Two part question

So my first question is how much should I care about SEO DA from semrush or Ahrefs? And the second part is how to remove spamy backlinks that increase my toxicity score. For context, i realized my website was not ranking at all and has no domain authority so I’ve started using more HARO to gain authority. I think it’s working so far? I saw the DA almost double from 7-13 but I’m not sure what’s considered good and if that is just a temporary trend