When we talk about “authority” in SEO, it basically means to understand how strong or trustworthy your website appears to search engines.
Semrush measures this using its metric called Authority Score (AS).
You can consider this as a compound metric rating that Semrush uses to judge the overall quality of your website. The AS score runs on a scale of 0 to 100; 0 being the lowest and 100 being the highest.
Higher your authority score, the better your chances of ranking well on SERP.
But the big question is: What is a GOOD Authority Score?
What is a Good Authority Score?
There’s no fixed number that is considered as a “good” Authority Score. It really depends on your niche and the websites you’re competing with. The score only makes sense when you compare it against similar websites.
For example, if your competitors are all having 50+ AS and you’re at 28, your score is low. But if your score is 40+ and everyone else in your niche is below 30, you’re doing great in backlinking.
The higher your score is relative to your competitors, the more trust your site holds in SERP.
You can check and compare your AS using SEMrush’s backlink analytics tool. It lets you compare multiple domains side by side, and instantly see which domain’s backlink profile looks stronger.
Here’s a quick overview:
| Authority Score (AS) | Authority Level | What it means |
| 0-10 | Very Low | New websites, almost no backlinks |
| 11-20 | Low | Starting to build credibility |
| 21-30 | Fair | Good for small/local/niche sites (started to rank on some keywords) |
| 31-40 | Average | Improving visibility |
| 41-50 | Above Average | Competitive in most niches |
| 51-60 | Good | Strong link profile, and consistent traffic |
| 61-70 | Very Good | Well-established sites with strong authority |
| 71-100 | Excellent | Industry leaders, major brands, high traffic. |
Note: For reputable websites in competitive industries, 70-80 AS is considered high. And for smaller niche sites 30-40 AS is considered strong
Factors Semrush uses to calculate Authority Score
Semrush calculates Authority score evaluating three major factors:
1. Backlink Profile Strength
Here, we talk about the quality and quantity of links pointing to your website.
SEMrush looks at how many websites link to you, how trustworthy those sites are, what their own authority score looks like, whether the links seem natural or spammy, and how diverse your referring domains are.
You could have 1,000 spammy backlinks and see no results, but just a few high-quality links from reputable websites can lift your Authority Score quickly.
Here are some red flags that can lower your authority score:
- Unnatural dofollow-to-nofollow ratio (for example, 90%+ dofollow links)
- Lots of backlinks but low organic traffic
- Many referring domains on the same IP/network (possible PBNs)
- Another domain with an identical backlink profile
2. Organic Traffic
Next, we’re talking about how your site performs on Google. SEMrush looks at your estimated monthly traffic, how many keywords you rank for, and whether your traffic chart is going steady or fluctuating.
If your site consistently brings in organic traffic, the more it is trusted by google and your authority score goes up.
How to Check Your Authority Score on Semrush
Using the Free Tool: Semrush Website Authority Checker
Just search “Semrush Website Authority Checker” on Google, open the tool, and enter your domain as you can see below image.
The tool instantly shows your Authority Score, along with a few basic stats like:
- Total backlinks
- Number of referring domains
- Top pages that attract the most unique referring domains
- Simple charts showing your backlink and referring domain growth over the last 12 months.
Not very detailed, but it gives you a clear idea, how that website is performing so far.
Using its Paid Tool: Semrush Domain Overview
Here, you need a Semrush any paid account subscription. Once you have access, it’s very easy:
- Go to Domain Overview in Semrush
- Enter your website
- You’ll instantly see your Authority Score along with the following details:
- Number of backlinks
- Referring domains
- Organic traffic insights
- Organic and paid keywords numbers
- AI visibility
- SERPs position distribution
- Competitor comparisons
This is the complete and reliable way to understand your Authority Score in Semrush.
How to improve your Authority Score?
1. Publish high-quality, valuable content that naturally earns links. Go for case studies, guides, or data-backed posts. Like this backlinko article on SEO Statistics having 1.3k referring domains.
2. Build a solid internal linking structure using topic clusters. Link main topics with related sub-topics to show your niche expertise.
3. Grow organic traffic by writing content that your audience searches for. Optimize content for user intent, and regularly refresh old content.
4. Strengthen technical and on-page SEO factors like fast-loading, mobile-friendly pages, clean structure, optimized titles, meta descriptions, headers, and HTTPS.
5. Earn high-quality backlinks and brand mentions from reputable websites via guest posts, collaborations, or digital PR.
6. Frequently audit your website for broken pages, slow URLs, technical issues, and anything that harms your user experience.
My Takeaway as a SEO Expert,
You should not solely depend on Semrush Authority Score nor on Ahrefs Domain Authority and Moz DA. All are vanity metrics if you’re not ranking above your competitors with your content and/or on your potential business keywords.
Not only chase high authority score websites for backlinks. Also check the relevancy and overall traffic of the website before
High-quality backlinks, trustworthy content, perfect technical SEO, and consistently improving your old content is the combination of your SEO success. Authority score can help you to understand the overall competition but with the right strategy, you can outrank your competitors with less authority score as well.
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