Definition
Domain authority (a third-party metric estimating ranking strength) measures site-wide link graph power. Topical relevance measures how closely the linking page’s subject relates to your destination page. Search ranking systems weight both, but relevance determines whether authority transfers meaningfully to a specific query set.
Historical context
SEO tools popularized domain-level scores (DA, DR, TF). Teams chased high numbers without reviewing page-level context. Google’s increasing use of semantic understanding and site-level quality signals reduced the payoff from irrelevant high-DA links.
Strategic explanation
Score prospects on a 2x2: high relevance/high authority (priority), high relevance/lower authority (still valuable), low relevance/high authority (selective), low/low (avoid). For Google.fr, French-language page relevance beats .fr TLD alone.
SaaS companies need IT and business press, not generic lifestyle DA. Ecommerce fashion needs style editorial, not tech forums with inflated metrics.
Industry use cases
Choosing between regional trade link vs. national general news link for a niche industrial term. Evaluating syndicated republishers that copy tier-one stories without canonical discipline.
Frameworks
Page-level relevance checklist
- Title and H1 align with your topic cluster
- Outbound links show topical focus
- Link placement inside body content, not boilerplate
- Page indexed and receiving organic traffic
Comparison table
| Criteria | Signal | What it predicts | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| High DA/DR | Site-wide strength | Ignores page topic | |
| Topical relevance | Query-specific boost | Harder to quantify | |
| Traffic to linking page | Referral + visibility | Not always available |
Practical prospecting rule
If you cannot explain in one sentence why a journalist on this page would cite your URL, the prospect fails relevance review regardless of domain score.