Growth guide
What is Domain Rating — and how to increase it fast
The 0–100 score that decides whether Google takes your site seriously. What it measures, what actually moves it, and a week-by-week plan to get from zero to DR 30.
What Domain Rating actually is
Domain Rating is a 0–100 score, invented by Ahrefs, that measures the strength of a website's backlink profile. That is the whole definition. It is not a measure of how good your product is, how well written your content is, or how much traffic you get — it is a summary of who links to you and how strong those linkers are.
The scale is logarithmic, and that is good news
Going from DR 0 to DR 20 is a fraction of the work of going from DR 70 to DR 80. The bottom of the scale is cheap: a few dozen referring domains will do it. The top requires links from the sort of sites — Wikipedia, major newspapers, category-defining platforms — that you cannot simply apply to. For a new product, this means the first month of effort produces the most visible movement you will ever see.
DR, DA, and what Google actually uses
Moz calls its version Domain Authority. Both are third-party estimates. Google uses neither — it has its own internal signals and has said so repeatedly. DR is still worth tracking because it is computed from the same raw ingredient Google's systems care about: the quality and quantity of sites that vouch for you by linking. It is a proxy, and a decent one.
The threshold that matters
Below roughly DR 20, competitive keywords are effectively closed to you — you can write the best page on the internet and it will sit on page four. Somewhere between DR 20 and DR 30, that changes: your pages start showing up, long-tail queries start converting, and the SEO work you are already doing finally has something to stand on. Getting over that line is the single highest-leverage thing a new site can do.
The DR tiers, and what each one means for you
A new domain with few or no referring domains. Google has no reason to trust you yet, and you will not rank for anything competitive no matter how good the content is.
The first real threshold. Long-tail keywords start to rank, and other sites' link filters stop rejecting you outright. Almost every indie product should be able to get here.
An established indie product or small SaaS with an active link profile. You can compete for mid-tail commercial keywords against similar-sized rivals.
A recognised brand with sustained SEO and PR. Content ranks quickly, and your outbound links now carry meaningful weight for whoever you link to.
Household names — G2, Stripe, Shopify, Wikipedia. Getting a single link from one of these does more for you than a hundred small ones.
What moves Domain Rating — and what doesn't
Half the SEO advice on the internet is about things that have no effect on this number at all. Here is the actual list.
Unique referring domains
One link each from 50 different sites is worth far more than 50 links from one site. DR is a count of who links to you, not how many times they do it.
The DR of the sites linking to you
Authority flows downhill. A single link from a DR 80 site can outweigh dozens from DR 5 blogs nobody has ever heard of.
Dofollow vs nofollow
Only dofollow links pass authority. A nofollow link from a huge site still sends traffic and looks natural in your profile — it just does not move the number.
How many sites the linker links out to
A page that links to five products passes more authority per link than a page that links to five hundred. Curated lists beat mega-dumps.
Content quality and word count
Great content earns links, and links raise DR — but the writing itself has no direct effect on the score. Publishing 200 blog posts nobody links to changes nothing.
Traffic, age and on-page SEO
Your title tags, page speed, schema markup and monthly visitors are all invisible to DR. They matter for rankings; they do not matter for this particular metric.
The takeaway is uncomfortable but simple: you cannot write, tweak or optimise your way to a higher DR. The only input is other websites linking to yours. Everything else is a way of persuading them to. Here's how backlinks work if you want the underlying mechanics.
Seven ways to increase DR, fastest first
Ordered by how quickly they pay off for a site starting from near zero.
01Submit to high-DR dofollow directories
DaysThe fastest, most reliable way to build a foundation. Directories exist to list products, so there is no pitching, no rejection and no relationship to build — you fill in a form and you get a link. Do 10–15 in week one and prioritise dofollow ones (see the table below). This alone typically takes a brand-new domain from DR 0 into the low teens.
02Filter ruthlessly for dofollow
OngoingProduct Hunt, Crunchbase and most social profiles are nofollow — genuinely useful for traffic and credibility, but they will not move DR by a single point. If your goal this month is the number, spend your submission time on dofollow targets and treat the nofollow ones as a traffic bonus.
03Trade badges for backlinks
MinutesPlenty of directories and tools offer a ‘featured on’ badge that gives you a permanent dofollow link in exchange for putting their badge in your footer. It is a two-minute change to your site for a link that lasts as long as your site does. Do not overdo it — five badges look like a proud founder, twenty-five look like a link farm. Start with ours: add the badge, we check for it, and your dofollow link goes live within 48 hours.
04Get onto niche curated lists
1–2 weeksGitHub 'awesome' lists, subreddit wikis, community tool roundups and newsletter resource pages. These pass real authority because they are hand-curated and link out sparingly. Find the ones in your niche, check the contribution rules, and submit a genuine entry rather than a pitch.
05Publish something people have a reason to cite
MonthsOriginal research, a benchmark, a free calculator, a genuinely comprehensive guide. Ordinary blog posts earn no links. Things with a number in them — 'we analysed 500 X and found Y' — earn links for years, because other writers need something to point at when they make the same claim.
06Ship a free tool
WeeksThe highest-leverage link magnet there is. A small free utility that solves one annoying problem gets bookmarked, shared and linked from roundups without you asking. It also gives you something to submit to directories that only accept tools.
07Be a guest, not a beggar
MonthsGuest posts, podcast appearances and expert quotes still work, but only once you have something to say. Reach out after you have numbers, a strong opinion or a launch story. The link is a byproduct of being worth interviewing.
High-DR dofollow directories to start with
Free or freemium, dofollow, and strong enough to be worth your time. These are pulled from the pool we submit to — the full list runs to hundreds.
| Directory | DR | Type | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 | 91 | Review Platform | Freemium |
| Capterra | 91 | Review Platform | Freemium |
| AppSumo | 84 | Marketplace | — |
| Fazier | 82 | Launch Platform | Freemium |
| Indie Hackers | 81 | Startup Directory | Free |
| Dang AI | 81 | AI Directory | Free |
| Twelve Tools | 81 | Software Directory | Freemium |
| HotFrog | 80 | Directory | Free |
| Findly.tools | 80 | Software Directory | Freemium |
| SaaSHub | 79 | Directory | Free |
| GoodFirms | 79 | Review Platform | Freemium |
| BetaList | 76 | Startup Directory | Free |
Each of these takes 10–20 minutes to do properly — a real description, the right category, a working logo, screenshots that are not placeholder text. Rushed submissions get rejected, and a rejected submission is a link you did not get.
Domain Ratings change over time and are approximate. Nofollow platforms like Product Hunt and Crunchbase are excluded here — they are worth doing for traffic, just not for DR.
A realistic timeline from DR 0
What actually happens if you do the work in order. Ahrefs recrawls on its own schedule, so expect a 2–8 week lag between a link going live and the number moving.
10–15 easy, free directory submissions. No strategy needed — just get on the map so you exist to the crawlers.
The high-DR dofollow directories, plus badge swaps. This is where the biggest single jump happens, because low DR is logarithmic and cheap to move.
Niche lists, awesome repos, community wikis. Slower, more manual, but the links are higher quality and stick.
Earned links from content, tools and original data. You cannot submit your way past this line — people have to want to link to you.
PR, brand and press mentions. At this point you are not doing SEO any more, you are doing marketing that happens to produce links.
The only shortcut that isn't a trap
There is no way to buy your way to DR 30 safely — but there is a way to compress the timeline. Everything in weeks 1–4 above is pure manual labour: the same form, filled in fifty times. It is the one part of SEO where speed comes from throughput, not cleverness. Do it yourself over a few weekends, or have someone do it for you in a week.
Domain Rating FAQ
We do the boring part
50 hand-picked directories, submitted by hand, with a written report at the end. It is the same work you would do yourself, minus the fifty forms.
Get listed on 50 directoriesWant to move the number today, for free? Get a dofollow backlink from us →