Page authority is a score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a specific page is to rank in search results. It runs on a 1-100 logarithmic scale - higher is better, and each point gets harder to earn as you climb. If you’ve been confused about what page authority actually measures and whether it’s worth paying attention to, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most misunderstood metrics in SEO.

Let me be clear about something upfront: page authority is a third-party metric. Google doesn’t use it. Google has never used it. Moz built it as an approximation of how Google might evaluate a page’s ranking potential based on factors they can observe from the outside. That said, PA correlates reasonably well with actual rankings, which makes it a useful diagnostic tool even if it’s not a direct ranking factor.

How page authority is calculated

Moz calculates PA using a machine learning model trained on search results data. The model looks at dozens of factors, but the heaviest inputs are the link profile of that specific page - how many links point to it, the quality of those linking domains, and the anchor text used.

A brand new blog post with zero backlinks will typically start with a PA of 1. A Wikipedia article on a popular topic might sit at 80+. Most pages on established sites that have done some promotion land in the 20-50 range.

The score is logarithmic, which means moving from PA 20 to PA 30 is much easier than moving from PA 50 to PA 60. This is by design - it mirrors how competitive rankings actually work. Getting your first ten backlinks matters a lot. Getting your hundredth matters far less.

What is page authority vs domain authority

This is where people get confused. Domain authority measures the predicted ranking strength of an entire domain. Page authority measures a single page. They’re related but they’re not the same thing.

Think of it this way. Your domain might have a DA of 45 because your homepage and a few key pages have strong link profiles. But a new blog post you published yesterday has a PA of 1 because nobody has linked to that specific URL yet. The domain’s overall strength gives that new page a slight boost, but it still needs its own links and signals to rank competitively.

Here’s a real-world example. Take a site like Backlinko.com, which has a DA around 80. Their famous “SEO Tools” guide has a PA in the high 70s because it’s been linked to by thousands of domains over the years. But a random blog post they published last month might only have a PA of 35 - strong compared to most sites, but modest compared to their top content. The domain authority lifts all pages somewhat, but individual page authority separates the winners from the filler.

Another example: a small SaaS blog with DA 30 publishes a piece of original research that gets picked up by TechCrunch and a few industry publications. That single page might jump to PA 55 while the rest of the blog sits at PA 15-20. Page authority is page-specific. One viral piece doesn’t lift your other pages.

What actually influences page authority

PA isn’t magic. The inputs are observable, and most of them are things you can directly influence.

External backlinks to that specific page. This is the biggest factor by far. A page with 50 links from relevant, authoritative domains will have a higher PA than a page with 5 links from low-quality directories. Quality matters more than quantity - a single link from a DA 70 site can outweigh twenty links from DA 10 sites.

Internal links pointing to the page. Your own site’s link structure matters. Pages that sit deep in your architecture with few internal links signal to both Moz and Google that they’re not important. Pages linked from your homepage, navigation, and multiple related articles get more link equity passed to them.

The linking pages’ own authority. Links from high-PA pages pass more value than links from low-PA pages. A mention in a New York Times article (PA 85+) does more for your page authority than a link from a brand new blog nobody reads.

Content quality and relevance. Moz’s model doesn’t directly read your content the way Google does, but content quality drives the behaviors that Moz does measure. Great content earns more backlinks, gets shared more, and tends to accumulate signals over time that the model picks up.

Age and link velocity. Pages that have accumulated links steadily over time tend to score higher than pages that got a burst of links last week. Moz’s model weights sustained link accumulation.

How to increase page authority

Improving PA is not mysterious. It follows directly from the inputs above.

Most link building campaigns focus almost entirely on the domain’s homepage or a few top-level pages. That raises DA but does nothing for the specific pages you want to rank. When you earn a link or do outreach, point it at the page you want to improve. If your goal is to rank a blog post for a competitive keyword, that blog post needs its own backlinks.

Write content worth referencing - original data, unique frameworks, or genuinely useful tools. A page that exists only to target a keyword and regurgitate what the top ten results already say won’t earn links naturally.

Fix your internal linking

Most sites drastically underuse internal links. Every time you publish a new article, you should link to it from at least 3-5 existing relevant pages. And every new article should link out to your existing content where it makes sense.

This isn’t just about PA. Strong internal linking builds topical authority and helps both users and search engines understand how your content fits together. When you cluster related content and interlink it properly, each page reinforces the others.

If you’re managing dozens or hundreds of pages, keeping track of internal linking opportunities manually is painful. A keyword clustering tool can help you identify which pages belong together and should be cross-linked.

Improve content that’s already got links

Some of your pages already have decent PA from links they’ve earned over time. Don’t waste that. Update those pages with better information, fresher data, and more depth. A page with PA 40 and outdated content is underperforming. Refresh it, and you keep the link equity while making the content more competitive for current rankings.

Check your analytics for pages that used to rank well but have slipped. Those pages often have strong PA but the content has gone stale. Updating them is almost always more efficient than writing something new from scratch.

Not all backlinks contribute equally. Focus your efforts on earning links from pages that themselves have high authority. A guest post on a site with DA 60 is good, but specifically getting linked from their most popular page (PA 70+) is better.

Look for resource pages, industry roundups, and “best of” lists in your niche. These pages tend to have high PA because they’re frequently referenced and updated. Getting included on a curated list with PA 50 is more valuable than five random blog mentions from PA 15 pages.

Remove or redirect dead weight

If you have pages with PA 1 that are thin, outdated, or duplicative, they’re not helping. Consolidate thin pages into stronger ones and redirect the old URLs. This concentrates whatever link equity the old pages had into fewer, better pages.

What counts as a “good” page authority score

There’s no universal benchmark because PA is relative to your competition. If you’re trying to rank for a keyword where the top results have PA 60+, your PA 25 page isn’t going to cut it regardless of how good the content is. If the top results have PA 20-30, you’re in a realistic fight.

As rough guidance: PA under 20 is low and typical of new or unlinked pages. PA 20-40 is moderate and competitive for low to medium difficulty keywords. PA 40-60 is strong and can compete for moderately competitive terms. PA 60+ is excellent and found on well-established pages with significant link profiles.

Check the PA of pages currently ranking for your target keywords. That gives you a realistic target for what your page needs to reach.

PA is a compass, not a scoreboard

Page authority is useful as a diagnostic tool. It tells you which of your pages have link strength and which don’t. It helps you identify where to focus your link building efforts and which pages need more internal links or content improvements.

But don’t obsess over the number itself. PA is a proxy metric built by a third party. Google’s actual ranking algorithm considers hundreds of factors that Moz can’t see - user behavior, content comprehension, entity relationships, and more. A page with PA 30 can outrank a page with PA 50 if it better matches search intent and covers the topic more thoroughly.

Use PA to diagnose problems and prioritize effort. Build links to the pages that matter. Interlink your content properly. Create pages worth linking to in the first place. The score follows from doing the work right.