Moz Ratings: DA, PA, and Backlinks

[finnegan]

Doing some KWD research in Moz, I see a lot of sites ranking #1 and #2 by DA or PA alone while only having 1-2 backlinks and not having the entire keyword in their URL.

It makes me wonder...if your site is new and has a DA of 8 or so, could you overtake these sites with a lower DA/PA but having more backlinks and the KWD in your URL?

If not, how high would your DA/PA need to be to overtake them with the above conditions?

 

[Ryuzaki]

There are far too many variables not related to the non-valuable DA/PA to answer this question, but you are on The right track.

What about on-page? What about anchor text? What about user metrics? What about time?

 

[Nat]

Moz domain metrics suck. Adding to what Ryuzaki said, if any of those sites have done any link building in the past year, don't expect Moz to know about it. Just one example.

Edit: For fun, I put my #1 site into a few to compare.
Moz: 40 Referring Domains - DA 24 (It was lower not too long ago though)
Majestic: 96 Referring Domains - Flow: 19
Ahrefs: 270 Referring Domains - DR: 48 URL: 36. ....And there are links Ahrefs hasn't found yet.

 

[Dan Barron]

In my experience DA can be easily manipulated with low quality links. Majestic TF or ahrefs DR are much better "guides" to go by in terms of getting an idea of quality/authority.

 

[Pardens]

Edit: For fun, I put my #1 site into a few to compare.
Moz: 40 Referring Domains - DA 24 (It was lower not too long ago though)
Majestic: 96 Referring Domains - Flow: 19
Ahrefs: 270 Referring Domains - DR: 48 URL: 36. ....And there are links Ahrefs hasn't found yet.

Could you test the same on SpyFu? I've been meaning to choose one and I've been fairly content with their free trial. Though I have no metric of accuracy of their backlink #s.

 

[Nat]

Could you test the same on SpyFu? I've been meaning to choose one and I've been fairly content with their free trial. Though I have no metric of accuracy of their backlink #s.

No problem, but I'm not familiar with SpyFu and it doesn't look like they display referring domains through the public interface? Or maybe I'm missing it.