Everything You Should Know About Page Authority (PA)

What is Page Authority?

Page Authority is a metric created by Moz to indicate the authority of all web pages on the internet. Since Google stopped updating their PageRank data and made it available to the public, Page Authority has been the industry standard for predicting how a specific web page will perform in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

PA is measured on a scale of 1-100. A higher score means a web page has strong authority and will stand a better chance at ranking well. A lower score means it will be more difficult for the page to compete against other similar pages in the search results.

Difference Between Page Authority (PA) and Domain Authority (DA)

Page Authority (PA) is a metric that predicts how a web page is likely to rank in the SERPs. On the other hand, Domain Authority shows how well a specific website is likely to rank in the SERPs.

The Page Authority of a web page mostly depends on the links pointing to it. It also helps if the website has a high DA, as some of that authority will be channeled to each new page created by the site. Building your DA is more of a long-term investment while PA is more short-term.

Page Authority is a useful metric when you have a piece of content you want to rank well in the search results. You can compare the PA of your website, with the PA of your competitors who are already ranking well. This will help you gauge the possibility of outranking these competitor pages. To ensure pages rank well, try to build as many high-quality links to them as you can.

You should also link to your pages internally from other pages of your website. This can either be from your navigation menus or from any other relevant posts you have already published on your blog. This will direct link juice and authority to any new pages you create on your site. You can also create external backlinks, pointing to your web pages, by publishing content as a guest blogger on other websites.

Time Can Impact PA and DA Rankings

Keep in mind that the PA of web pages may change over time. If a particular page on your website has a PA of 30 this month, that doesn’t mean the value will remain constant for the next couple of months.

Typically, pages will increase in authority over time as they gain more links and the site gains more domain authority overall. However, it’s possible for a page’s authority to decrease too, if you lose backlinks, or if there has been an update in Moz’s algorithms on how they calculate the DA and PA metrics.

Just like when trying to increase your DA, you should attain backlinks from other sources when trying to increase PA. If a single blog post has 200 social shares and 100 backlinks, it will have more page authority compared to a newly created page which has none.

Both PA and DA work together for the overall success of your website. As a page’s authority increases, it will naturally increase the domain authority too. According to SEO experts, PA is quicker to achieve than DA. However, DA deserves more attention than PA if you’re looking at the long-term.

Remember, it’s more difficult to boost the score from 70-80 than it is to boost it from 20-30. This is true for both PA and DA. It becomes progressively more difficult to improve ranking as the score increases.

Now that we have a good understanding of how Page Authority is calculated, let’s take a look at some strategies for boosting the authority of your pages.

How to Increase Page Authority

Many of the strategies for improving your Page Authority are the same strategies to increase your Domain Authority. You can read our earlier post on increasing your Domain Authority for strategies on how to increase the authority of all the pages of your website simultaneously. This will give you a head start when it comes in ranking the internal pages of your website in future posts you publish.

Here are some fundamental ways you can improve your Page Authority.

1. Make Sure Your Content is Interesting

The content you publish is a huge asset when it comes to increasing your Page Authority. Every page on your site should feature high-quality content which is relevant to the keywords being searched for. To get a better idea of what you should produce, you should know your audience. Think about the kind of content your visitors will be searching for.

Unfortunately, most businesses create content with little or no substance – this is definitely not ideal. Content is not just a web page you post on the internet to get search traffic from keywords. It should be information that answers people’s related questions. It should be easy to digest and offer a solution to the challenges the website visitor is trying to overcome.

Great content will also be shared via popular social media platforms. Make sure it’s likable content, to boost your PA score and search traffic.

2. Publish New Content Regularly

It’s difficult to improve your Page Authority without bringing new content to your website or blog. When you don’t publish new posts or you do publish the same rehashed content, you’ll have trouble attracting links from other bloggers.

To achieve high rankings, the information you publish should be comprehensive and useful. Google prioritizes new content, so you should update it regularly. If you hang onto the same old content and don’t refresh it to stay current, it may become obsolete, which in turn could hurt your PA score.

3. Post Useful And Relevant Content

Relevant content delivers the right message to your target audience. The information you post on your web pages should begin with proper research.

Generally, it should focus on the needs and wants of your target audience. Again, the key to a higher PA score is posting useful and relevant content. This is content which people are searching for, whether it be about a specific topic, or a blogger looking for a post they can link to.

4. Make Sure The Content is Easy to Read

The content you publish on your blog should be easy to read. Most readers scan web pages, so the content should be easy to digest. If nobody is reading and engaging with your content, you can say goodbye to backlinks and social shares which would increase your Page Authority.

One way of making your content readable is by using line breaks. For a lengthy page, you should use lots of white space and don’t make your paragraphs too long. Additionally, you should break the information with compelling subheadings. Don’t forget to use bullet lists too.

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5. Use Images to Improve Readability And Increase Sharing

You may wonder whether or not your web pages and blog posts need images. Well, the answer is a resounding YES.

If you want to spice up the dull words in your content and break up the text, you should use stock images, infographics, data flow diagrams and charts. When you add photos, videos and other graphics to your content, you’ll encourage readers to stay on the page as it makes the content much more visually attractive. Adding images will also enhance the SEO value of your page.

Additionally, dazzling and eye-catching images will make your content more shareable. When people share your content on social media, the post image is one of the first things that will grab their attention. If there is no image, they probably won’t read or share it.

6. Increase Your Inbound Links

Inbound links can bring more traffic to your web pages. They are also considered a strong indicator of quality and are one of the most important ranking signals for SEO and increasing your Page Authority.

The easiest way to increase your inbound links is to build links from authority websites to your blog posts. You can do this in many different ways. Some of these include guest blog posting, contributing to online forums and posting on social media.

Guest posting on other authority blogs in your niche is a great way to get high authority backlinks to your blog posts without having to wait for bloggers to link to you naturally.

Contributing to forums and answering people’s questions is a great hack for getting instant backlinks to your posts. Forums with big names hold more authority. When you participate in forums such as Quora and Reddit, you can answer questions and provide a link to your blog posts where the person asking the question can read more on the topic.

Finally, you should promote your content on social media. The more exposure your content has, the higher the probability other website owners will come across it and link to it. When you receive more links, Google recognizes your site as trustworthy and rewards you with better rankings.

7. Remove Harmful Links From Your Web Pages

If bad links point to your page, they can nullify the benefits of the good ones. This can lead to lower PA or even a penalty from Google.

The only way you can identify the harmful links is to conduct a link audit. You should remove links from spammy sites. These are sites with poor quality content and links which have over-optimized anchor texts.

You should politely ask the webmasters responsible for the sites to remove the links. Alternatively, you can request Google to remove them by using the Disavow Tool if you are unable to get in touch with the webmaster.

The Bottom Line

Website owners and SEOs use page authority scores to compare one web page to another. In order to beat your competition, focus on producing content which is better than theirs and has more high authority backlinks. You should focus on both internal and external backlinks to boost your PA score.

As with other metrics in SEO, you may not have direct control over your page authority. However, if you apply the above strategies, then you should be able to boost the PA of your content in the fastest possible time.

Not only that, but by focusing on a quality-first approach to your content marketing, and incorporating general SEO principles in your blog posts, your blog will become a dominant authority in its niche.

If you need help with your website, search engine optimization, and digital marketing in general, let us know. You can connect with us on our contact page, or through the contact form below.