Page Authority and Domain Authority – What Is the Difference?
Domain authority or page authority, which is which? In order to best optimize your website, you need to understand the difference between the two and which strategies work in which area.
Table of contents:
- What’s the Difference Between Page Authority and Domain Authority?
- How to Check Domain Authority or Page Authority
- Domain Authority or Page Authority – which is more important?
What’s the Difference Between Page Authority and Domain Authority?
If you’re wondering what is the difference between page authority and domain authority and you want to try to make your website the highest ranking page in your field, being able to work in both of these areas is integral to success. This article will explain the differences between Page and Domain Authorities and how best to utilize them to create a successful online presence!
What is Page Authority?
While both Page and Domain Authorities are metrics developed by Moz, they are absolutely relevant and ubiquitous to webmasters as a whole. Page authority is the metric that measures and forecasts how well a specific page will rank on search engines. This means that any article, product web page, about page, etc. will need to consider their Page Authority in order to be seen more favorably by search engines at large.
While both Page and Domain Authorities are a more holistic representation of the overall success of the pages and sites they’re measuring, there are still ways to ensure that you increase your page’s authority. The best way to improve the PA of any given section of your website is to improve the link profile of the page by incorporating more backlinks and having more external sources link to the specific page in question.
What is Domain Authority?
Similar to Page Authority, Domain Authority is the prediction of how the overall search engine ranking success of a given domain is measured. Domain Authority forecasts the effectiveness of the website as a whole and must be considered when doing website-wide changes. Most webmasters think only about the effectiveness of the overall domain as a whole, and while it is important to manage, domain authority is still only a part of an overall picture.
There are several ways to boost Domain Authority, but they all focus on getting the best backlinks from sites that already rank higher than your site. By building strong networks across the internet, your DA will improve dramatically. For starting strategies, try:
- Building quality, relevant backlinks into your website.
- Make sure the backlinks you have are from reputable, significant sites.
- Create strong, unique, great-quality content.
- Generate good content that is focused on your core audience.
Overall Website Performance Requires Both
The fundamental difference between domain authority and page authority is what precisely is being measured – in other words, PA predicts the overall performance of the specific web page in particular (ie, a particular article on your website) whereas DA predicts the overall performance of your entire website as a whole.
Obviously, both metrics are important, and learning the best practices in optimizing them are essential for overall success, but teasing out which needs work is itself an important process in overall optimization. Some solutions require domain optimization and some require page optimization – it simply depends on what the issue is! By taking these into account, no matter if your page requires domain authority or page authority, you will be able to find areas of optimization.
How to Check Domain Authority or Page Authority
Being able to check these concepts in order to optimize your website is one of many essential components to consider when doing an optimization overhaul for your domain. There are many tools available to you when it comes to this, but we will focus on Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush.
Moz
Since the two concepts are created by Moz, Moz just so happens to be the best place to start to analyze these metrics! For starters, you can check out their Link Explorer for free! This handy tool is instantly capable to examine the Domain Authority generated by Moz, which will give you information concerning the optimization of your site.
Step 1
The first step is to check out the Domain SEO Analysis Tool. Once you navigate here, simply type in the website you’re interested in researching and hit the Analyze Domain button.
Step 2
Once done, simply then look at the data that the process provides!
Step 3
For Page Authority, you can see the Link Explorer linked above. It follows much the same process as the Domain Explorer.
Ahrefs
While somewhat similar to Moz’s Domain Authority, Ahrefs uses a “Website Authority” metric that does differ. Both can offer a comprehensive understanding of the current strength of a website’s search results, but they do have differences.
Step 1
Like the Moz tool, Ahrefs requires you to simply put into the domain or specific URL into the checker. Start here.
Step 2
Afterwards, you will receive an immediate breakdown of your site’s authority that you can use to maximize optimization!
If you know what is your website’s Domain Rating you can work on improving it. In the video below Ahrefs explains how to improve the Website’s Authority:
Semrush
Using a similar metric to Moz, Semrush uses the Semrush Authority Score that functions in a holistic way that is similar to other authority metrics. For best results, checking your domain and page authority with multiple tools can give you a more accurate representation of where your site is relative to other domains!
Step 1
Semrush is a service that will require you to create an account. Once you have done so, you are able to check domains and pages and their Semrush Authority Score. So, the first step is to make an account!
Step 2
After creating an account, navigate to the desktop. Once at the desktop, you can simply search domains and specific webpages with the search bar at the top!
Domain Authority or Page Authority – which is more important?
At the end of the day, both domain authority and page authority are very important to websites for different, but related reasons. In order to make sure your newest blog entry is doing well, you’re going to need to do an optimization overhaul on the page itself, comparing it to similar pages across the internet, including excellent backlinks, and more.
If you’re trying to get your overall domain more attention, you will need to run optimizations just the same, but also compare against competitors, and ensure the content on your site is well made. Optimization and SEO best practices take time! By understanding the differences and using both to maximize the impact of your site overall, you will be able to rise through the SEO ranks and find the success you are interested in!
