What is domain authority and how does it affect outdoor business rankings?

Your website’s domain authority score sits at 14. The rafting company two towns over has a 22. Viator has a 93. Before you panic about any of these numbers, you should know what domain authority actually measures, what it doesn’t, and why it matters far less than you probably think for getting your outdoor business found locally.

What domain authority is (and isn’t)

Domain authority is a score from 1 to 100 created by Moz, an SEO software company. It predicts how likely a website is to rank in search results based on the strength of its backlink profile, meaning how many other websites link to yours and how trustworthy those linking sites are.

Here’s what trips most outdoor operators up: domain authority is not a Google ranking factor. Google’s own John Mueller has said they don’t have “anything like a website authority score.” Moz built DA as a comparison tool, not a ranking signal. Google has never used it, doesn’t look at it, and doesn’t care about it.

That doesn’t make DA useless. It correlates with rankings because the things that raise your DA (quality backlinks, a well-structured site, strong content) also happen to be things Google rewards. Think of DA like a thermometer. It reads the temperature, but it doesn’t control the weather.

What a “good” score looks like for outdoor businesses

Most small outdoor recreation businesses land somewhere between DA 5 and 25. A fishing guide who launched her site three years ago and has a handful of links from the local tourism board and a newspaper feature might sit around DA 15. A well-established outfitter with a decade of press coverage and partnerships could hit 30.

Those numbers sound low compared to Viator at 93 or TripAdvisor at 94. But DA is logarithmic. Going from 20 to 30 is dramatically harder than going from 10 to 20. And for local searches, you’re not competing against Viator’s global authority. You’re competing against the other three kayak rental shops within 40 miles.

For local business rankings, a DA of 20 or above is often enough to claim the top spot. Businesses with DA scores as low as 6 have ranked on page one for local searches when their other signals (Google Business Profile, reviews, proximity) were strong.

Why local rankings care more about other signals

Google’s local pack (the map results that show up for “rafting near me” or “fishing charters in Destin”) weighs three factors above almost everything else: proximity to the searcher, relevance of your listing, and prominence. Domain authority plays into prominence, but it’s one small input among many.

What matters more for that local pack:

• Your Google Business Profile completeness, accuracy, and activity
• Review quantity, quality, and recency, meaning a steady stream of 4- and 5-star reviews with actual words in them
• NAP consistency (your name, address, and phone number matching exactly across every directory listing)
• On-page content that matches what someone is searching for

A guide service in Bozeman with DA 12, 87 Google reviews, and a fully optimized GBP profile will outrank a competitor with DA 35 but only 11 reviews and an incomplete profile. We’ve seen this pattern play out dozens of times across outdoor businesses.

Where domain authority does matter

DA isn’t irrelevant. It matters most in organic search results (the regular blue links below the map pack) and especially for informational queries. If you’re trying to rank a blog post for “best time to fly fish in Montana” against content from Orvis, Field & Stream, and state tourism sites, your DA 15 is fighting an uphill battle against their DA 70+.

This is where topical authority becomes your edge. Analysis of over 400 SEO campaigns found that sites building deep content clusters - 25 to 30 interlinked articles on a focused topic - saw ranking gains up to 3x faster than sites chasing raw DA through link building alone. A fly fishing guide who publishes 30 articles about fly fishing in their specific region builds topical authority that can outmatch sites with much higher DA scores for those niche queries.

How to build authority the right way for outdoor businesses

Forget buying links or submitting to hundreds of random directories. The backlinks that actually move your DA and your rankings come from relevant, trusted sources. For outdoor businesses, that means:

Your state tourism board’s partner or outfitter directory. A single .gov link from a state parks or recreation department page carries more weight than 50 low-quality directory submissions. Many states maintain official lists of licensed outfitters, guides, or recreation providers. If you’re not on yours, fix that this week.

Local press coverage works. When the Bozeman Daily Chronicle writes about your guided float trips, that link from a real local news site does double duty. It sends referral traffic and strengthens your backlink profile. Pitch your local paper a seasonal angle or offer to be a source for outdoor recreation stories.

Tourism board and chamber of commerce memberships almost always include a website link. The Outdoor Industry Association, state-level outfitter associations, and river conservation groups often maintain member directories too.

Guest posts and partnerships with complementary businesses create natural links. The lodge that recommends your guided trips, the gear shop that sends customers your way. If those relationships already exist offline, getting them reflected as links online takes one email.

Stop watching the score, start building the signals

Checking your DA every week is like weighing yourself every morning on a diet. The number fluctuates, moves slowly, and can mislead you about actual progress. Moz updates DA periodically, and scores can drop for reasons that have nothing to do with your site - like Moz recalibrating their algorithm or a linking site disappearing.

Instead of tracking DA, track what actually correlates with bookings: your organic search traffic trend, your keyword positions for terms that matter (like “[your activity] in [your town]”), and your conversion rate from website visitors to booked trips. Those metrics connect directly to revenue. DA doesn’t.

If you want one number that roughly gauges your site’s competitive position, DA is fine for that. Check it quarterly, compare it to your direct competitors (not to REI or Viator), and move on. A DA of 18 that’s climbing slowly while your local SEO fundamentals are solid means you’re on the right track.

The one thing to do this week

Look up your domain authority at Moz’s free Link Explorer tool. Then look up your two closest competitors. If you’re within 10 points of them, DA isn’t your problem - focus on reviews, content, and your Google Business Profile instead. If you’re 20+ points behind, check where their backlinks come from and pursue those same sources. Either way, the score is a compass heading, not the destination.