How can you effectively apply link metrics like Domain Authority and Page Authority alongside your other SEO metrics? Where and when does it make sense to take them into account, and what exactly do they mean? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand answers these questions and more, arming you with the knowledge you need to better understand and execute your SEO work.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about when and how to use Domain Authority and Page Authority and link count metrics.
So many of you have written to us at Moz over the years and certainly I go to lots of conferences and events and speak to folks who are like, "Well, I've been measuring my link building activity with DA," or, "Hey, I got a high DA link," and I want to confirm when is it the right time to be using something like DA or PA or a raw link count metric, like number of linking root domains or something like Spam Score or a traffic estimation, these types of metrics.
So I'm going to walk you through kind of these three — Page Authority, Domain Authority, and linking root domains — just to get a refresher course on what they are. Page Authority and Domain Authority are actually a little complicated. So I think that's worthwhile. Then we'll chat about when to use which metrics. So I've got sort of the three primary things that people use link metrics for in the SEO world, and we'll walk through those.
Page Authority
So to start, Page Authority is basically — you can see I've written a ton of different little metrics in here — linking URLs, linking root domains, MozRank, MozTrust, linking subdomains, anchor text, linking pages, followed links, no followed links, 301s, 302s, new versus old links, TLD, domain name, branded domain mentions, Spam Score, and many, many other metrics.
Basically, what PA is, is it's every metric that we could possibly come up with from our link index all taken together and then thrown into a model with some training data. So the training data in this case, quite obviously, is Google search results, because what we want the Page Authority score to ultimately be is a predictor of how well a given page is going to rank in Google search results assuming we know nothing else about it except link data. So this is using no on-page data, no content data, no engagement or visit data, none of the patterns or branding or entity matches, just link data.
So this is everything we possibly know about a page from its link profile and the domain that page is on, and then we insert that in as the input alongside the training data. We have a machine learning model that essentially learns against Google search results and builds the best possible model it can. That model, by the way, throws away some of this stuff, because it's not useful, and it adds in a bunch of this stuff, like vectors or various attributes of each one. So it might say, "Oh, anchor text distribution, that's actually not useful, but Domain Authority ordered by the root domains with more than 500 links to them." I'm making stuff up, right? But you could have those sorts of filters on this data and thus come up with very complex models, which is what machine learning is designed to do.
All we have to worry about is that this is essentially the best predictive score we can come up with based on the links. So it's useful for a bunch of things. If we're trying to say how well do we think this page might rank independent of all non-link factors, PA, great model. Good data for that.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority is once you have the PA model in your head and you're sort of like, "Okay, got it, machine learning against Google's results to produce the best predictive score for ranking in Google." DA is just the PA model at the root domain level. So not subdomains, just root domains, which means it's got some weirdness. It can't, for example, say that randfishkin.blogspot.com is different than www.blogspot.com. But obviously, a link from www.blogspot.com is way more valuable than from my personal subdomain at Blogspot or Tumblr or WordPress or any of these hosted subdomains. So that's kind of an edge case that unfortunately DA doesn't do a great job of supporting.
What it's good for is it's relatively well-suited to be predictive of how a domain's pages will rank in Google. So it removes all the page-level information, but it's still operative at the domain level. It can be very useful for that.
Linking Root Domain
Then linking root domains is the simplest one. This is basically a count of all the unique root domains with at least one link on them that point to a given page or a site. So if I tell you that this URL A has 410 linking root domains, that basically means that there are 410 domains with at least one link pointing to URL A.
What I haven't told you is whether they're followed or no followed. Usually, this is a combination of those two unless it's specified. So even a no followed link could go into the linking root domains, which is why you should always double check. If you're using Ahrefs or Majestic or Moz and you hover on the whatever, the little question mark icon next to any given metric, it will tell you what it includes and what it doesn't include.
When to use which metric(s)
All right. So how do we use these?
Well, for month over month link building performance, which is something that a lot of folks track, I would actually not suggest making DA your primary one. This is for a few reasons. So Moz's index, which is the only thing currently that calculates DA or a machine learning-like model out there among the major toolsets for link data, only updates about once every month. So if you are doing your report before the DA has updated from the last link index, that can be quite frustrating.
Now, I will say we are only a few months away from a new index that's going to replace Mozscape that will calculate DA and PA and all these other things much, much more quickly. I know that's been something many folks have been asking for. It is on its way.
But in the meantime, what I recommend using is:
1. Linking root domains, the count of linking root domains and how that's grown over time.
2. Organic rankings for your targeted keywords. I know this is not a direct link metric, but this really helps to tell you about the performance of how those links have been affected. So if you're measuring month to month, it should be the case that any months you've got in a 20 or 30-day period, Google probably has counted and recognized within a few days of finding them, and Google is pretty good at crawling nearly the whole web within a week or two weeks. So this is going to be a reasonable proxy for how your link building campaign has helped your organic search campaign.
3. The distribution of Domain Authority. So I think, in this case, Domain Authority can be useful. It wouldn't be my first or second choice, but I think it certainly can belong in a link building performance report. It's helpful to see the high DA links that you're getting. It's a good sorting mechanism to sort of say, "These are, generally speaking, more important, more authoritative sites."
4. Spam Score I like as well, because if you've been doing a lot of link building, it is the case that Domain Authority doesn't penalize or doesn't lower its score for a high Spam Score. It will show you, "Hey, this is an authoritative site with a lot of DA and good-looking links, but it also looks quite spammy to us." So, for example, you might see that something has a DA of 60, but a Spam Score of 7 or 8, which might be mildly concerning. I start to really worry when you get to like 9, 10, or 11.
Second question:
I think this is something that folks ask. So they look at their own links and they say, "All right, we have these links or our competitor has these links. Which ones are providing the most value for me?" In that case, if you can get it, for example, if it's a link pointing to you, the best one is, of course, going to be...
1. Real traffic sent. If a site or a page, a link is sending traffic to you, that is clearly of value and that's going to be likely interpreted positively by the search engines as well.
You can also use...
2. PA
3. DA. I think it's pretty good. These metrics are pretty good and pretty well-correlated with, relatively speaking, value, especially if you can't get at a metric like real traffic because it's coming from someone else's site.
4. Linking root domains, the count of those to a page or a domain.
5. The rankings rise, in the case where a page is ranking position four, a new link coming to it is the only thing that's changed or the only thing you're aware of that's changed in the last few days, few weeks, and you see a rankings rise. It moves up a few positions. That's a pretty good proxy for, "All right, that is a valuable link." But this is a rare case where you really can control other variables to the extent that you think you can believe in that.
6. I like Spam Scor for this as well, because then you can start to see, "Well, are these sketchier links, or are these links that I can likely trust more?"
Last one,
So I think this is one that many, many SEOs do. We have a big list of links. We've got 50 links that we're thinking about, "Should I get these or not and which ones should I go after first and which ones should I not go after?" In this case...
1. DA is really quite a good metric, and that is because it's relatively predictive of the domain's pages' performance in Google, which is a proxy, but a decent proxy for how it might help your site rank better.
It is the case that folks will talk about, "Hey, it tends to be the case that when I go out and I build lots of DA 70, DA 80, DA 90+ links, I often get credit. Why DA and not PA, Rand?" Well, in the case where you're getting links, it's very often from new pages on a website, which have not yet been assigned PA or may not have inherited all the link equity from all the internal pages.
Over time, as those pages themselves get more links, their PA will rise as well. But the reason that I generally recommend a DA for link outreach is both because of that PA/DA timing issue and because oftentimes you don't know which page is going to give you a link from a domain. It could be a new page they haven't created yet. It could be one that you never thought they would add you to. It might be exactly the page that you were hoping for, but it's hard to say.
2. I think linking root domains is a very reasonable one for this, and linking root domains is certainly closely correlated, not quite as well correlated, but closely correlated with DA and with rankings.
3. Spam Score, like we've talked about.
4. I might use something like SimilarWeb's traffic estimates, especially if real traffic sent is something that I'm very interested in. If I'm pursuing no followed links or affiliate links or I just care about traffic more than I care about rank-boosting ability, SimilarWeb has got what I think is the best traffic prediction system, and so that would be the metric I look at.
So, hopefully, you now have a better understanding of DA and PA and link counts and when and where to apply them alongside which other metrics. I look forward to your questions. I'll be happy to jump into the comments and answer. And we'll see you again next time for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Great video, Rand, very helpful. I remember reading (I think) a long while back that, because the index and calculations can change month-to-month on DA, that if you are tracking DA monthly for a website, it is best to do it against a few competitor domains as well. That way you have a chance to see if a drop was possibly the algorithm/index changing slightly (assuming everyone had a very similar change), or if a change was due to a change in the strength of your own domain (because it moved quite differently than the rest). Is that still a best practice (if it ever way?), or can DA now be looked at independently as the algorithm and index are more consistent/stabalized now?
Good memory Brian! Yes. I absolutely still recommend this. PA and DA will flux a lot, especially in the lower score ranges (<70 or so), so using a set of comparative domains is the way to go.
Many thanks Rand for this post to clarify well what is DA and PA. I think the most important thing I think is the DA and then the PA. The video is very explanatory. a greeting
I would use Moz metrics in conjunction with other tools' metrics for a better overall picture such as ahrefs, majestic etc
Agreed, I use Moz's DA/PA metrics combined with ahrefs backlinks/LRDs metrics, helpful to:
I was surprised that relevance of the linking page and/or domain was not even mentioned in the "Ordering Link Outreach Targets" portion of the discussion. Is that not important? Or, is the problem that a tool cannot measure that and, heaven forbid, people actually will have to use the tool that sits atop their shoulders?
I imagine it was avoided to focus on the main thing here which was the understanding of DA and PA.
Exactly Scott. There's no current metric or number that can capture how relevant a site or page is to the site or page it links to. Thus, this is either a manual process or you'd want to substitute a well-correlated metric like visits sent.
Maybe relevance is how we actually perceive it and relies upon context, industry, as well as the subjective 'feel' of the beholder? Just a thought.
Month over Month, we just saw a client jump to 40 DA from 33. We didn't do much except some meta data changes. Why did this happen? It happened very similarly for one of our competitors too. Was this just an adjustment of your scoring algorithm or did we do something good we're not aware of? We checked traffic, rankings, and brand mentions and it's stayed flat. Our other clients stayed flat in this time too.
Most likely two things: 1) Our crawler found more links from more good places and/or 2) our algorithm rewarded links more like the ones you already had.
My DA use to change two or three points up or down in every update, while traffic growths month over month...
Hey Rand.
I really enjoyed it. Very informative.
I always see your whiteboard videos. Great work man.
Thanks.
Great post about one of the most difficult topics for seos. Da, Pa and links relevance change every year. I started laughing when I saw ‘We have a big list of links’… if we manage several webs we may have tons of xmls with links ordered by PA, DA, etc.
"But the reason that I generally recommend a DA for link outreach is both because of that PA/DA timing issue and because oftentimes you don't know which page is going to give you a link from a domain"
Is there any post or place where we can find more info about it?
Sorry - I don't quite follow. What are you seeking more info about?
The force on the camera is strong with this one Rand. Not that I intentionally noticed it, but I did haha :)
This such great content for me at the time as I am gathering backlink opportunities for a website that I am working. Thank you so much. Keep it up good sir.
Agree with you Rand, depends on the quantity too, I would choose 5 more powerful back links if I got a chance to select in from 5 and 100. Thanks for the great post.
Regards,
Dipesh patel
I'm relatively new in this community and I don't have to much time of been an active member, but I can say that have been a great decision, every post here looks like you took your time to written.
This one in particular clarify me many doubds that I had.
It is true that if you get most of backlinks from Good DA sites your DA/PA will increase. I have seen and tested that DA increases even you get links from high DA non relevant sites. Why it is so?
This is a great question Mohnseh - one I should have answered directly in the video.
Basic story is that DA (and PA) care about what correlates highly with Google rankings. And, one of the elements of the PA/DA models that correlates most is count of linking domains. Thus, when you get more links from more diverse places, it often helps more than getting smaller numbers of links from higher DA sources. That said, there's a limit. If we're talking about 5 new links from DA <20 sources, that might not be as valuable as 1 link from a DA 80+ source. But, if it's 50 low DA to 1 high DA, the 50 probably (but not always, especially if there's spammy stuff in there that Google discounts) wins in boosting your rankings (and your DA) more.
I am hearing that traffic is becoming increasing important?
For link metrics or for Google's valuation of links? If the latter, I'd agree. I think Google cares more about the engagement with links and pages than they did in years past.
Great WBF Rand!
I observed that in terms of ranking, PA prediction accuracy is much higher, as compare to Majestic TF and AhrefsRank. Yes, DA is not my primary one, just because the duration of the updates. But now i am excited for Moz upcoming new index matrix, hopefully it will more faster and easier.
Questions - In August last year, Eric Enge asked you that "1000 just links of 5 high-quality links? What would you choose?". That time you selected 1000 links instead of 5 heavy ones. Rand, are you still going through your earlier dialogue?.. Is it a chance to decrease DA/PA, If I gain a few links from low trusted sites and lose one high quality links?
Thank you.
It would be nice to see who likes and dislikes peoples comments. Especially here where people are disliking the facts. It's frustrating.
I would select five quality links, without a doubt, because the quality of the domain which links to my pages in most cases means high authority thereof.
Of course, when I talk about links coming from high quality domains, this implies the entire page context, content relevance, as well as the position of the links on the page itself.
Completely agree. A few high quality links can boost any project.
Some great links are much better than thousands of bad links or da/pa 1 links, in my opinion and experience.
Yeah - I'd still go for 1,000 less authoritative links. That quantity, assuming they're not spammy or manipulative, is just too compelling, and too valuable vs. only 5 high authority links. If the numbers were more like 5 and 50, I might be swayed to the 5 authority links.
Agree with you Rand, depends on the quantity too, I would choose 5 more powerful backlinks if I got a chance to select in from 5 and 100. But for 1000, I will choose them as at that quantity less PADA links, also makes your link profile more powerful, but as you said, they should be niche and not spammy.
the post i was looking for from a long time Rand. cleanly explained.
You have to pay close attention to the domain authority, there are people who do not have a single link, just waiting for them to arrive. My favorite technique to get them is through Ahrefs.
It is good news that values are updated more quickly, instead of month by month.Another important fact is that despite having an important DA, there will also appear a score on spam. This is an important fact that indicates that there is something that we are not doing well.
Great insights Rand. Thanks for showcasing the importance of PA & DA by making the concept more clear.
Thanks Rand for the definitions on PA and DA - From my work in content production, it was useful to note the ‘Real traffic sent metric’ a page sending valuable traffic to a site which I think also demonstrates the importance of developing useful content for audiences. Interesting to see you think that Google gradually is placing more emphasis on traffic and engagement with links and pages too.
Ultimately i think link builders put too much focus on metrics and neglect to consider if the audience from the linking site would benefit from the content it's linking to (your site).
Dude, nice hair cut.lol
Hey Rand,
It's a very informative post about one of the most important and difficult topics to digest properly DA and PA in SEO strategy. I really enjoyed your Whiteboard video.
Very informative post about the most important and difficult topics DA and PA in SEO strategy. The Whiteboard video you shared is really helpful. Thank you so much for sharing this post and keep sharing
Thank you Rand! Very, very interesting explanation. It's a very valuable information for me that I'm starting building links. I could undertstand the difference between PA and DA, and when to apply them.
Great post, well defined about DA, PA, Link relevancy. We should not focus on making too many of links except try to get backlinks from high DA & PA websites. Recently i redirect my webpages to new one and its ranking get affected. I found my webpages PA was 25 but my new one is just 1. So PA and DA is most important factor also in page rank.
I did know that domain and page authority is important to check before linking to any sites but i always wonder about what the spam score is for.Thank you for sharing such informative post.
Very useful article. It's great to hear that there is a revision / replacement to Mozscape that will reduce cycle time for metric updates.
One thing I am still having questions about is with DA/PA for your root domain / landing page. If DA is basically PA for your root domain, would it be fair to assume that your DA would be your PA for your landing? I could even imagine that your DA would be higher since your landing page will have a plethora of backlink for combinations of http, https, www. or just your domain name. However, I have seen many examples of landing page PA's higher than domain DA's. For example, my site's homepage PA is 32 and the site DA is 23. In a logarithmic scale, this is quite a difference. Do you have a gut feel for what causes this difference?
Thanks so much, Rand. Just FYI, I think the subtitle on the title slide is missing the title and just has the template text (at 0:07).
Doh. We'll probably leave as is for now, but may try to fix in the future. Thanks John
Hi
Loved the video, as usual. Just wondering why Majestic scores can often be at odds with DA? Sometimes I have noticed that these can be quite far apart? Also, I hearing that traffic is becoming an increasingly important factor, I'm guessing to filter out artificial network blogs?
Different scoring methods and differ indices - we don't always crawl the same links or count them the same, so you should expect differences between the tools.
Hi Rand, thanks for another awesome vid to stir up that Friday feeling! For some reason DA was my top priority factor for new links (I think it's probably to so with the way my SEO software presents the info), but its nice to know that thats probably the right way to go anyway!
Also nice to get some reenforcement on spam scores, I panic every time I see 2/3/4, but if 7/8/9 is the place to worry then that's reassuring :)
Yeah. At spam score 4, less than 10% of sites are penalized or banned, so I really wouldn't stress at all until 7/8+ and even then, it's more a flag that you should manually review vs a guaranteed problem. Plenty of spam score 7 sites are totally fine (but enough aren't that it's worth a review).
Good to know. We have our webmaster keep spam at zero. Perhaps we are overly aggressive.
"But the reason that I generally recommend a DA for link outreach is both because of that PA/DA timing issue and because oftentimes you don't know which page is going to give you a link from a domain"
I have also noticed this in the search results as well. Relevance and DA has a much higher weightage than PA
Hey there, is there any way how to find historical data of Domain Authority for a certain domain? I can't find any source about this. Thanks, Martin
Unfortunately, the only way right now is to track in your Moz Pro campaign. However, in the future, we'll be releasing that feature for all sites in the index on-demand. I know it's something folks want -- our engineers are working on it!
Hi Rand, I am a huge fan of your whiteboards friday!! Thank you very much for all those great contents, you help me a lot in the SEO strategy of my company. My question is about ranking. Do you know how to compete with a forum on SERPs ? They are often at the top of the pages...
Interesting WBF!
Scenario:
URL A has a decent number of good backlinks
I redirect URL A to URL B
Does URL B get any benefit from URL A's backlinks?
From everything I've read if you do proper 301 redirects 'most' of the link juice will be retained, but not necessarily all.
Yeah, what DesignersDownSouth said is right, though I'd add a caveat that if the URL isnt relevant, Google may not credit as much of the link weight from the 301.
Thanks Rand, that makes sense as thinking about it logically, with a 301 Google will essentially be reevaluating both your onsite and offsite factors. If your content stays largely the same and you've done the 301s correctly, you will largely maintain the status quo, but as part of the deal your links will be retested through the latest algorithms so may not weigh as heavily before; especially, as Rand has mentioned, if they are not relevant, which is an important piece of the puzzle these days.
It's more difficult than a simple and general case. I would say Yes, but...
Be carefull about incoming links and possible penalties. If you redirect your A web to your new B web (for example you change the domain) there's no problem, and you will get the benefits.
If you do this with a new domain you bought be carefull and check many things before doing it.
Hello Rand.
Really useful article. I would love to use page authority more but I have a question about Page Authority 1 pages. We have about 30k pages on our domain and we have a domain authority of 52 but almost all our pages (certainly almost all individual video pages -- we sell videos) have a page authority of 1. We have 2.9 million internal links, 98% of which are no-follow. We have 27k external links, 24k of which are followed. Are we doing something wrong?Thanks a lot. Greetings!
Yeah I would go with 5 quality in the first place. It's probably easier then to layer in the more diverse links but best to have that solid foundation in place.
Great clarification on the metrics!
Good article, Rand, wonderful highlight on DA and PA, for ranking factors and driving more organic traffic. I would like to ask you this question, which has troubled me a lot. Why actually does Moz or Majestic discovers quite different backlinks and why are they not similar to the ones discovered by Google. In fact only 10% of backlinks get discovered by Moz as compared to Google. Will it take time? or does Moz considers only stronger and powerful backlinks, I mean text or blog links?
A) Google has a lot more money for web indexing
B) Google will generally crawl everything, even though they don't count all of it. We try to bias to things we think Google's counting (though that certainly is an imperfect process)
C) never seen it quite as bad as 10%, but agree we need to get way better. That's a work in progress I hope will be out before end of year.
Moz products are one of the best. Thank you, Rand, to clarify that Moz is working on to discover plenty of backlinks. It will be a boost for the Moz users. :)
Fabulous Post Rand! Yes I know that Now a days Webmasters focus on Domain & Page authority of the site because Google no longer consider Pagerank as ranking signal. But learn here spam score also effect site ranking. Thanks.
Well... Google still uses their internal version of PageRank, and they don't use Page Authority or Domain Authority (which are Moz's own crafted metrics). But, since PR is unavailable externally, PA/DA metrics can be helpful.
re: Spam Score - I did a Whiteboard Friday on that here: https://moz.com/blog/understanding-and-applying-mo...
Always love a good Whiteboard Friday, Cheers for this Rand. I was always confused on the factors of Page Authority but now i get the jist.
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Literally came here to say that but you beat me to it!
Nice post.. It's a really helpful for generating quality link building...You said right some websites DA is 60/70 and also spam score is 7/8, then all are confused,this is quality sites or not.. I think When we create back links always checks these things : DA, PA ,link Root Domain name and spam score..
Spam score can be high even on well linked to sites. Most black hat efforts are on fact geared at getting lots of links, just to sketchy domains, so no surprise.