What is Page Authority (PA)?

While Domain Authority measures the overall ranking health and backlink profile of an entire domain (such as nytimes.com), Page Authority measures the ranking capability of a single, specific URL or web page (such as nytimes.com/specific-news-article).

Developed originally by the SEO experts at Moz, Page Authority utilizes a logarithmic 100-point scale. It predicts the likelihood that a specific page will outrank competing pages on Google's Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Because it is a predictive metric created by third parties, it is frequently used by content marketers to determine if a newly launched blog post has enough "juice" to compete for its target keyword.

How Page Authority Differ From Domain Authority

It is perfectly common for a website to have a Domain Authority of 85, while a newly published blog post on that same site has a Page Authority of just 20. Here's why:

• Root Origins: DA represents the aggregate sum of all backlinks pointing anywhere on your site. PA represents only the backlinks pointing to the specific URL in question.
• Time Dependency: It takes time for search engines to crawl a new page, discover links pointing to it, and funnel authority toward it. Older pages generally have higher PA simply because they have had more time to accrue backlinks organically.
• Internal Linking: A page can leverage the DA of its host domain through a smart internal linking strategy. A URL placed prominently on the homepage will inherit far more Page Authority than an "orphan page" buried deep in pagination.

How to Improve Your Page Authority

Since the Page Authority calculation heavily mirrors the variables used for Domain Authority, the strategies for increasing it revolve almost exclusively around link acquisition—but applied specifically to the exact URL rather than the homepage.

1. Build Direct Inbound Links

The most effective method for inflating the PA of a specific URL is launching a link-building outreach campaign focused entirely on that page. If you've just published a massive "Ultimate Guide to Cloud Computing," reach out to tech bloggers and ask them to link directly to that guide, rather than your homepage.

2. Optimize Internal Linking

Backlinks are not the only way to generate authority. You can distribute the authority "juice" flowing into your domain across your subpages artificially. Identify the most highly-linked pages on your site (typically your homepage, about page, or legacy viral posts), and place internal contextual links from those pages pointing to the lower-PA page you want to boost.

3. Clean Up Broken Links

Broken external links pointing to a 404 page waste valuable Page Authority. If an external site is trying to link to your /old-product page but it no longer exists, that PA evaporates into thin air. Use a reliable 301 Redirect to push that defunct URL's authority toward a related, live page on your network.

Evaluating Competitor URLs

The primary use-case for a Page Authority Checker is competitor analysis. Suppose you find a keyword with moderate traffic volume. Before you spend a week drafting an article to target it, you should input the URLs currently occupying the top 3 spots on Google into our checker.

If the URL in Position #1 has a PA of 90, it is cemented into the search results and will be extraordinarily difficult to surpass. However, if the URLs occupying Positions #1 through #3 all have a PA below 25, that signals a golden content opportunity. It tells you that Google does not have highly authoritative content to fulfill the search intent, giving your new content a legitimate shot at ranking quickly.