How fast can Domain Authority be established?

[NickEubanks]

I am wondering how much time it takes to grow a new site's domain authority. More so, based on a consistent stream of links, syndication, and content, how fast can a website grow from 0-20, 21-40, 41-60, etc. in terms of domain authority?

[NickEubanks]

As I feared - there is no straightforward way to predict how fast a website could hypothetically grow their DA, but solid answer.

Thanks Ryan.

[RyanKent]

How fast can Domain Authority be established?

The answer to your question has a bit of complexity to it depending on the result you are seeking.

If you are referring to the DA you can actually see in your toolbar, that is based on the Linkscape crawl of the web which is updated approximately once per month. Depending on various timing factors you could obtain a new link today and it can take 2 months before you see the DA increase in the toolbar.

With respect to the actual benefits of DA (i.e. your site improving ranking results) those are obtained much faster. Google will crawl some sites multiple times each day and other pages only once per month depending on the site's DA, links and other factors. If you obtained a link from the New York Times today, then later today your site will receive the benefits of that link.

With respect to growing DA, a logarithmic scale is used. The higher your DA, the harder it is to improve the numbers.

Another point to consider is quality vs quantity. You can have 10k links but if they are all footer links from a single domain which has a relatively low DA, then you will not receive much benefit. If you have a single link from Time magazine, Harvard University or an authoritative site then you will receive a significant boost.

I know you are reaching for a specific answer, but it doesn't exist. It's kind of a "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop" type of question.