Domain Authority / Page Authority
-
I manage a site that has home page authority of 69, and overall domain authority of 63. To improve domain authority, would it help to remove some of the pages that have 0 page authority? There are over 1,000 pages to this site, and I always thought that the more pages you have, the better (generally). But, does it actually hurt the site to have pages that Google perceives as having 0 page authority, or does this have no bearing? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
-
The guys above are pretty much right, but to try and explain:
Domain authority, if you don't already know is really just an indicator of the total number of links and unique domains linking to your site (as opposed to just a single page). The more domains the better and works very similarly to PR.
Here's a Whiteboard Friday on Domain Authority and Trust - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-domain-trust-authority - (about 7:45 fo DA)
And here's the Whiteboard Friday on how that's used in the SEOmoz tools - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-domain-authority-page-authority-metrics - (part 2, round about the 8 minute mark, but worth watching it all).
Now, your question about whether linking out to pages effects DA we need to think about how PR works (as it's kinda the same) and as shown in the first video it doesn't matter how you interlink at the page level, but more the domain level. So links coming into your domain, on any page, determine your DA (to simplify it). And as such linking to low PA pages shouldn't have any effect.
Also linking out to other domains shouldn't effect your DA either and if I had to try and prove that I would probably turn to this YOUmoz piece from Hamlet batista - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/training-the-random-surfer-two-important-adjustments-to-the-early-pagerank-model - which is not as easy to digest, but if we assume DA works like PR then there's be little to no benefit in cutting those links out.
If you are worried about how you link then you may get some advantage from is streamlining the pages by consolidating them. Have a read of this and see if it helps - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-consolidation-the-new-pagerank-sculpting
Also, the best way to improve your site's DA is to build links from more domains wherever possible into these pages with low PA.
I'm going to publish this and have a read in case I need to edit or have wandered off topic, but hopefully it's useful for you
-
I'd not remove pages from a site (unless they are duplicated, or void): the more the pages, the more the PR internal flow (if you a have a well designed site architecture).
I agree with David: building some authoritative links from many different resources is the way to improve your DA.
-
I don't think that hurts your domain authority. At least, in my experience it never has.
The way to get your DA up is by getting more authoritative links, a higher diversity, and that is pretty much the basis of it.
Work on getting authoritative and hard to get links like .EDU, links from high PR sites, etc...
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
-
Fresh page versus old page climbing up the rankings.
Hello, I have noticed that if publishe a webpage that google has never seen it ranks right away and usually in a descend position to start with (not great but descend). Usually top 30 to 50 and then over the months it slowly climbs up the rankings. However, if my page has been existing for let's say 3 years and I make changes to it, it takes much longer to climb up the rankings Has someone noticed that too ? and why is that ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Geo-Targeted Sub-Domains & Duplicate Content/Canonical
For background the sub domain structure here is inherited and commited to due to tech restrictions with some of our platforms. The brand I work with is splitting out their global site into regional sub sites (not too relevant but this is in order to display seasonal product in different hemispheres and to link to stores specific to the region). All sub-domains except EU will be geo-targeted to their relevant country. Regions and sub domains for reference: AU - Australia CA - Canada CH - Switzeraland EU - All Euro zone countries NZ - New Zealand US - United States This will be done with Wordpress multisite. The set up allows to publish content on one 'master' sub site and then decide which other sub sites to 'broadcast' to. Some content is specific to a sub-domain/region so no issue with duplicate and can set the sub-site version as canonical. However some content will appear on all sub-domains. au.example.com/awesome-content/ nz.example.com/awesome-content/ Now first question is since these domains are geo-targeted should I just have them all canonical to the version on that sub-domain? eg Or should I still signal the duplicate content with one canonical version? Essentially the top level example.com exists as a site only for publishing purposes - if a user lands on the top level example.com/awesome-content/ they are given a pop up to select region and redirected to the relevant sub-domain version. So I'm also unsure whether I want that content indexed at all?? I could make the top level example.com versions of all content be the canonical that all others point to eg. and rely on geo-targeting to have the right links show in the right search locations. I hope that's kind of clear?? Obviously I find it confusing and therefore hard to relay! Any feedback at all gratefully received. Cheers, Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveHoney0 -
Effect of Removing Footer Links In all Pages Except Home Page
Dear MOZ Community: In an effort to improve the user interface of our business website (a New York CIty commercial real estate agency) my designer eliminated a standardized footer containing links to about 20 pages. The new design maintains this footer on the home page, but all other pages (about 600 eliminate the footer). The new design does a very good job eliminating non essential items. Most of the changes remove or reduce the size of unnecessary design elements. The footer removal is the only change really effect the link structure. The new design is not launched yet. Hoping to receive some good advice from the MOZ community before proceeding My concern is that removing these links could have an adverse or unpredictable effect on ranking. Last Summer we launched a completely redesigned version of the site and our ranking collapsed for 3 months. However unlike the previous upgrade this modifications does not URL names, tags, text or any major element. Only major change is the footer removal. Some of the footer pages provide good (not critical) info for visitors. Note the footer will still appear on the home page but will be removed on the interior pages. Are we risking any detrimental ranking effect by removing this footer? Can we compensate by adding text links to these pages if the links from the footer are removed? Seems irregular to have a home page footer but no footer on the other pages. Are we inviting any downgrade, penalty, adverse SEO effect by implementing this? I very much like the new design but do not want to risk a fall in rank and traffic. Thanks for your input!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Splash/Warning Pages at front of site
We are looking at working on a site that needs a warning for users visiting - This splash/warning page is the only just google sees this not performing well in search engine - The sites are Wordpress sites - Would we use script to force a full screen pop up? This would be needed on a visit but if the user leaves and returns to the site the warning would need to reappear. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Why do some domains out rank stronger authority domains
Hi, If we take the Moz stats into account here, how comes sometimes weak Moz stat domains out ranking strong Moz stat domains? For example: A inner page with DA56 / PA40 is outranking a Wikipedia inner page with DA100 / PA82. That's a massive difference basically twice as strong on the Wikipedia page but being out ranking. In this case I assume the onpage SEO is playing a big part, but can onpage optimisation be that powerful? And I see this all the time, what SEO factors cause this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bondara0 -
Can pages compete with each other? Inbound links & domain authority, How to determine problem areas?
Heyy, I'm having some pretty big SEO issues. 😞 We have had some drops in our ranking. We're 5th page or worse depending on location for a few of our keywords that we used to rank well for. There are all sorts of random non relevant sites outranking us for the term "stickley" and "stickley furniture" One thing I noticed is that we are ranking for a different page for each keyphrase. Our home page is ranking for "Stickley" and our stickley page is ranking for "Stickley Furniture" Is this normal? I guess Google is just picking what it see's as what's more relevant. Is it possible that these two pages are "competing?" Do similar phrases linking to different pages cause pages to "fight" or unevenly disperse link juice? I'm having trouble knowing which page I should send inbound links to since Google seems to be linking similar keywords to different pages. How much should I stress about which pages I receive links on? Is it true that any inbound link to a site site will help increase its overall domain authority and overall SEO? What should I be focusing on? I've added 301 redirects for non WWW as well as tried to make the pages well optimized for SEO. Should I just add more related content to the pages? I know backlinks are important but I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to get links that aren't just spammy forum post footers or junk directory submissions. The thing that bothers me is we were ranking well and then suddenly are way back. We have never done any black hat SEO of any sort. I feel a bit stuck and confused at the moment 😞 Thanks in advance for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SheffieldMarketing
-Amy0 -
Which page to target? Home or /landing-page
I have optimized my home page for the keyword "computer repairs" would I be better of targeting my links at this page or an additional page (which already exists) called /repairs it's possible to rename & 301 this page to /computer-repairs The only advantage I can see from targeting /computer-repairs is that the keywords are in the target URL.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOKeith0 -
Domains
I am currently working on a huge website which ranks very well receiving 150,000 visitors every day. I have been offered the chance to buy some more domain names which would suit my keywords in the current site. These domains as a keyword also receive huge amounts of traffic. Would it be beneficial for me to do this....if so why? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850