What is Page Authority in SEO and How to Improve It?

What is Page Authority?

Page Authority, or PA for short, is a web page scoring system that predicts how well a page will rank on search engine results. The page authority score ranges from 0 to 100, with higher scores suggesting the page is likelier to rank well on SERPs. It follows a logarithmic scale, which means improving page authority from 30 to 40 is more manageable than increasing it from 80 to 90. 

This metric was originally developed by Moz to provide a reliable indicator of a page’s SERP visibility. Moz considers a myriad of factors in calculating the PA of a specific page, including but not limited to: 

• Number and quality of incoming links
• Distribution of dofollow and nofollow backlinks
• Link anchor text distribution
• Backlink profile spam score
• Branded mentions

Moz isn’t the only SEO software that uses an authority-related metric. Ahrefs has its Domain Rating and Page Rating, which measure the strength of a backlink profile. Semrush has its proprietary Authority Score, which looks at backlinks, organic traffic, and spam scores. Majestic uses Flow Metric Scores that consider the number of backlinks and the quality of its content.

While not necessarily Google-sanctioned, site owners and SEO professionals use page authority to mirror how Google views web pages. Many off-page SEO activities begin with assessing the page authority scores of partner websites first before any collaborative efforts.

Difference Between Domain Authority and Page Authority

Page Authority and Domain Authority are both scores developed by Moz. The only difference is that PA measures the performance of each individual page, while DA considers the entire domain.

Moz says both are measured using the same proprietary method, so they are more similar than different. However, both metrics have their nuances. For instance, a website might have high domain authority, but the individual performance of pages may not be uniform, with some pages having high PA and others with relatively lower PA. 

Both DA and PA have some distinct applications. For example, high DA benefits all pages on a website, helping identify high-authority sites for guest posting campaigns. Meanwhile, PA focuses on single pages ranking for targeted keywords, which might be more applicable for link insertion campaigns.

What is Considered a Good Page Authority Score?

Page authority is considered good if it is higher than (or within the value of) competitors in your niche. Every industry has a different level of SEO competition, so “good” PA scores can vary.

Moz describes the PA metric as a comparative rather than an absolute measure. Consider industry standards and analyze competitor performance to determine if your website’s PA is good or needs improvement.

Why is Page Authority Important?

Moz’s Page Authority (or Domain Authority) is not the be-all and end-all of SEO metrics. In fact, Google doesn’t use it as a ranking factor.

Moz says Page Authority is not a Google ranking factor on their website and has no influence on SERPs.

Several Google personnel, such as Gary Illyes and John Mueller, have also voiced opposition in calling domain authority a ranking factor on Google.

Here is what Gary Illyes posted on Twitter back in 2016:

In a series of now-deleted tweets back in 2019, John Mueller denied domain authority’s relation to Google’s algorithm:

According to John Mueller, Google tries to make its metrics as “granular as possible,” meaning it doesn’t look at the overall domain level but examines the factors of how each specific page will rank. In other words, the page’s authority matters more to Google than the domain’s authority.

Going back, if Page Authority is not considered a Google ranking factor, why do SEOs and site owners fixate on these values?

The answer is quite simple.

Google has kept its SERP ranking signals a trade secret. By using Page Authority, site owners can have a tangible interpretation of how Google possibly views the SEO performance of a specific page on the internet.

In Moz’s white paper released in 2020, they said Page Authority correlates more closely with SERP results. It can also pinpoint site owners where to take action to increase Page Authority.

Here are the specific advantages of Page Authority:

A. Indicator of search engine performance

Page Authority and search ranking of web pages are highly correlated. A higher PA score suggests a page has solid backlinks, high-quality content, and strong SEO fundamentals—the premise of high SERP positioning.

t also shows search engines view the page as authoritative and trustworthy. Monitoring this metric allows businesses to gauge whether their optimization strategies are effective and make necessary improvements.

B. Baseline for collaborative efforts

Page Authority is a foundation for measuring the value of partnerships when collaborating with other websites, businesses, or bloggers. A higher search engine ranking score indicates a strong, reliable page, making it an attractive candidate for link-building activities.

This ensures that collaborations bring mutual SEO benefits.

C. Standard for competitive research

Page Authority acts as a reliable benchmark for evaluating competitors in your niche. As Moz says, PA is best used as a comparative rather than an absolute measure.

Analyzing PA scores reveals which pages drive the most organic traffic and rank well on SERPs. This also presents an opportunity to identify areas where your pages can outperform theirs, allowing you to fine-tune your strategy.

How to Improve Your Page Authority: 4 Actionable Tips

If you’re looking for ways to boost your page authority, try these strategies:

1. Acquire backlinks from authoritative websites

Backlinks have been one of the most long-standing ranking factors since Google’s establishment in 1998. Regardless of the link’s rel attribute, your website benefits when authoritative websites link back to your web pages.

Dofollow backlinks act as “endorsements,” telling search engines that your content is credible, valuable, and worth mentioning. Backlinks qualified as dofollow also pass link juice or authority from the source to the target page, resulting in a boost in Page Authority.

But not all dofollow backlinks are the same. Naturally, backlinks from authoritative websites carry more weight and can significantly enhance your page’s authority more than less authoritative domains.

On the other hand, nofollow backlinks can still serve your business, albeit not as significantly as dofollow counterparts. Google has evolved the function of the nofollow attribute, and instead of completely ignoring the link, Googlebot treats them as “hints.” 

While not directly transferring link juice, Google now analyzes the anchor text and correlates it with the target page’s content. This helps Google improve how it serves pages in search results, indirectly affecting SERP rankings. 

To get started, identify authoritative pages on your niche using a page authority checker like AuthorityCheckr:

Signing up gives you 10 free credits to analyze a website. The tool shows the essential SEO metrics of a website, including DA, PA, TF, CF, and Spam Score. 

Once you’ve identified viable sites, here are some link-building tactics you can employ in exchange for backlinks:

• Guest posting: Write high-quality articles for reputable websites in your industry.
• Link exchanges: Identify relevant pages, contact the site owners, and request that your link be inserted in their content. Reciprocate by offering a page on your site to link back to them.
• Broken link building: Find broken links on other websites and offer to replace them with relevant links to your content.
• Buy backlinks: Receive backlinks from reputable sites in exchange for payments. Strictly qualify paid backlinks as rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” to avoid getting penalized by Google.

2. Implement good internal linking practices

Internal links are crucial for a website for many reasons.

First, internal links are crucial for boosting a visitor’s user experience on your website. Linking to relevant internal pages gives visitors the option to explore further. This reduces your website’s bounce rate while increasing the click-through rate and time spent and promotes positive user behavior.

Google treats active website activity as a positive SEO signal and sees the page as authoritative and relevant. This may result in increased SERP ranking for related search queries.  

Internal linking tools, like LinkStorm, automate internal links by identifying sitewide linking opportunities. The tool uses semantic analysis and does not rely on exact-match keywords, which is essential to diversify anchor text usage. Moreover, maintaining a well-connected website via internal links prevents orphan pages.

From the LinkStorm dashboard, select Opportunities:

This will show all undiscovered internal link suggestions on your site:

Users can modify anchor texts from the dashboard using the “Edit Anchor” button. It also only takes a single click to accept or reject an internal link suggestion.

If desired, users may connect their Google Search Console to integrate essential GSC metrics, such as CTR, average position, and impressions, into the columns.

Secondly, internal links distribute link juice from the source to the target pages, just like backlinks. On a website, the Page Authority of web pages may vary, with some pages being more authoritative than others. Site owners can take advantage of this information to control the direction of internal linking:

• Scale-down approach: Build contextual links from high-authority to low-authority pages. This is done mostly to kickstart the SEO growth of low-authority pages and move them up the rankings.
• Scale-up approach: Create internal links from high-authority pages to fellow high-authority pages. This will further increase the SERP position of already-performing pages, for example, from position #8 to position #5.

LinkStorm lets users configure the direction of internal linking. Toggle the column settings and check GSC Metrics. Then, arrange the rows found in the “Ave. Position” column.

As shown in the image, the above internal link suggestion is an example of a “scale-down approach,” as the link comes from position #3 to position #45 page. Meanwhile, the internal link suggestion below exemplifies a “scale-up approach” as the link comes from position #5 to position #3 page.

Third, internal links help Googlebot discover all the pages found on a website. Google considers the homepage the strongest page on your website, and most crawling activities begin there. However, as a page increases in click depth or moves farther from the homepage, it becomes weaker in Google’s eyes.

By optimizing click depth, you keep web pages at arm’s length from the homepage. This means users can easily find their desired web pages with the fewest clicks. Moreover, this boosts Googlebot’s crawl efficiency, as Google can discover web pages without exhausting the website’s dedicated crawl budget.

You can optimize click depth by arranging the rows in the depth column, as shown below:

As shown in the image, the internal link suggestion at the top connects a page with click depth 1 to another with click depth 4. Accepting the suggestion will reduce the target page’s click depth from 4 to 2.

There are many use cases for LinkStorm, which will allow you to maximize your internal linking while simultaneously boosting your site’s Page Authority.

3. Monitor and clean up your backlink profile

Your backlink profile is the collection of all web pages linking to your website. A healthy backlink profile, with the right balance of nofollow and dofollow links, can significantly boost your Page Authority. However, maintaining low-quality or toxic backlinks can harm your website’s reputation and expose you to manual action, which may lower your search engine rankings.

Shady link schemes can ruin a backlink profile, such as buying links from spammy websites or engaging with link farms. While Google works to detect and block these third-party sites, inadvertently keeping them on your backlink profile may affect Google’s opinion on a page. 

Using Google Search Console’s Disavow Tool can help disassociate your website from these toxic backlinks. Google provided a step-by-step process for disavowing links on this resource. Unfortunately, it requires some coding knowledge, and you must manually write each URL in a text file encoded in UTF-8 or 7-bit ASCII.

Backlink monitoring software, such as Linkody, makes this process more manageable. The tool’s Links tab shows essential information, including: 

• Link Status (if OK, Link Not Found, or Wrong Anchor)
• Source URL
• Target page
• Anchor text
• Rel attribute
• Moz DA
• Spam Score

To disavow links, select the spammy links using the checkbox on the left. Then, toggle the drop-down at the top of the page and click Disavow. Choose whether to disavow the specific link only or the entire linking domain. 

All disavowed links will appear as “Rules” on the Disavow tab, as shown below:

Export the list and upload the file to the GSC disavow tool. You now have a clean backlink profile.

4. Publish high-quality content

Last but certainly not least, publish high-quality, keyword-optimized, and helpful content. This is the most straightforward way to improve your Page Authority. Content is the beacon that gives your website identity and value in a searcher’s eyes. Exceptional content naturally attracts backlinks, keeps readers engaged, and signals to Google that your page is a reliable source of information.

If you’re reading this article, it is safe to presume that you are already active in publishing content on your website. After all, content creation should be second nature to website owners. Without content, you limit your website’s avenues for gaining online traction and organic traffic. 

Instead of exploring generic tactics like keyword research, intent analysis, trend identification, and content gap analysis, let’s look at some niche long-form written content strategies:

• Ultimate Guides: Content that covers a topic comprehensively and explores all possible angles. This is great for attracting backlinks, ranking for multiple keywords, and establishing niche authority. These are also likely to become go-to references for readers and other content creators.
• Case studies: Content that demonstrates expertise by sharing real-world results, processes, and insights. Case studies are rarely replicable, especially if a proprietary technology was used for the study. Moreover, this content type is highly shareable, trusted by professionals, and encourages backlinks from multiple sources.
• In-depth tutorials: Also known as “how-to” guides, these provide step-by-step instructions on how to solve a problem. They are also an avenue for user engagement via follow-up questions in the comments section.
• Listicles: Extensive lists of tools, tips, or strategies perform well in search rankings. Unlike other content types requiring deep reading, listicles appeal to users who prefer easily digestible formats.
• Whitepapers: These are detailed informational documents issued by companies to introduce the features of a new product, service, or technology. Because they are downloadable, they are not focused on driving organic traffic. However, whitepapers can boost a company’s professionalism, influencing brand recall. 
• Topic clusters: Topic clusters are collections of interrelated and contextually relevant web pages around specific topics. They are composed of a central pillar page and several cluster content that are connected using internal links.

Using topic clusters let site owners artificially manipulate the user experience by deliberately presenting relevant internal links throughout the content. Aside from improving internal linking, this also encourages further site exploration.

Here is what topic clusters look like:

Focusing your content creation on these above strategies will inevitably increase your site’s Page Authority as more searchers and external pages notice your content. 

Start Boosting Your PA with AI-Powered Internal Linking

Page Authority measures how likely your web page will outrank competitors in search engine results. There are countless ways to boost PA. Some are a little beyond your control, like building backlinks. Others are well within your grasp, such as content creation and internal linking. 

If you need any help building internal links across your web pages, LinkStorm can help. The tool uses AI-aided semantic analysis technology to find internal link suggestions that would have otherwise been undiscovered.

Stop spending hours manually scanning pages and looking for internal link opportunities. Let the machine do it exactly how you would have done it.

Try LinkStorm now for FREE and start boosting your Page Authority.