We have written about the Ahrefs site authority metric, Domain Rating (DR), several times -- most recently about a month ago.
Understanding DR is one thing. We have been asked by our partners how it typically improves over the course of a campaign, particularly in the first year, when it's critical to demonstrate SEO results for clients.
Product effectiveness is a huge focus for us, and we realized that this is data that could help us show that our services are working to help achieve our mission: We believe we can help growing businesses achieve their dreams.
We pulled a random sample of 189 campaigns and analyzed how they did for the first 45 weeks of their respective life cycles. (We take a reading of each campaign's DR weekly.)
Here's what the aggregated data looks like:
The average starting DR for this randomly-selected cohort of campaigns was 13.8. After 45 weeks, the average DR was up to 20.6, an average increase of 6.8.
We were pleased to share this analysis with the partners that asked for it, and we also wanted to make it available here to the larger community.
Please let us know if you have any questions about these results, or if you would like us to analyze our data for other macro trends. Your dream is our mission!