What Page authority is
Page Authority (PA) is a Moz metric that predicts, on a scale from 1 to 100, how likely a specific URL is to rank in search results, based mainly on the links pointing to it. It is not a Google ranking factor; Domain Authority (DA) is its equivalent for a whole domain.
Why it is important
According to Moz, the higher a URL's PA, the more likely it is to rank well, and pages on domains with a high DA tend to start with an advantage. Together, the two metrics give a quick estimate of a page's ranking potential and make it easy to compare it with the pages that already rank for the same search.
That is why SEO consultants want this score to be as high as possible, as long as it is not inflated artificially with spammy links. It is a predictive metric, though: Google does not use it, so a higher PA is a sign of a stronger link profile, not a ranking factor in itself.
How to measure page authority
Page Authority itself is only calculated by Moz, and you can check it in Moz Link Explorer or with the MozBar browser extension. Other SEO tools do not show PA, but offer their own equivalent metrics:
- Moz: Page Authority (Link Explorer and MozBar).
- Semrush: Authority Score.
- Ahrefs toolbar: URL Rating (UR).
- Majestic: Trust Flow and Citation Flow.
Difference between Domain Authority and Page Authority
While Page Authority measures the strength of a single page, Domain Authority (DA) measures the strength of a domain or subdomain. In this way, the DA gives you aggregated information for the entire domain or project as a whole.
How to increase page authority
The most direct way to raise PA is to earn external links pointing to that specific page. The better those links are, the better for the metric: links from authoritative websites on topics related to your project count far more than many links from weak or unrelated sites.
Internal links also help, because they pass authority from your strongest pages to the ones you want to push. Content worth citing (original data, tools, complete guides) is what attracts links naturally over time.
In conclusion:
The page authority score is a very useful metric for SEO consultants that allows you to measure the potential to position a given page in search engines. However, it is a metric that can be easily manipulated and should never be considered as an end in itself.
Important: DA and PA are indexes or metrics, they are not an SEO factor taken into account by Google or other search engines. Focusing on optimizing these indicators without taking into account the SEO factors will allow you to manipulate these metrics but will not necessarily help to improve your project.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Page Authority is a metric created by Moz that estimates on a scale from 1 to 100 how likely a specific URL is to rank in Google, based on the quantity and quality of links pointing to it.
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Domain Authority measures the strength of the entire domain, while Page Authority is calculated at the individual URL level. That is why two pages on the same domain can have very different PAs.
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By building relevant, high-quality links pointing to that URL, reinforcing internal linking from authoritative pages and improving the depth and quality of the content to attract editorial links naturally.