA do you need to rank?

None, strictly, because Google does not use either score. Search Engine Journal's collection of Google statements records John Mueller saying in 2016 that "Google doesn't use 'domain authority'", in February 2020 that "we don't use domain authority at all in our algorithms", and on Reddit in 2022 that "Google doesn't use it at all." Seven separate statements between 2016 and 2022 say the same thing.

What Google does use is links, and DA is a rough proxy for links. So the honest version of "how much DA do I need" is "how strong a link profile do the ranking pages have", and the answer is whatever you measured in the worked example above. Page Authority asks the same question about a single URL rather than a domain; domain authority vs page authority explains when each one matters.

Does domain authority still matter in 2026?

It matters as a comparison tool and not as a goal. Two things it is good for: sizing up a keyword before you commit to it, and vetting a site before you ask it for a link or trade one with it. A partner at DA 25 with real traffic is a better link than a partner at DA 50 with none. Two things it is bad for: reporting to a client as if it were a ranking, and deciding whether your site is "good enough", which only rankings and traffic can tell you.

Domain authority vs domain rating explains why the same site gets a different number from Moz, Ahrefs and Semrush, which is one more reason not to treat any of them as a target.

How do you get from DA 20 to DA 30?

By adding referring domains that are relevant and real, not by anything you do on the page. The steps are the same at every level:

Count your referring domains, not your backlinks. Fifty links from one site move the score far less than one link from each of fifty sites.
Publish something worth citing: original numbers, a free tool, a comparison that does not exist yet.
Ask for links in the right places: sites your competitors already have links from, guest posts on sites with readers, and like-for-like trades with other site owners in your niche. 7 ways to increase DA without buying links lists the honest routes.
Give it time. The score is a trailing indicator of links that already exist. How to improve domain rating in six months sets realistic monthly targets.

For step three, Backlinkster matches site owners in related niches to trade one in-content link for one in-content link, with each swap verified by API. The free plan allows five swaps a month, which at the DA 20 stage is a meaningful share of the new referring domains you need.

Frequently asked questions

Is 20 domain authority good? For a site under a year old or a small local business, yes. For a site competing against national brands with scores in the 60s and 70s, no. DA is relative: compare your score with the top five ranking domains for your keyword rather than with a generic chart.

What is a good domain authority number? One at or above the scores of the pages ranking in the top five for your target keyword. There is no absolute threshold. Generic bands such as 40 to 50 being "average" describe the whole web, not your competition.

What is the average domain authority? There is no reliable figure. Averages quoted by tools are averages of the sites each tool chose to crawl. Measure the median score of twenty competitors in your niche instead; that is the number that predicts anything about your rankings.

Does a higher domain authority mean higher rankings? Not directly. Google has said at least seven times between 2016 and 2022 that it does not use Domain Authority. A higher score usually reflects more and better links, and links are a ranking factor, which is why the two correlate without one causing the other.

How long does it take to go from DA 20 to DA 30? Typically months rather than weeks, because the score follows links that already exist and the scale gets harder at each step. A site adding a few relevant referring domains a month usually sees the score move within a couple of quarters.

The bottom line

DA 20 is a fine place to be if the site is young and the competition is local or niche, and a weak place to be if the competition is national. The score has no meaning on its own and Google does not use it, so stop asking whether 20 is good and start asking what the ranking pages have. Then build relevant referring domains until you are in their range.