For a Challenger Brand, guessing is expensive. You do not have the luxury of bloated budgets, endless do-overs and “we’ll see what happens” SEO. You need a dashboard that tells the truth about what is working, what is stalling and what is going to take real effort to move.
That is why Domain Authority deserves a seat on your marketing KPI dashboard.
Not because it is a Google ranking factor. It is not.
Not because a bigger number magically equals better SEO. It does not.
You track it because it gives you a competitive context. It tells you whether your site is building enough authority to compete for the keywords that matter and whether your link-building strategy is actually gaining traction.
Domain Authority (DA) is a score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search results compared to competitors, scored on a 1–100 scale.
Here is the part that too many teams miss: DA is a comparative metric, not a Google metric. Moz explicitly warns against mistaking DA for PageRank or assuming Google uses the DA score in rankings.
So why keep it? Because dashboards are not only about what Google directly uses. They are about what your team needs to make smart decisions. DA is one of the fastest ways to answer the question everyone asks in the same meeting:
“Are we losing because our content is weak or because we are outgunned on authority?”
Most Challenger Brands do the “right” work:
Then rankings still crawl.
That is usually an authority problem, not an effort problem. DA gives you a clean, easy signal that your site’s authority footprint is trending up or getting left behind.
It is not the only signal you should watch, but it is a strong scoreboard for one critical reality: authority takes time, and it compounds.
If your dashboard has DA, you are going to hear about other numbers too:
Different tools, different math, same general purpose: a fast read on how much weight a site is carrying online.
Our take: pick one primary authority metric for KPI reporting so you can track trends consistently. If your team lives in Moz, use DA. If your team lives in Ahrefs, use DR. If your team is Semrush-heavy, use Authority Score.
Consistency beats perfection.
1) It makes competitiveness visible, fast
Keyword difficulty is useful, but it is not always intuitive for non-SEO stakeholders. DA is. When leadership wants to know why you are not ranking in the top three, DA helps you show the competitive gap in a single number, then back it up with the SERP reality.
Moz even positions DA as most useful for benchmarking against the sites you compete with.
2) It connects link building strategy to momentum
Link building can feel abstract until it shows up as rankings and revenue, which can take time. DA gives you a leading indicator that your backlink profile is strengthening.
Ahrefs describes DR as explicitly tied to backlink profile strength and shows how link equity is influenced by how linking domains distribute links. Semrush also frames its Authority Score around link power and organic traffic, with checks for spam indicators.
In plain English: authority metrics move when your link profile is improving in a way the ecosystem recognizes.
3) It helps you forecast effort, not just hope
Some keywords are winnable with great content, solid technical SEO and a strong on-page strategy.
Other keywords require authority.
DA helps you forecast how much authority work is needed so you can plan:
DA is domain-wide. Page Authority (PA) is page-specific.
Moz’s Page Authority 2.0 explains PA as a 1-100 score estimating a specific page’s probability to rank. It is link-based and is meant to be used as a relative metric, so it focuses more on link equity than on-page optimization.
This is why PA is so useful for KPI dashboards that care about outcomes:
If DA tells you how strong the brand’s overall authority is, PA tells you if the pages that pay the bills are getting the link equity they need.
We will say it clearly:
Chasing DA is not a strategy.
Here is how to keep it grounded.
Google has been consistent for years that selling links that pass PageRank violates quality guidelines and can lead to actions that hurt visibility.
So yes, build authority. Just do it the way that compounds, not the way that collapses.
What actually improves your authority footprint
If you want a higher DA, DR or any website authority score, focus on the underlying drivers, not the number.
Here are the levers that tend to move the needle for Challenger Brand Marketing:
Think:
When content becomes a reference point, links show up naturally.
The best link growth often comes from marketing that is already smart:
Authority is less useful if your site architecture is messy. Clean internal linking, crawlable navigation and smart consolidation help link equity reach the pages that matter. Google’s guidance on crawlable links and internal linking reinforces that internal links help both users and Google understand and navigate your site.
If we are building a dashboard that drives decisions, not just reporting, pair authority metrics with performance metrics:
That is the full story: authority, visibility and business results.
Domain Authority belongs on your KPI dashboard because it tells you whether your SEO performance is limited by content, by technical execution or by authority.
For Challenger Brands, that clarity matters. It protects your team from wasted effort, it helps you justify the right investment and it turns SEO from a guessing game into a growth system.
