Before we get into discussion on Domain authority vs Page authority, let me ask something.
How many of you know about PageRank?
PageRank is a metric developed by Larry Page – Google Founder – for measuring the quality of a website.
The funda behind PageRank is simple. Websites with higher number of quality incoming links will be given a better PageRank.
But this metric became less relevant as Google stopped updating this algorithm during last few years.
As a result, two major metrics developed by Moz became the favourites of SEO experts – Domain Authority and Page Authority. Read here what Jayson DeMers has to say about domain authority and PageRank.
Learning Points
- What is domain authority?
- How is domain authority calculated?
- How to improve domain authority of your website?
- What is Page authority?
- How to increase page authority?
- Difference between page authority and domain authority
Know about Moz
Moz is a US based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company founded by Rand Fishkin and Gillian Muessig in 2004. Moz sells digital marketing as well as marketing analytics software subscriptions online. Moz has also developed many important SEO metrics. MozRank, MozTrust, Domain authority and Page Authority are some important Moz metrics for SEO. Let’s try to understand these metrics.
Moz Domain Authority, Moz Page Authority, MozRank and MozTrust
Let’s start with Domain Authority.
What does Domain Authority mean?
- Domain Authority is a metric that determines the chances for a website to rank well on Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
It’s calculated on a logarithmic scale ranging from 1 to 100. Higher the score, higher is your website’s ability to rank well.
- Page Authority on the other hand predicts how well a specific web page would rank on Search Engine Results Page.
The methodology for calculation of Page Authority is same as that of Domain Authority.
In short while Domain authority measures ranking strength of an entire domain, Page authority measures ranking strength of a single web page.
Page authority is also calculated on a logarithmic scale ranging from 1 to 100.
- MozRank is a metric used to measure popularity of a link.
MozRank is determined based on the number and quality of incoming links to the link. Higher the number of quality links, higher the MozRank.
- MozTrust is like MozRank but instead of measuring Link popularity MozTrust measures link trust.
MozTrust measures trustworthiness of a web page relative to other pages in internet. For example, if your page has links from trusted websites like government websites, you could get a high MozTrust score.
How Domain Authority and Page Authority are Calculated
Moz cumulates a lot of link metrics together to generate Domain Authority Score.
- Link counts
- MozRank
- MozTrust and many more factors are considered for determining Domain Authority score.
Moz uses a machine learning model to aggregate more than 40 different factors to determine the rankability of domains.
Image Source
Calculation of page authority also happens in the same way.
One important point about both these scores is that they are not absolute scores.
These scorings are done relative to other domains or pages. Predicting these scores are also difficult as these scores are based on the algorithm which changes frequently.
Calculating these metrics for SEO purpose is tedious. You can make use of tools like Moz domain authority checker for this.
Domain Authority versus Page Authority
We have seen what domain authority and page authority are. While domain authority is about the ranking strength of an entire domain, Page authority is for individual pages in the domain.
The most important question here is then which one among these two is most important from an SEO perspective.
I would say there are more similarities between Domain authority and Page authority than there are differences.
We have already seen that both are calculated in the same way. Even the factors affecting both these metrics are similar.
We will discuss those in the next sub heading. Let us start with the differences between domain authority and page authority.
Achieving a high domain authority score takes more time and effort compared to page authority score.
Also, you have more options as in where to apply your strategies.
Page authority score can be improved quickly since here we work only on a specific page. Also, both these metrics could complement each other.
Improving page authority score of different pages in the domain could improve your overall domain authority score.
Also, boosting your overall domain authority score would have a positive impact on the page authority scores of individual pages in the domain.
Strategies for Improving Domain Authority and Page Authority
First let’s see how do we increase domain authority for our website.
- Try to add good number of high quality inbound links in your website. You can have these on any page in your domain. Make use of open site explorer Moz for high quality inbound links.
- Make sure the different pages in your website are linked to each other internally.
- Get rid of low quality links.
- Don’t indulge in Black Hat SEO.
- Finally make sure your domain has high quality content in it.
Strategies to increase page authority scores are similar as both Domain authority and Page authority are calculated based on similar algorithms. Let’s see some of them.
- Make sure the page is created on a domain with a high domain authority score.
- Your page should have high quality, original and SEO optimized content.
- Ambient number of high quality inbound links – both from external sources as well as from other pages in the same domain.
- Avoid low quality links.
It’s advised to have an effective SEO authority strategy. Analysing metrics like domain scores and domain ranks are equally important.
Also keep a track of authority scores. Tools like bulk domain authority checker and other page authority checkers can be used for this.
Wrapping it Up
So far, we have seen many aspects of both Domain Authority and Page authority.
My recommendation would be to concentrate on how to increase Domain authority. Because investing in domain authority would have an overall impact in your domain.
It helps in building brand for your domain. Progress may be slow, but the gains in long term will be many.
Eventually it will help in improving page authority of individual pages too.