Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What's more important page authority Vs domain authority?
-
Hello everyone,
I am fairly new to SEO so I'm still trying to get my head round everything, I am currently looking into some back links .. well looking at competitor's back links to copy. I was just wondering what's more important page authority or domain authority?
So for example if a page has a page authority of 50 and a domain authority of 10 is that better than if a page have page authority 10 and a domain authority of 50.
Thanks so much in advance!
-
I find Domain Authority to typically be a much stronger candidate for results. Installing the "mozbar" to your browser and using it (make sure you are logged into Moz) will really help show you what I am speaking of. Many times, websites like Yelp will list on the first page for a business with a page that has a Page Authority of 1, but the DA of the site is so strong that it outranks other pages with a much higher PA.
The way I see it, PA will help get a certain page to rank, but DA will get all your pages to rank (which will help diversify your SEO thus bringing way more traffic to your site for different sets of keywords.) Remember, each page should be for a different topic, so if your front page is for your main target keyword strand, and you have a high PA but a low DA, your site is likely to rank for that one term, but all the interior pages wont. Whereas, if you have a higher DA, you can rank higher for every page on your site with different keywords. The best way to do this is to link multiple pages from your site. For instance if you are guest blogging, don't just include a link to your front page. Try to include a few links to interior pages as well for relative topics. Also, I have actually seen Google Adwords give stronger DA. I know many will argue this, but when campaigning on adwords, you can send different keywords to different pages. Users entering your site through interior pages is a good thing, as Google seeing everyone come to your site from the front page can sometimes lower your DA.
Hope this helped!
-
page authority and domain authority are a good measure of how good a website is (but not the only measure!). Think about where your post and link are going to be in the long term. For example, if you are guest posting, the post may be on the home page for a week or 2 but then it will be archived so you need to look the inner pages of a website and look at the authority of that page.
If a website has a much higher page authority than domain authority then it's a sign to me that it isn't that good. It'd be much better to have a higher domain authority than page authority because it will show that the website has been up and running for a while.
Also look at the last time Google cached the website and the inner pages, that way you will see how often Google revisits the website and the chances of your link getting cached. Look at some popular websites and look at the domain vs page authority scores, the home page maybe slightly bigger but not that much.
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
linking domain issues
Hello guys. I am having issues with my linking domains. These domains are made outside of my website. I have tried to disavow these links but not able to do it. These are mostly from google redirects links. Here is the```
Link Building | | Rom1988z
code_text0 -
What Makes A 'Natural Link Profile'?
I find it hard to recognize unnatural link patterns when the links to my site are so familiar. It can be hard to see the wood for the trees! How many links from one site is too many? Does it depend on the size of the site? Thanks for your advice on this.
Link Building | | T0BY0 -
Does the root domain hold more power then an inner page?
Question, Lets say a new domain is launched, the root domain and an inner page target the same term. Google comes along for the first time and indexes the website. Does it see the target term on the homepage as more important then the inner page because you are putting it on the root? I get the feeling terms connected directly with the root domain have a better chance of ranking then the term being on a inner page. Any thoughts on this?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?
Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why: If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course) I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not? In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias? Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?
Link Building | | Static_Shift3 -
How do sites have so many 'total links'?
I've been analyzing some of our competitors: essayedge.com and papercheck.com Both sites have a large number of 'total links'... about 93,000 each. The former has about 1,200 linking root domains while the latter only has 195. Even for 1,200 linking root domains, 93k total links seems like a ton to me. Our site has 101 linking root domains and only 299 'total links'. I'm quite new to this whole SEO game and admittedly still learning a TON. Am I missing something here? How do sites generate so many links? This seems nuts to me. Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | TBiz0 -
Why is my Page Rank 0.
Hi, I am trying to understand why my Page Rank is 0. Many forums say that it is because my site has been blocked by google. Any help with this would be much appreciated. http://davincidrivers.com
Link Building | | MariaPerrone0 -
Domain Authority and nofollow links?
Hello, I'm wondering, are 'nofollow' links from websites with high domain authority beneficial? Would they boost our own DA? In essence, I'm wondering if there is added value (other than visitors clicking the link) to being linked to by a 'nofollow' link. Thanks!
Link Building | | yacpro130 -
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
Forgive the newbie question, but now that I have found SeoMoz and OpenSiteExplorer, should I just piggy back on my competitors backlinks? What would be the downside? By way of explanation, I've never had the need to explore SEO before. Our site, Widgets.com has always ranked highly for all Widgets keywords because we have the keyword in our domain and our site has been around since 1998. But out of the blue this summer, a site, let's call them WidgetsCircus.com suddenly began outranking us on widgets keywords, and pretty much every keyword we can imagine in our little widget universe. Now that I have run OpenSiteExplorer, I can see how they've done it. They've pretty much spent the last year commenting on blog posts all over the place, editing wiki pages, etc., and built thousands of links for all these widget keywords. So, I'm wondering: why shouldn't I just go down the list of links and do exactly what they've done? Where they commented on a blog, why don't I just comment right along side them. Obviously, this has worked for them! Wouldn't it work for us too? Or is that too simple?
Link Building | | brianmcc0