What is Page Authority?
Page Authority, or PA, is Moz’s score for a single page, the way Domain Authority is its score for a whole site. Checkers often show the two side by side as “DA PA”. Here’s what PA tells you, where it misleads, and how to raise it.
What Page Authority measures
Page Authority predicts how well one specific page will rank. Like Domain Authority, it runs from 1 to 100 on a logarithmic scale, so moving a page from 70 to 80 is much harder than moving it from 20 to 30. It’s built from link data for that one URL, such as how many different sites link to it.
It’s Moz’s estimate, not something Google uses. Google ranks pages on its own signals; PA is a way to guess, from links alone, how competitive a page is.
Page Authority vs Domain Authority
DA scores the whole site. PA scores one page. They can disagree sharply:
- A brand-new post on a strong site can have a low PA, because nothing links to it yet.
- One page with lots of strong links can outscore the DA of the small site it lives on.
When you’re competing for one search, the PA of the pages already ranking often tells you more than their sites’ DA. You’re up against those pages, not the whole domain.
Page Authority vs URL Rating
URL Rating is Ahrefs’ version of the same idea: a page-level, link-based score on a 100-point logarithmic scale. Ahrefs says UR counts both internal and external links and ignores nofollow links. Since Moz and Ahrefs crawl the web separately, a page’s PA and UR won’t match. Compare PA with PA and UR with UR.
What “DA PA checkers” show
Bulk DA PA checkers list both scores for many URLs at once. They’re handy for sorting a list of sites you might pitch, or for comparing every page on page one of a search in a single pass. Two cautions: a domain’s homepage and its inner pages have different PAs, so check the exact URL you care about, and treat the numbers as a first filter, not a verdict.
How to raise a page’s Page Authority
- Earn links to that exact URL. Make the page the best thing to cite on its topic: data, examples, a tool or a checklist people can point to.
- Keep the address stable. Every URL change throws away the links pointing at the old one unless you redirect it.
- Merge near-duplicates. Two thin pages on the same topic split their links. One stronger page, with the other redirected to it, keeps them together.
- Link to it from your strongest pages. Internal links help Google find and value the page, and they count toward Ahrefs’ UR.
When PA is worth checking
Use it to decide which of your pages to update first (strong PA, weak ranking usually means the content is the problem), to see how far behind the ranking pages you are, and to choose which page to ask for links to. For the site-level picture, SERP DR keeps a free public Domain Rating page for any domain, if you’d rather work in Ahrefs’ numbers.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good Page Authority score?
There’s no fixed good score. Compare the PA of your page with the pages already ranking for the same search; that gap tells you more than any absolute number.
Can Page Authority be higher than Domain Authority?
Yes. PA scores one page and DA scores the whole site, so they aren’t measured against the same things. A single page with lots of strong links can outscore its site’s DA, especially on a small or new site.
How is Page Authority calculated?
Moz builds it from the links pointing at that one URL, such as the number of separate sites linking in, and places the result on a 100-point logarithmic scale.
Does Page Authority matter for SEO?
Only as a guide. Google ranks pages on many signals and doesn’t use Moz’s scores. PA is useful for spotting when a competing page has far more links than yours, which tells you where to put your effort.
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