Page authority is an essential factor in the behind-the-scenes Google algorithm, and maximizing your site to get the attention of Google means more traffic to your site. That’s why page authority is something you want to understand and think about when creating any website content.

The Difference Between Domain Authority and Page Authority

When building a website, it all starts with a domain. That domain is your URL and the brand attached to it. Most businesses, when starting, will build a blog as part of their website. In recent posts, we explained the factors that go into how Google ranks your site.

This is an excellent example of domain authority as it is about how ALL of the content and keywords, snippets, links, etc., on the site are viewed by Google. And therefore, how they impact the site ranking.

Page authority, on the other hand, is based on one single page of content. That may be a service description page, or it could be a blog post. Page authority ranking is calculated in a similar way to overall domain authority. You may remember that a recent Google algorithm change looks at page paragraphs to help with calculating indexed rank.

The one thing to consider is that if you have one page on your site that relates to a topic everyone wants to know about, and that page has great backlinks and length, then it is likely to be THE page that will draw people to your site. Once they are on your site, they are likely to stay longer if you build valuable links to the page. Don’t discount the value of having a high-ranking page.

4 Ways To Improve or Build Page Authority.

Below are four different ways to improve or build page authority. It is valuable to look at each page of content you have on your site and consider if doing one or more of these things would improve your authority.

1.    Constantly Create Fresh Content.

You may have visited a website before where you notice that a page was recently updated. This information shows that the page owner has been onto the page and added content or somehow adjusted the content. That may have been by updating statistics on the page or adding a recently created YouTube video. Perhaps you might also consider some new topics or other areas that you could add to the post. For example, in a month or so’s time, you could revisit this page and add another one or two ways to increase page authority.

Another thing to look at is your keyword strength on the page. If you added fresh content that increased the keyword or key phrases you were ranking for on the page, that would be valuable. Read more about keyword lists.

Now the other aspect of this is to continue to add new posts to your blog constantly. In “How To Build a Solid List of Keywords,” we discussed the importance of having a keyword strategy. That strategy exists at a site level, then at the individual post level too.

If you think of it this way, you won’t go to an unknown person to receive medical advice; you want to visit the practitioner who has undertaken training and is an authority in their field. Your website pages can be seen as that authority if you develop content by following these guidelines. Be the authority in your field.

2.    Earn External Links.

When visitors view your page as authoritative, other sites will be more inclined to link to it. Take, for example, the fact that in this post, we have linked to the Moz website article on Page Authority. It is a clear and descriptive page that explains in detail what page authority is. That is why it is of value to link to it.

You want each page that you develop to provide high-quality, informative information. If the content you create provides value to others by describing something in detail or giving a different perspective, it is more likely to be seen as authoritative.

Remember that by making your content shareable, more people will see it and you are more likely to gain site links to it. In Jason Hennessey’s 12 Examples of How to Earn High-Quality Links the Natural Way, he provides examples of different content to create that others will want to link to.

3.    Use Images.

Kevin Richards at Ventura Webdesign says that images make written content more digestible and sharable.

And it’s true. You know yourself that you get bored reading page upon page of text, especially if you are looking at that page on a smartphone or tablet. At the same time, it becomes more exciting and holds your attention when the page contains images.

If the images add value to the content, that, of course, is a bonus because that adds to the page’s shareability.  Neil Patel said that quality content is sharable. Be creative and create your own images; Google crawlers favor those above stock photos.

4.    Check Your Links (Complete a Link Audit).

There is nothing more frustrating for a page visitor to click on a link on your site and find that it doesn’t work. That is the opposite of being authoritative. Whether you are linking to internal documents or external pages or websites, it is valuable to complete a link audit.

You may not realize that even the simple act of changing a page title can mean that any internal pages or posts linked to on a page will no longer work. The same could be the case for external links; the site may no longer exist, or the page title could have changed. That is why it is valuable to check links regularly.

Google indexes your site based on the page links it finds. Then it searches within each page for further links and indexes those too. That is why your links need to stay current.

There is no simple or easy way to check your links unless you use an external tool. Setting up a plan to review one or two pages a week ensures they stay updated.