While working through the difference between internal, external, and backlinking I came across link authority. I thought it was domain authority. But I also remember hearing about page authority. I decided I was finally going to look up all the authorities and straighten it out for myself. It seems there are three types of authority.
Three types of authority
- Domain authority
- Page authority
- Link authority
Domain authority
- introduced by Moz; Made up of metrics. There is the Domain authority concept and the Domain authority metric.
Domain authority (concept)
Two factors to consider,
Age and trust
- domain has a good track record; around for years; earned their right to rank. This means the domain has not been used to game the search engine algorithms, not that you really can.
- Website migration where a long-standing domain is 301 redirects to a new domain. Otherwise, a new domain needs to “earn its stripes” by letting the domain age, taking care of it – writing good content and earning high-quality backlinks.
Popularity
Factors include,
Quantity of backlinks
- more usually better
Quality of backlinks
- quality backlinks pass on more authority, you earn more trust
Number of unique linking domains
- the more domains linking to you, the better, more popular you are
Domain relevance (metric)
- draws from on-page content and external links
Checking domain authority
Criteria to consider to get a feel for domain authority
- Are you ranking for any high-competition search queries?
- How many backlinks do you have
- Are the backlinks of good quality (non-spammy and authoritative)
- How many unique linking domains
Tools for domain authority:
How to improve domain authority
Age and trust
- take care of your content, add to it, refresh it, and don’t do anything “spammy” or “black-hat-ish”. Don’t try to “game” the system.
Popularity
- actively try to build the number of good quality backlinks you have.
Good level of domain authority?
Whatever is needed to be successful in your market. Higher the better.
Page authority
- indicators of a webpage’s ability to rank.
Based on three factors
Age and trust
- Page has a good track record and has been around for years. Take care of the page e.g. updating the content, external linking to authoritative sources, quality backlinks, internal links pointing to the page over time will influence the page’s authority
The amount of value received from links
- external linking by linking out to authoritative pages, backing up your content; internal linking to show that the page has high authority within your domain; of course securing authoritative backlinks
Freshness of the last update
- update content of the page periodically as search engines like this and makes the page more relevant for the present.
Page relevance
- relevance of the page for specific keywords / search terms is important. This is earned through on-page content including those keywords and related keywords, internal linking and external linking to back up the content on the page.
How to check page authority (get a sense of it)
- Is the page ranking for any competition search queries?
- How many backlinks does the page have?
- Are the backlinks good quality? (authoritative and non-spammy)
- How many unique domains are linking to the page?
Tools to find page authority metric
Note
- Page authority metric is a better indicator than domain authority metric when gauging your ability rank. Ranking a single page is easier to understand and do than an entire domain.
How to improve page authority?
Age and trust
- play by the rules, take care of the page while it ages
Popularity
- work towards gaining more high quality backlinks and as many quality backlinks as possible
Freshness of the last update
- Keep page up to date and refreshing the content
What is a good level of page authority?
Whatever you need to be successful. Low competitive search queries may be easier to rank for while more competitive search queries will be harder to rank for and you may never rank for them. (it’s a compounding thing it seems, as your authority increases you’ll be able to rank more easily etc)
Link Authority
- indicators of the ranking power a link carries over
Note
- There isn’t a common metric for any of the tools to measure this. The higher the link authority the better.
Based on four factors
- Nofollow attribute
- Page authority of the page linking out
- Number of links on the page linking out
- Location of the lin on the page linking out
Nofollow
- When this is indicated with a link, usually external, it tells the search engines that the owner of the website linking out doesn’t want to credit the page they are linking out to. (douchebag thing to do) These are links that are not earned and shouldn’t be credited. E.g. paid backlinks, links on profile pages, blog comments.
- Tells the search engine not to follow a link and not to associate any value to it. E.g. product filters.
- They pass on less link authority (not none). They are not useless. (if a visitor clicks on one, it still leads to that page, shows them that you are backing up your content with relevant sources etc.)
Page authority of linking out page
- The more authority the page linking out has, the more link authority it passes onto the other page.
Number of links on linking out page
- Each link on a page receives some of the page’s authority. If there are many links on a page, each link has a smaller fraction of the page’s authority. This means being efficient and effective with your internal and external links is wise.
Link location
- Depending on where the link is located makes a difference to the link authority to a search engine. E.g. contextual links, links within the copy of the page, are valued more than a link in the footer or header that are on every page because it lacks context and thus is less relevant.
References
Authority and Trust in SEO explained, October 2021, Steven van Vessum, Jessica Rangel, URL: https://www.contentkingapp.com/academy/authority/
Tools
https://ahrefs.com/website-checker
I enjoy learning and sharing that knowledge.Sharing has been in many forms over the years, as a teaching assistant, university lecturer, Pilates instructor, math tutor and just sharing with friends and family.Throughout, summarizing what I have learnt in words has always been there and continues to through blog posts, articles, video and the ever growing forms of content out there!
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