Domain Authority and Page Authority

[Laustin1878]

For those who look at these metrics on Moz, what do you normally see, on average, as the difference between domain authority (DA) and the page authority (PA) for your top level pages, main navigation pages?

I have not come across a site that has a PA that is relatively close to the DA (when looking at higher authority sites, 30+ DA). I'm trying to gauge domain and authority flow throughout websites but haven't seen a good example. I have not looked at 100 sites but I've been trying to better understand and analyze how others have successfully achieved passing authority to second and third level pages.

I have written a few well received and quality articles where after they have ranked well, I've gone back and added a few links to important pages of the site and have not noted the boost I was expecting to see. As always, I'm looking to hone in more on my skills.

 

[Christa Morgante]

Others may have more insight, but I think it's pretty rare if not, impossible to find an internal page with higher authority than the domain. Even when an internal page ranks in the SERPs, the domain will always have higher trust and authority by the SE's, since that is the root of the information.

In this case, I think using Google Analytics is a much better/more accurate measurement of how your internal pages are performing rather looking solely at page authority.

 

[Laustin1878]

Sorry if I wasn't more clear. Im with you, I don't think you'll ever see an internal page have higher authority. I was looking for good examples where the DA and the PA are close or closer, indicating a website that has successfully passed authority to internal pages.

 

[Christa Morgante]

No worries! Unfortunately, I have no examples or stats on that.

 

[Greg Schueler]

It depends on the pages of your site and the links that are pointed to them.
Most people get way more links to their home page, so it usually has the highest PA/DA/PR...etc.

If you have an awesome back page (like a tool that gets a lot of use) with many people pointing to it, that back page can have a higher authority than the whole domain.

See this for example: http://www.5minutesite.com/local_keywords.php (PA 46 - DA 35)

It's a great tool by the way ;-)

 

[JacobMaslow]

Links tend to go more to the home page especially for a local business.

This forum has lots of great posts and plenty of fresh content. It is quoted by Barry Schwartz and others. These big guys link to specific articles.

Nevertheless, it is a DA46 with a PA on the home page of 55.

Wikipedia is a DA of 100 and PA of 96.

For those who look at these metrics on Moz, what do you normally see, on average, as the difference between domain authority (DA) and the page authority (PA) for your top level pages, main navigation pages?

I have not come across a site that has a PA that is relatively close to the DA (when looking at higher authority sites, 30+ DA). I'm trying to gauge domain and authority flow throughout websites but haven't seen a good example. I have not looked at 100 sites but I've been trying to better understand and analyze how others have successfully achieved passing authority to second and third level pages.

I have written a few well received and quality articles where after they have ranked well, I've gone back and added a few links to important pages of the site and have not noted the boost I was expecting to see. As always, I'm looking to hone in more on my skills.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

While it is uncommon, there are still many websites that have internal pages with higher PA than their DA.

PA and DA are not equal measurements, just to be clear. If you have a PA of 38 and and a DA of 37, that does not mean your page has a higher authority than your domain. They are two separate measurements on two separate scales.

 

[foodnearme]

PA can often be misinterpreted as if your DA is high, naturally the authority will be passed onto your inner pages if set up correctly.

I would worry about your rankings, not DA any whom.

 

[JacobMaslow]

DA affects your ability to rank. You can say that I wouldn't worry about citations or I wouldn't worry about meta data or ....


Putting work you put into DA, meta titles, citations, content etc will affect your rankings.

PA can often be misinterpreted as if your DA is high, naturally the authority will be passed onto your inner pages if set up correctly.

I would worry about your rankings, not DA any whom.

 

[foodnearme]

DA affects your ability to rank. You can say that I wouldn't worry about citations or I wouldn't worry about meta data or ....


Putting work you put into DA, meta titles, citations, content etc will affect your rankings.

Domain Authority is not cited as Google so it doesn't affect any ability to rank, although can be measured to determine the authority of your competition.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I think you're both saying the same thing.

DA is a measurement by Moz that attempts to emulate how Google ranks a website's domain as a whole.

One of you is saying it's Moz's measurement, not Google's, so don't get too mixed up over it.

The other is saying that you should work on things that move your domain authority, which Google will also look at, backlinks, etc.

You're both right.

It's also worth keeping in mind that while Moz claims PA is the best correlating measurement on the web, they don't mention that about DA and it seems like maybe they have less confidence in it. Which makes sense as PA correlates to an actual Google internal tool, Page Rank. But as far as we know, there is no current internal measurement in Google like Page Rank for domain authority. So, DA would be harder to predict anyway since there isn't a current model for it that we are aware of.

Also keep in mind that PA and DA are based off of link metrics found through their Open Site Explorer, which is less than accurate. In my experience, it finds less than 40% (maybe even lower) of your backlinks out there. So without that extra data, how accurate is PA and DA anyway?

 

[foodnearme]

I think you're both saying the same thing.

DA is a measurement by Moz that attempts to emulate how Google ranks a website's domain as a whole.

One of you is saying it's Moz's measurement, not Google's, so don't get too mixed up over it.

The other is saying that you should work on things that move your domain authority, which Google will also look at, backlinks, etc.

You're both right.

It's also worth keeping in mind that while Moz claims PA is the best correlating measurement on the web, they don't mention that about DA and it seems like maybe they have less confidence in it. Which makes sense as PA correlates to an actual Google internal tool, Page Rank. But as far as we know, there is no current internal measurement in Google like Page Rank for domain authority. So, DA would be harder to predict anyway since there isn't a current model for it that we are aware of.

Also keep in mind that PA and DA are based off of link metrics found through their Open Site Explorer, which is less than accurate. In my experience, it finds less than 40% (maybe even lower) of your backlinks out there. So without that extra data, how accurate is PA and DA anyway?

Agreed.

To add;

If you're in a local market, and comparing your domain to Yelp or the likes anywhom it's no wonder why you may be scared.

Relevance always plays a key also, so say for example you're up against Yelp but you own a local pest removal service with hundreds of relevant pages to your niche then automatically you may find DA/PA irrelevant factors.

Edit: So many scenarios to compare, so I think we're all doing fine

 

[Laustin1878]

Thank you all for the responses.

As with most data and tools, you have to take them with a grain of salt. Moz attempts to display value of a page with PA. How well it does this is certainly a debate. I was only looking to use this as part of a gauge to see how authority is passed from the homepage and understand "page/authority flow" better. Of course, rankings is important but if you are not properly passing authority from your main pages to your internal pages, it's going to be harder to get them to display in the SERP's.

Side bar.... Josh, you mention Open Site Explore and how it doesn't always find links. Which tools are you using for this type of data?

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Thank you all for the responses.

As with most data and tools, you have to take them with a grain of salt. Moz attempts to display value of a page with PA. How well it does this is certainly a debate. I was only looking to use this as part of a gauge to see how authority is passed from the homepage and understand "page/authority flow" better. Of course, rankings is important but if you are not properly passing authority from your main pages to your internal pages, it's going to be harder to get them to display in the SERP's.

Side bar.... Josh, you mention Open Site Explore and how it doesn't always find links. Which tools are you using for this type of data?

Majestic seems to be the tool I see most SEO's using. Although ahrefs is probably equal in quality. I'm just too use to majestic now

Using PA to understand how juice is passed between pages is tough. Moz is using public information (patents, the original PR paper floating around out there) to understand how Google passes juice. They may not have even coded that into PA, or maybe they did. I would read a few articles on interlinking and PR juice and you'll be pretty well armed with what you need.