How much attention should I pay to Moz's DA/PA?
-
Hola!
I've been optimising a site since October and our hard work has yielded a sizeable increase in organic traffic, revenue, quality, relevant links and Search Metrics scoring since commencing the campaign.
After yesterday's Moz update, the DA has dropped slightly and a number of pages' PAs have dropped significantly (i.e. from 27 to 17). So here are my questions:
- My 'white hat' optimisation is clearly working. The site is enjoying more than 100% year-on-year increase in organic traffic and we're currently pulling in more organic visitors than ever before. Why is Moz's score not reflecting this?
- Some of the pages that have seen sizeable PA drops have had their URLs changed since the last Moz update. For example, I've optimised a URL from www.mysite.com/cases-covers to www.mysite.com/phone-cases to coincide with search volumes. I've added optimised content to this page too, but the PA has dipped from 27 to 17. A 301 redirect has been correctly added, and this is evident by a PA of 17 and not zero, which is what a brand new page would have.
- Am I paying too much attention to Moz's scores? It's a bit disheartening to see a drop after a lot of hard work. However, I guess the only thing that really counts is an increased volume of search traffic and revenue, right?
Cheers,
Lewis
-
Thanks all for the great responses... as usual!
-
In addition to Don and Matt's excellent answers, I'd only add that you're giving the right priority to how you're measuring the performance of your site: increases in sales, increases in organic traffic, relevant links, and referral visits. Ultimately tools like Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic are comparative samplings of the net and not the defacto proxy of Google. If they're helping you build out your network and find new places where you can connect then you're doing well.
-
Hi Lewis,
Rand just posted about DA/PA with their recent huge crawl update. Here
"..This means that DA and PA scores may fluctuate more than usual, as link diversity are big parts of those calculations and we've crawled a much larger swath of the deep, dark corners of the web (and non-US/non-.com domains, too)..."
Even with that, I really try to pay more attention to what you mentioned, user engagement, click-through, in-bound links, organic traffic and on our retail site; SALES! Google has really been shaking things up, I've seen more often then not lower pa/da pages higher in SERPS then ever before. While I don't have anything to point to prove this is true, we all know Google's goal is to provide the best possible pages for a users search.
Just because a domain / page has been around since Al Gore invented the internet and has a high da/pa doesn't mean it is the most relevant for today's Googlers.
-
PA & DA are a place to start but the index is so small compared to the net in general that you can't really just say "this is" the score or not. I've seen sites that Moz lists 20-50 backlinks and Majestic links 15,000. Same with Ahrefs.
I saw a client just today with: 100 Moz, 1500 Ahrefs, 9000 Majestic. I always assume Majestic may see about 30% of my links. That means a site with 27,000 links, Moz sees 100 sometimes. How accurate can it be with 1 out of every 270 links?
Also, the opposite can be true. Google may not have picked up on a link or three that Moz did pick up. Also, Moz can't see disavows so if you get rid of 49 out of 50 links, Moz may give you a higher (or lower) PA/DA than your site deserves.
There's a lot to it - I would use it as a guide but don't judge your SEO efforts by a 5 point PA rise or fall.
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
-
Unsolved Does Anyone use DashThis API with MOZ?
Hi Team
API | | SkyrailCairns
Looking to share MOZ API credentials with DashThis - They provide an all in one reporting solution for all aspects of digital marketing.
Does anyone use DashThis?0 -
Location Data Batch Updates via the MOZ API
According to the MOZ API documentation, I am able to update multiple Locations in a batch in order to create or update their location data, currently 130 locations. I have successfully created a batch and the API returned the $id, as I expected. Yet, it doesn't make clear how the multiple locations I want to update are supposed to be sent back to the API. I was expecting an upload of a CSV file or JSON data, and not Query Parameter as noted in the docs. When including a JSON file, properly formatted, as a binary upload, the response is still expecting a locations parameter. See error here: { "status":"MISSING_PARAMETER", "message":"locations missing. ", "response": { "locations":"MISSING_PARAMETER" } } https://moz.com/developers/docs/local/api#_api_batch__id-PATCH
API | | yuca.pro1 -
When I click into the moz bar on our website www.essexparts.com it shows that the URL is Canadian and shows a Canada flag. The website and company are in the US. Can someone please explain this?
When I click into the moz bar on our website www.essexparts.com it shows that the URL is Canadian and shows a Canada flag. The website and company are in the US. Can someone please explain this? Also does the location have any bearing on how it shows up in google? XNQOQoJ
API | | Tindol0 -
Is there a way to connect Moz to Databox?
Is there a way to pull data from Moz into other applications, such as Databox? If possible, how do I set this up?
API | | jenmilehigh1 -
Navigation pages with a PA 1
Ok, you guys probably think this is a new website and i should just wait, but this is not the case.
API | | Forresult
We have 2 websites (old) websites with a DA of 34 and a DA of 19 and high PA values on the mainpage. Our problem: All the other pages stay at a page authority of 1. One website is build in Magento and one in Wordpress. Both websites have deeplinks, footerlinks en in-contentlinks. The other pages don't get any linkjuice according to Moz. We don't use any robot noindex,nofollow or nofollow links and the menu structure isn't the problem. Is anyone familiare with the problem? I know is shouldn't be concerned about PA/DA, but i just can't explain what's going on.0 -
Is There any API from FourSqaure that allow us directly feeding business listings into it , Moz is doing same , so there must be some API?
Hi, i have seen "Moz Local" , has a option , "FourSqaure". I just a curiosity to ask that , is there any tie-up between FourSqaure and Moz , coz Moz must be using its APIs to feeds its business listings into FS Database. When i have searched for FS APIs for direclty feeding business listings into it , i got nothing ? so i have got this question? if any one can help me out.
API | | Prodio0 -
Is Moz's rank checker driving referals (and bounces) in my analytics?
I see 200+ referral visits per month from "rank-checker.online" and they all bounce with one second session durations. Are these bounces hurting my SEO? They are definitely distorting my referral metrics. Can I block them somehow?
API | | 10516VT1163000