Page Rank, Domain Authority, Page Authority

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi All,

I've been doing some research into PR, DA, and PA and was wondering what you are using as a benchmark when rating these values for your clients websites?

ie. what is considered a minimum score that you want to aim for?

 

[djbaxter]

Excellent question. These days there are so many ranking factors and so many continuous changes its hard to say but I would guess not Page Rank per se, not without authority. But knowing what Google uses to determine authority is another question.

I assume you mean as targets for your clients' sites in doing SEO? Or do you mean for obtaining links?

I'll look forward to seeing replies to this thread.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Thanks for the reply David. I was thinking in terms of our clients websites. But looking at it from an obtaining link perspective is important as well.

Looking forward to some input from the community.

 

[Howell]

PageRank is DEAD, and Google recently announced no more updates to the Tool Bar. Dead metric and has been for a while.

I go by domain age mostly these days, and do a deep background check on if the domain has changed hands, or changed themes. (which ruins authority).

Think TrustRank from here on.

As for linking partners...well if the site is similar in nature and you're NOT over anchor-texting the link...could be good.

 

[djbaxter]

PageRank is DEAD

Well not quite dead but public PR by now is very misleading. True PR (which only Google ever knew) is still a factor but now only a lower level one among 200-300 factors (or more by now).

 

[Dev]

Hi Colan,

I don't use any "authority" ranking with my clients as a target for SEO services. Typically I use benchmarks in website performance and page rankings for specific keywords. The reason for this is because authority metrics take time to build & develop properly. Whereas if you create a great piece of content on a page, fetch as Google and create a quality backlink to it you could be indexed and ranked well in a few days.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Hey Colan,

Out of all the metric to use, including Moz, Ahrefs, Majestic, etc. I stick with PA/DA.

However, I wouldn't report those to a client nor use it as a benchmark for myself, as they can be manipulated in a positive or even a negative manner.

A PA/DA can be manipulated by blasting links that Google deems irrelevant but Moz considers relevant because their algorithm isn't as sophisticated. I've only seen this happen once or twice but it still can happen.

A PA/DA can also be manipulated by people who purchase backlinks. Many backlinks now purchased are controlled solely by a third party. This third party can block the crawling of the website by the Moz crawler. Therefore, that backlink won't show up in OSE and won't be calculated in the PA/DA. Thankfully, in local it is much more rare as Local SEO's aren't incredibly sophisticated when it comes to gaming the system.

I only use PA/DA as a light measurement. Maybe to size up the difficulty of ranking in an industry/location as a whole.

I can tell you, for frame of reference, that a DA of 30+ for a local website is RARE. 99th percentile. Same for a PA of 35+ or so for the homepage. If you see a competitor like that (or even a potential client), just check their backlinks through Majestic. If they all check out, that is going to be a beast to beat more than likely (if they're a competitor) or a super easy client to work with (if, of course, a client).

Does that help?

 

[Jonathan Hatton]

Personally, when obtaining links, I don't really focus to heavily on DA/PA or any other metric to be honest.

I would try to get the links that come from the most relevant websites to that client.

For example, If I was looking for backlinks to a Beauty Spa. I would much rather have contextual links on 'low authority' Beauty/Make up/Style blogs. Than a higher authority, completely irrelevant website.

I believe Google, looks at the whole website behind that backlink to identify whether the source is relevant to your website or not.

 

[Laustin1878]

I've been using Moz Pro tools lately and have paid more attention to DA as it seems to have a stronger correlation to better rankings. This is just an observation. 25+ seems to be a target number for a newer site.

What's more important to me is the number of linking domains. Yes, the quality of a higher number of linking domains needs to be factored into the equation as the old quality vs quantity thought comes to mind. Some sites that I've been looking at that rank well seem to have a good number of linking domains. Further inspection shows a good amount of quality linking domains has to be the catalyst behind the healthy rankings.

Joshua, thanks for bringing up the point about sites blocking Moz crawlers. Never thought of that and I feel it's important to consider.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I only use PA/DA as a light measurement. Maybe to size up the difficulty of ranking in an industry/location as a whole.

I can tell you, for frame of reference, that a DA of 30+ for a local website is RARE. 99th percentile. Same for a PA of 35+ or so for the homepage. If you see a competitor like that (or even a potential client), just check their backlinks through Majestic. If they all check out, that is going to be a beast to beat more than likely (if they're a competitor) or a super easy client to work with (if, of course, a client).

Does that help?

Thanks for the feedback everybody!

Joshua, you make some great points. We also pay very close attention to a websites backlink profile when performing an audit. As you alluded to, you really need to look at both the DA and the link profile to understand what the DA is actually telling you.

 

[leadjoint]

Almost all ranks including Pagerank and DA are kind of misleading. You can use them to have a general idea about a domain, but if you are looking at investing time and effort into building a link, I would recommend moving beyond these metrices. Use one of the SEO auditing tools or backlink monitoring services to identify the kind of websites linking back to the target site - if the backlink volume is low, or if the backlinks are primarily from footers/sidebars, or from spammy sites, then that's a site I would avoid. If the backlink profile of the target site is great, then I think you should go ahead with building a link from this.