In this guide
- Why "good DR" is always relative, never absolute
- Benchmarks by industry
- DR benchmarks by site age and stage
- DR benchmarks by purpose (link prospect vs money site)
- How to read your DR against direct competitors
- Red flags: high DR that doesn't match reality
- What to do if your DR is below benchmark
- Frequently asked questions
Whenever someone asks "is DR 35 good?" the honest answer is "depends." DR is a relative metric, not an absolute one — what counts as strong in local services is mediocre in SaaS and weak in news publishing. This guide gives you the actual benchmarks I use when evaluating sites: by industry, by site age, by purpose. So you can stop guessing and start comparing.
Why "good DR" is always relative, never absolute
DR is on a logarithmic scale where moving from 20 to 30 is roughly equivalent in link power to moving from 70 to 80 isn't. That means a DR 25 in a low-competition niche is "very good" while DR 60 in publishing is "below average." Asking whether DR is good without context is like asking whether a budget of $50,000 is good — for a wedding it's high, for a house it's low.
The right question is never "is my DR good?" — it's "is my DR strong enough to compete in the specific SERPs I want to rank in?"
Benchmarks by industry
Approximate average DR of top 10 ranking sites for commercial keywords, by industry:
Local services (plumber, lawyer, dentist, electrician)
- Competitive minimum: DR 15
- Strong: DR 25–35
- Dominant: DR 40+
Most local service SERPs are won at DR 25–30. Many of your competitors are at DR 10 or below. This is the easiest category to dominate with consistent link building.
SaaS / B2B tech
- Competitive minimum: DR 30
- Strong: DR 45–55
- Dominant: DR 60+
Top players like HubSpot, Salesforce, Asana sit at DR 90+, but you don't need to beat them on every keyword. The realistic battleground is the DR 45–55 mid-tier — beat that and you're in the running for most commercial queries.
Ecommerce
- Competitive minimum (small categories): DR 20
- Strong (category-level keywords): DR 35–50
- Dominant (brand-level keywords): DR 50+
For product-level keywords ("Nike Air Max 90 black size 10"), individual page authority matters far more than domain-wide DR — a small ecommerce site with focused content can outrank Amazon for specific long-tails.
Affiliate / review sites
- Competitive minimum: DR 35
- Strong: DR 50–60
- Dominant: DR 65+
Affiliate is the most saturated category in terms of competing DR. The top affiliate sites in any niche have DR 70+. Below DR 35, ranking for commercial intent keywords is extremely difficult — focus on informational long-tails first while you build authority.
News / digital publishing
- Competitive minimum: DR 50
- Strong: DR 65–75
- Dominant: DR 80+
News competes directly with established publications (NYT DR 95, BBC DR 94, Guardian DR 93). A new publisher needs DR 50+ even to enter the conversation, and most of the budget goes into Digital PR and reputation building, not content production.
Local news / regional publishing
- Competitive minimum: DR 30
- Strong: DR 40–55
- Dominant: DR 60+
Finance / insurance (YMYL)
- Competitive minimum: DR 40
- Strong: DR 55–70
- Dominant: DR 75+
Google's Your Money Your Life standards add an extra layer beyond pure DR — even DR 60 sites struggle to rank in finance without explicit E-E-A-T signals (author bios, regulatory citations, expert reviewers).
Health / medical (YMYL)
- Competitive minimum: DR 45
- Strong: DR 60–75
- Dominant: DR 80+
Same YMYL constraints as finance. Mayo Clinic (DR 92), Healthline (DR 91), WebMD (DR 90) dominate the category. Independent sites need DR 60+ and clearly identified medical reviewers to rank for clinical queries.
Education / online courses
- Competitive minimum: DR 30
- Strong: DR 45–60
- Dominant: DR 65+
Crypto / Web3
- Competitive minimum: DR 35
- Strong: DR 50–65
- Dominant: DR 70+
Crypto SEO is unusually saturated and the SERPs change rapidly with market cycles. DR is even more important than in adjacent finance categories because the editorial trust signals are weaker (less regulatory backing, fewer established authorities).
DR benchmarks by site age and stage
Brand new site (0–6 months)
DR 0–15. A new site can't realistically exceed DR 15 within 6 months — Ahrefs needs time to crawl the new links and weight them. Sites that show DR 30+ in their first 3 months are almost always artificially inflated through manipulation.
Established site (1–3 years)
DR 20–45 is the typical range for a site that's been building consistently. At this stage, DR primarily reflects whether you've been deliberate about link building or just publishing content.
Mature site (3–7 years)
DR 40–70. Sites in this range have multiple years of compound link acquisition. If a 5-year-old site still has DR below 30, the issue isn't time — it's that no one has been doing link building.
Established authority (7+ years)
DR 60+ becomes possible. The compound effect of consistent link acquisition over a decade produces authority that's very difficult to replicate from scratch.
DR benchmarks by purpose
Evaluating link prospects (guest posts, niche edits)
Minimum: DR 25 for relevant niches, DR 40 for highly competitive ones. Below DR 25, the equity transferred to your site is too small to justify the time investment in outreach unless the prospect has other signals (high topical relevance, real traffic, etc.).
Evaluating expired domains for 301 redirect
Sweet spot: DR 25–40. Above DR 40, prices rise sharply and risk increases (high-DR expired domains have often been targeted by previous PBN operators, leaving footprints). Below DR 25, the equity contribution is too marginal to justify the operational overhead.
Evaluating expired domains for content revival
DR 30+ is the threshold for the strategy to be economically viable. Below that, the cost of rebuilding content and re-establishing the domain exceeds the value of the inherited backlinks.
Evaluating PBN candidates
DR 15–35 is the optimal range. Higher DR domains are too valuable to risk in a network architecture (they'd produce more value as single-domain 301 redirects). Lower DR domains don't pass enough equity to justify the maintenance overhead.
Money site target DR
Aim for the average DR of the top 10 results for your money keywords, plus 10 points. That gives you a defensible position. Underbidding the SERP average means your money pages will struggle to rank regardless of content quality.
How to read your DR against direct competitors
Instead of comparing your DR to "what's good in my industry" (a generality), compare directly:
- List your top 3 direct competitors (companies that win the same deals you do)
- Pull their DR from Ahrefs
- Calculate the average
- Your DR target = average + 5 to 10 points
If your DR matches the average, you're competing on parity for link authority — and other factors (content, on-page, technical SEO) become the differentiator. If your DR is 15+ points below the average, you have a structural disadvantage that will take 12–24 months of link building to close.
Red flags: high DR that doesn't match reality
Sometimes a site shows DR 50+ but the reality doesn't match. Signs that DR is inflated or about to crash:
- DR much higher than competitor average in the same niche. If your competitors are DR 30 and you're DR 60, the math doesn't add up — investigate.
- Most referring domains are themselves DR 5–15. The DR was manufactured through volume of low-quality links, not genuine authority.
- Few or no referring domains from real publications. A site with DR 50 should have a handful of links from recognizable publications. If yours has none, the DR is built on weak foundations.
- Sudden DR spike (jumped 15+ points in a single week without any digital PR event). Manipulation followed by inevitable correction.
- Low Trust Flow paired with high DR. If DR is 50 but Majestic Trust Flow is 5, your backlink profile is suspicious in ways Majestic detects but Ahrefs hasn't yet.
- Site sells links openly. Sellers' own sites eventually decline because Ahrefs detects the editorial disengagement pattern.
What to do if your DR is below benchmark
Concrete actions, in order of priority:
- Audit your existing backlinks. Many sites have RDs they don't know about. Reclaim broken ones, request linking page updates where applicable, monitor for new ones.
- Set a monthly RD acquisition target. For a site below benchmark, 8–15 new unique RDs per month is the minimum to close the gap meaningfully over 12 months.
- Pursue 1–2 "halo" links per quarter. A single link from a DR 70+ industry publication moves DR more than dozens of mid-tier links. Plan campaigns around earning these specifically.
- Use HARO / Connectively systematically. Consistent placement in business media adds 1–3 high-quality RDs per month for a few hours of weekly effort.
- Consider expired domain 301 redirects. A vetted DR 35 expired domain in your niche redirected to your site can add 30–80 RDs in 4–8 weeks. Full process here.
- Original research / data studies. The single best link-earning content. Cost is high (research is real work), but the returns compound for years.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good Domain Rating?
Depends entirely on your industry and what you're trying to compete for. For local services, DR 25–35 is strong. For SaaS, DR 45–55. For affiliate sites, DR 50+. For news publishing, DR 65+. The most reliable benchmark is the average DR of the top 10 ranking sites for your money keywords — match that and you're competitive.
What's a good Domain Rating for a new site?
DR 0–15 is realistic for a site under 6 months old. DR 15–25 is good for a site between 6–12 months. Sites showing DR 30+ in their first months almost always reflect artificial inflation that will correct downward.
Is DR 30 good?
For a site under 18 months old, yes — it indicates active link building. For a site over 5 years old, it suggests neglect of link acquisition. For a local services site, it's competitive in most markets. For affiliate or news, it's below the competitive threshold.
What is the highest Domain Rating possible?
100. The logarithmic scale makes DR 100 effectively unreachable. The highest DR sites in the world (Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Google) sit at DR 96–99. Even the largest news organizations rarely exceed DR 95.
Can a site have high DR but low traffic?
Yes — very common with expired domains pre-redirect, PBN domains, and sites that earned authority years ago but haven't published actively in a while. DR measures link authority, traffic measures relevance and ranking. They're independent.
Should I worry if my competitor's DR is higher than mine?
Only if the gap is more than 15 points and you're losing rankings to them on shared keywords. A 5–10 point gap is normal and can be overcome with better content and on-page. A 20+ point gap is a structural disadvantage that takes years of focused link building to close.
Does Domain Rating decay over time?
Yes, gradually. Without new link acquisition, DR loses 2–5 points per year from natural link decay (referring pages going offline, sites losing their own DR, links being removed). Maintaining DR requires continuous link building; not maintaining it means slow decline.
For the full guide on what Domain Rating is and how to raise it, see the pillar: What Is Domain Rating (DR). For the specific factors that move the metric, Domain Rating factors. For the related page-level metric, Page Authority.