What is Page Authority (Web Page Authority)?

Did you ever hear the phrase "Page Authority" but weren't quite sure what it meant? If so, read on to learn everything you need to know about page authority and how it can help your website's search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Page authority is a measure of how influential or authoritative a web page is deemed by search engines like Google or Bing. It can help you better understand the value of individual web pages relative to one another. In this blog post, we'll go over exactly what page authority is, explore why it matters for your SEO rankings, and discuss simple tips and tricks that will help you increase page authority scores for websites and their associated content pieces.

What Is Page Authority?

Page authority(PA) is one of the metrics developed by Moz. It is used for calculating the overall worthiness of the backlinks of a webpage. It only takes represent the ranking factor of your page. Instead, it gives a comparative analysis between the web pages of your site and your competitors.

The higher the PA value, the higher the chance of the search engines ranking your page in the organic search results. High-scored PA is achieved through quality content creation and strategic link building. Besides, you also have to implement some other SEO measures. 

Remember, it is only one metric. It does not represent the overall quality or SEO value of a webpage.

How Moz Scores the Page Authority of a Webpage?

PA is based on a 100 logarithmic scale. A higher PA score increases the chance of a webpage ranking higher in search results.

Page authority (PA) is scored based on several criteria. The three most common measures include the following −

Last Update

The PA metric checks when the page was last updated. If the page is not updated for a long time, it can impact the score. As a result, the chances of it showing on the SERP decrease. You can boost your score by making frequent updates to your web pages. 

Whenever something changes on your page, google bots will crawl into it to index it. So, when you update your old content, google will index it more often. The more frequently Google indexes your page, the more likely it will appear in search results.

Page Trustworthiness

Google and other search engines prefer quality over quantity. The worthiness of the page is usually based on the quality of links pointing at it. If you have high-quality external and internal backlinks, google will consider your page more worthy. 

On the contrary, low-quality and irrelevant links will negatively affect your PA score. This decreases the authority of the page. 

Link Contribution to the Page

PA calculates the number of unique domains pointing to your page. 

It also considers (is not limited to) the following −

• Followed and no-follow links

• 301s and 3012s redirects

• New and old links

• Domain name 

All the above-listed factors are based on the data from Mozscape Web Index. 

The Mozscape web index is a Moz tool that replicates the Googlebot's behavior. It scores a map based on all the factors that Googlebot considers while ranking a page. 

The scores are calculated by weighing, compiling, and placing all the factors in a machine-learning model. Then it is further compared with the training data accumulated from Google's SERP. 

Moz's algorithm learns google's algorithm model and makes ranking predictions for a webpage. 

Moz cannot 100% replicate google's algorithm. However, it can help you estimate whether your page is well-equipped to be ranked on search results. 

What is Considered a "Good" Page Authority?

PA is not scored as "good" or "bad ." It is scored based on a number between 1-100. The higher is always, the better. However, not every page can achieve a score above 90. 

Moz changes the scoring system based on your goal. If you set the goal to rank on the first page of Google, it will be much harder for your page to score 90 in PA. That means your webpage must fulfill a higher requirement to reach a higher rank.

How to check the page authority of a webpage?

You can check your page authority using various tools like Moz, Ahrefs, small SEO tools, site checkers, etc. However, the most used one is the MOZ Link Explorer. 

Enter the targeted webpage link on the Link Explorer box and click "Get free link data."

It will generate complete link metrics of your website, including page authority (PA) and domain authority (DA). 

It also shows the following −

• Research competitors backlinks

• Broken links

• Spam score of backlinks

• New and lost links

• Link building opportunities

• Research top-performing contents

Meanwhile, you can also check other sources to compare the PA scores. For example, the Ahrefs website authority checker allows you to check the domain rating.

How to Improve Page Authority?

Here are some of the ways to improve your page authority −

Make the Selection

Go through your website and select the pages you want google to crawl first. In simple words, choose the pages with high SEO value. This includes pages you wanted to rank in search results.

Use a Sitemap

Create a sitemap and include all the links in it. A sitemap instructs Google bots about the hierarchy of pages on your website. It tells the crawlers which pages they should crawl first. There are tools to create a sitemap. However, you can do it manually if you have a small site.

Create High-quality Content

Updating your website with new content is a significant attractor of google crawlers. Googlebot crawls the website and indexes them. This increases the chance of getting ranked in search results. However, posting random and low-quality content doesn't count. 

Therefore, you need to be better than your competitors. You must create unique content offering genuine and accurate information to your users. Make sure to add references, scientific data, statistics, and other elements to increase the reliability of your content.

Get External Backlinks

Getting backlinks from highly authoritative pages increases your chance of boosting your PA. When someone gives you backlinks, it says they trust your content. As a result, Google also trusts your content. These links show that your page is trustworthy and authoritative.

Do Internal Linking

Internal linking is when you add links from one page to another within your website. It is as important as external linking. It helps users and search engines to find pages within the website. 

For example, Suppose you add link A to link B, then B to link C. This makes it easier for users and search engines to find and index all links. On the contrary, suppose you don't add link C in link B, search engine crawlers will stop crawling at link B. That means link C may not be crawled sooner or may not get crawled at all.

Why Did My Page Authority Change?

It is hard to determine the exact cause behind the change in PA. 

This is because it could be due to several factors, such as −

Your DA is lower than your competitors

Moz removed some of your links as a ranking factor

High-authoritative sites got more growth than you. 

The change in PA could be due to one of the above factors or all. You should check them individually and collectively to fix the issue.