Table of Contents
What is Authority?
“Authority is a measure of any web property that significantly affects the property’s overall visibility and ranking in search engines.”
This means that authority is a critical element of strong SEO. Many SEO strategies, like creating educational content and building backlinks, are done in order to increase authority. Page authority and domain authority are two ways to measure authority.
Also, authority is a pretty strong indicator of your overall SEO performance!
What is Domain Authority?
Domain authority is a measurement of the authority and trustworthiness of an entire website. A website’s authority score predicts its chances of ranking well in search engines. In other words, the higher a website’s authority the more likely they are to rank highly in search results.
The domain authority metric was originally developed by Moz. They introduced it as a score to predict how well a website will rank on search engine results pages. The metric is calculated using a variety of factors including the number of backlinks and backlink sources. The metric ranges from 1-100 and is a relative measurement.
This metric gives individuals the ability to view their sites relative to their competitors. This can tell a business owner how easy it will be for them to outrank their competition.
What is Page Authority?
This metric shares the same overall concept as domain authority. It is a score that was originally created by Moz and it is also scored on a 100-point scale based on many factors. The purpose of this tool is also comparative, allowing users to compare webpages with on their websites against both competition and other webpages on their site.
The major difference between the two metrics is that page authority looks at the individual page level, not the entire website. This is an important distinction because websites with high domain authority can still have struggling pages that need attention, and this tool is very helpful for identifying those issues.
Recent Page Authority Update:
Page Authority 2.0
Recently Moz the creators of the page authority metric announced an update to how the score will be calculated. This update, Page Authority 2.0, will launch on September 30, 2020. This update will introduce new factors to the calculation of the score including a Spam Score, which represents the percentage of sites with similar features found penalized or banned by Google. Another new factor that they are introducing is link quality pattern identification.
The purpose of this update is to “to give [individuals] more clarity on the strength of their pages and domains, and to help identify where link-related efforts should be prioritized.”
Top Tips to Increase Page Authority
How can you increase page authority? These are some of the most important tips to ensure a higher page authority:
- If possible, create a page on a domain that already has high authority.
- Make sure that the content of the given page is detailed, organized, relevant, and original.
- Check that the page works well and that it is optimized for SEO.
- Include internal linking to and from the page.
- Build many high-quality backlinks directly to the page.
- Get rid of any bad links pointing to this webpage.
Top Tips to Increase Domain Authority
How can you increase domain authority? These are some of the most important tips to ensure a higher domain authority:
- Focus on creating high-quality content on your website, that is relevant and searchable
- Focus on building high-quality backlinks to your website (any page).
- Get rid of any bad links pointing to your site (any page).
Which Metric is More Important?
Both metrics are important to your search visibility and search rankings. However, domain authority generally needs more attention and prioritization compared to page authority. This is because it is a larger and more long-term investment and thus it has greater potential for a good ROI. In addition, your overall domain is usual more important for brand awareness than a single page.
That being said, it is still essential to utilize page authority in certain cases. For example, if you have an important webpage for the success of your business such as a registration page for events this page would need extra attention. In addition, if you have an excellent piece of content that you want to promote so that it is competitive in search results, you can focus on improving its page authority to help!
It is vital to use these metrics strategically for the best results. Determine your goals with authority and then build a plan. If you want to build your brand than emphasize increasing domain authority. If you want to promote a specific competitive page for a high-value keyword than emphasize increasing that page’s authority.
Take-Aways:
Domain Authority and Page Authority are both useful metrics to consider to ensure that your website is functioning optimally for SEO. Both scores can help you identify pain points in your website and strategies to improve these scores will also improve overall SEO! Guest posting can help increase both metrics and is easy to do.