When you go to the doctor’s office for a physical, your doctor runs a series of tests as soon as you’re called back from the waiting room. She may record your height, weight, blood pressure, pulse rate, body temperature, and more.

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These vital signs help your doctor predict your overall health and wellness, especially as they relate to your past health records. If your doctor has any specific concerns about your heart, she will refer you to a cardiologist, where the process begins again. But we’re not pretending to be heart surgeons here–we’re digital marketers, for crying out loud!

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Consider these doctor’s visits analogies for Domain Authority and Page Authority in SEO. Both DA and PA measure the SEO strength of your website and the probability of it ranking high on Search Engine Results Pages. Domain Authority (DA) can be compared to a visit to your general practitioner, while Page Authority (PA) can be compared to a visit to a specialist. Both DA and PA measure the SEO strength of your website and the probability of it ranking high on Search Engine Results Pages.

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How? Step into our office, and we’ll walk you through it.

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What is Page Authority?

Page Authority in SEO (or PA) is a metric that predicts how well an individual page will rank on the Search Engine Results Page (or SERP) on a scale of one to 100. The higher the score given, the higher probability of the page ranking high in SERPs. 

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Page Authority is similar to Domain Authority. In fact, it’s nearly identical to Domain Authority, meaning the only difference is that Page Authority predicts a specific page’s ranking score, while Domain Authority predicts a domain’s ranking score. For example:

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Page Authority = predicts a specific page’s rank = cardiologist visit

Domain Authority = predicts a domain’s rank = general practitioner visit

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Page Authority and Domain Authority are calculated by a machine learning algorithm developed by Moz. It uses data from the Mozscape web index, link counts, and more than 40 other factors. Page Authority does not use data from on-page SEO elements such as keywords or content optimization, though these elements are a factor in Domain Authority.

Why is Page Authority in SEO important?

Analyzing your Page Authority score helps you monitor how well your pages are performing on SERPs currently and how you can improve your ranking. It also allows you to monitor how well your competitors are ranking comparatively, so you can make page improvements to rank higher than your competition.

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How do I check my Page Authority?

To check Page Authority and Domain Authority for free, you can visit Moz’s Free Domain SEO Analysis Tool. You can also check Page Authority and Domain Authority using Moz’s suite of tools, including Link Explorer, MozBar, or the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer.

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Many SEO and marketing platforms make it easy to check Page Authority and Domain Authority by including these metrics in their suites of analytics services.

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What is good Page Authority?

Talk about starting on a level playing field! All web pages start with a Page Authority score of 1. The score improves based on a series of more than 40 factors.

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Here’s the kicker. There isn’t technically a “good” or “bad” Page Authority score! Rather than using Page Authority and Domain Authority as absolute metrics, they should be used as comparative tools to determine page and domain performance over time and how this performance relates to your competitors’ pages.

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Basically, it’s time to turn on your competitive streak. Achieving a perfect score of 100 is unnecessary. All you need to do is achieve a higher Page Authority and Domain Authority score than your competitors.

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How do I get Page Authority to improve?

The most crucial factor in Page Authority, and therefore the best way to improve Page Authority in SEO, is to improve the page’s link profile by getting external links from other pages with high authority.

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Page Authority in SEO is scored on a logarithmic scale, meaning it’s easier to improve a Page Authority score from 1 to 10 than improve a score from 90 to 100.

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What is the difference between Page Authority and PageRank?

Page Authority, Domain Authority, and PageRank are remarkably similar metrics.

• Page Authority is the predicted rank of a specific page on the Search Engine Results Page based on several factors. PA is a 1-100 metric score created by Moz.
• Domain Authority is the predicted rank of a domain on the Search Engine Results Page based on several factors. DA is a 1-100 metric score created by Moz.
• PageRank is a numerical 1-10 weight ranking of all web pages on the Google Search Results page. PageRank is an algorithm created by Google.

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Ready for your check-up? You're in the right place! Contact our team of SEO specialists to get a full SEO panel complete with vital signs of SERP ranking strength and competitive performance indicators. Your website’s health and well-being depend on it!