Ranking and Domain/Page Authority
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I'm not seeing a very good correlation between ranking and domain/page authority. Am I missing something here? ie., 2nd raning at 1/0. Also seeing competitor as "12" domain authority in "competitive domain analysis", but shows much higher here for same competitor?
<colgroup><col width="94"> <col width="171"> <col width="108"></colgroup>
| Page Authority | Page Linking Root Domains | Domain Authority |
| 70 | 40 | 83 |
| 1 | 0 | 41 |
| 51 | 3 | 97 |
| 34 | 5 | 36 |
| 41 | 3 | 52 |
| 23 | 1 | 59 |
| 59 | 49 | 100 |
| 48 | 2 | 100 |
| 52 | 6 | 77 |
| 27 | 2 | 14 |
| 1 | 0 | 57 |
| 15 | 1 | 36 |
| 28 | 2 | 36 |
| 28 | 2 | 36 |
| 24 | 1 | 57 |
| 28 | 2 | 36 |
| 21 | 1 | 36 | -
In my example presented, If I have competitors ranking higher with lower domain authority and page authority than my site (respectfully with domain authority having greater weight),.. What conclusions can I make around what activities or actions I should be taking to improve my site's ranking?
These metrics are to give you a quick whiff of the competition. Do they have dozens or thousands of linking roots? Are they all DA of 25 or less or are their some heavyweights in there.
In my opinion they do not provide any guidance at all on what the next job you should take to improve your site.
My conclusion would be to spend my time improving the site in ways that the visitor will appreciate and spend less time looking at these numbers.
Bottom line, if my goal is compete with other sites, how do I determine from SeoMoz metrics, what I should do to stay competitive, given low correlation?
Don't worship these numbers.
What can you do to make the visitor stay on your site more? Tweet about it? Link to it?
These numbers are not guidance on how to improve your website.
You should look at them to decide if you want to attack a keyword. Then look at them about twice a year.
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Thank-you for your reply.
But, isn't the point of the metrics to provide the ability to evaluate your site and adjust accordingly. Otherwise, these values have little meaning. I understand the imperfection around making conclusions around Google algorithms, but if there is very little correlation with these metrics and how Google sees my site, then I can't use that data to conclude anything about the quality of my site in the eyes of the SERP.
In my example presented, If I have competitors ranking higher with lower domain authority and page authority than my site (respectfully with domain authority having greater weight), what conclusions can I make around what activities or actions I should be taking to improve my site's ranking? Why would I care about SeoMoz metrics if they aren't ultimately helping me achieve my desired result - rank higher and increase traffic.
Also remains is my question around conflicting data on domain authority change. Any reason for difference in ranking section and competitive analysis section?
Bottom line, if my goal is compete with other sites, how do I determine from SeoMoz metrics, what I should do to stay competitive, given low correlation?
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Page authority and domain authority are SEOmoz metrics.
They are great for tracking your progress over time.
Google uses different metrics to rank websites so agreement between PA/DA and rankings generally does not occur.
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