How to Use Page Authority Checker for Better SEO Insights
Let's go back to our analogy from the world of sports. We've talked before about how a website's "Domain Authority" is a little bit like a sports team's overall ranking in the league. It is a single, a simple, and a very useful number that gives you a quick, high-level idea of the overall strength of the entire team.
But what happens when you need to do a much deeper and a much more granular level of analysis? What if you don't just want to know how good the entire team is? What if you want to know about the specific and the individual strength of one, single player on that team? How good is their star striker, really? And how solid is their goalkeeper? To be able to answer those questions, you would need a much more specific and a much more focused metric.
In the highly competitive and the ever-changing world of SEO, the exact same thing is true. Your Domain Authority is a fantastic metric for being able to tell you the overall, general strength of your entire website. But what about the specific strength of one, single, and individual page? How powerful is that brand-new blog post that you just published? Or that incredibly important, product page? For that, we have another, a more granular, and an incredibly insightful score. It is called "Page Authority," and it is an absolutely crucial metric for being able to understand your content's performance on a page-by-page level.
The "Individual Player's" Score: What is Page Authority?
Before we get into the "how," let's just make sure that we are all on the same page about what this "Page Authority" thing actually is. Just like its more famous, big brother, Domain Authority, Page Authority, or PA, is a search engine ranking score that was developed by the pioneering and the well-respected, SEO software company, Moz.
It is also a score that is on a 100-point, logarithmic scale. But its one, and only, job is to be able to predict the ranking strength of one, single, individual URL, not the entire website. The best analogy is to think of it like this: if your Domain Authority is like the overall credit score for your entire, and your long, financial history, then your Page Authority is like the specific credit score for just one of your individual, credit cards. It is entirely possible for a single page on your website to be incredibly powerful and to have a very high authority, even if the rest of your website has a lower, overall Domain Authority.
The All-Important Difference: Domain Authority vs. Page Authority
Now we need to have a very important and a very clarifying conversation, because this is the part where so many beginners in the world of SEO can get very, very confused. It is absolutely crucial that you understand the clear and the distinct difference between these two, very important Moz metrics.
Domain Authority (DA) is the metric that is used to measure the overall and the predictive ranking strength of your entire domain. It is a score that is influenced by the total number and by the quality of all the backlinks that are pointing to all of the different pages on your entire site. It is a high-level measure of your website's overall, accumulated reputation and its trust in the eyes of Google. Because of this, it is a metric that will usually change very, very slowly over time.
Page Authority (PA), on the other hand, is the metric that is used to measure the ranking strength of one, single, individual page. Its score is influenced primarily by the number and by the quality of the backlinks that are pointing directly to that one, specific page. A brand-new page on a very authoritative website will almost always start with a very low PA score of 1, and it will then have to build up its own, personal authority over time as it begins to earn its own, high-quality links.
Why You Should Be Analyzing Your Pages, Not Just Your Site
So, why is it so incredibly important for you to be able to get this granular and to look at the authority of your individual pages, and not just at the overall authority of your whole site?
The first and the most important reason is for content performance analysis. Your Page Authority score is the single best and most direct metric that you have for being able to judge the success of an individual blog post or an article that you have published. You have just written a new post. Is its PA score slowly and steadily going up over time? That is a direct and a very positive signal that your new piece of content is starting to earn some valuable links and some real authority in the eyes of Google.
It is also an essential tool for being able to identify your "power pages." You can use a checker tool to be able to analyze your entire site and to be able to find the handful of pages that have the highest and the most powerful PA scores. These are your most valuable and your most important, SEO assets. And you should be strategically and intelligently linking from these powerful pages to some of your other, and your newer, pages on your site that you want to be able to give a little bit of a boost.
The Manual Method (It Doesn't Exist)
Now, you might be thinking, "Okay, this is great. Can't I just go and try to calculate this myself?" The simple and the honest answer to that is no, it is completely and totally impossible.
Just like its big brother, Domain Authority, the Page Authority score is a complex and a proprietary, machine-learning metric that has been developed by Moz. The score is calculated by an incredibly complex algorithm that analyzes dozens and dozens of different and of various factors, but it is primarily based on the backlink data for that one, specific page. It is a complex and a proprietary score that is completely impossible for a human being to be able to calculate by hand. You absolutely and totally must use a tool that has access to this specific, and this valuable, data.
The Instant Page-Level Audit: The Online Page Authority Checker
This pressing need for a fast, for an easy, and for an incredibly insightful way to be able to get this granular and this page-level insight is exactly why a Page Authority Checker is such a fundamental and an essential tool for any modern and for any data-driven, content strategist.
This type of tool is a simple but a very powerful utility that is usually connected directly to the Moz, or a similar, data index. It is designed to be able to pull the specific, PA score for any individual URL that you enter. The workflow is an absolute dream. You just go to the tool. You will see one, single, and very clear input box. You just have to paste the full and the specific URL of the page that you want to analyze, and not just the homepage. You click the "Check" button, and the tool will then return a detailed report for you that shows you the Page Authority for that one, specific page, and it will usually also show you the Domain Authority of the entire site, just for some extra and some helpful context. And the fantastic thing is, with the kind of fast and completely free tools you can find on toolseel.com, you can get an instant, strength-reading of any page on the entire web, in just a few seconds.
What to Look For in a Great PA Checking Tool
As you begin to explore these wonderfully simple and useful tools, you'll find that the best and most trustworthy ones are designed to be fast, accurate, and incredibly easy to use. They are built to be your on-demand, competitive analysis dashboard. A really top-notch online tool for checking a page's authority should have a few key features. It should include:
- The ability for the tool to be able to check the authority of any full and specific URL, not just a root domain.
- A fast and, most importantly, an accurate lookup process that is able to pull the latest and the most recently available data from a reputable and a trusted source, like the Moz index.
- A clear, a simple, and an easy-to-read, final result that shows you both the Page Authority (PA) of the specific page that you have entered, and also the overall Domain Authority (DA) of the site for context.
- The fantastic functionality to also be able to show you some of the other, useful, page-level metrics, such as the total number of backlinks that are pointing to that one, specific page.
- A simple and an intuitive interface that is very easy for even a non-SEO-expert to be able to use and to understand.
A tool with these features is an invaluable asset for any modern and for any serious, content creator.
The Human SEO: From a Score to a Strategy
Now for the golden rule, the part of the process that turns a simple number into a real and a winning, SEO strategy. The online tool has done its job. It has given you the number. Now, your job is to be the human strategist and to be able to interpret what that number actually means and what you should do about it.
If you have just published a brand-new blog post, its PA score is, of course, going to be a 1. This is completely normal. Your action plan now is to start to promote that new post. You need to share it on your social media. And, most importantly, you need to be on the lookout for any good, internal linking opportunities. You should find one of your existing, "power pages" that is, a page on your site that already has a very high PA and you should add a link from that page to your brand-new post.
And if you are analyzing your competitor's page that is already ranking for a keyword that you want to target, and you see that it has a very high PA of 45, then this is an incredibly crucial piece of competitive intelligence. It is telling you that to be able to compete, you can't just write a good article. You are going to have to write a truly great article, and you are going to have to have a very serious and a very proactive, link-building strategy to be able to build up the authority of your own page to a similar kind of a level.
From a Team Ranking to a Player's Stats
Let’s be honest, while your Domain Authority score is a fantastic way to be able to get the big and the high-level picture of your website's overall strength, your Page Authority is the crucial and the indispensable metric that gives you all of the granular and all of the page-level insights that you need to be able to make smart and effective, content and link-building decisions. A good, checker tool is the only way to be able to access this valuable and this important data, quickly and easily.
So, it's time to stop just looking at the overall strength of your entire website. It is time to start to analyze all of your individual and of your specific players. By using a simple online tool to be able to check the Page Authority of your own, valuable content and of your competitors' content, you can get a much more detailed and a much more actionable understanding of the entire, SEO battlefield. It’s time to find your star players, it’s time to strengthen your weaker ones, and it’s time to build a content strategy that is designed to win, one page at a time.
