What is page authority, in plain terms
What is page authority? Page Authority (PA) is a 1-to-100 score, invented by the SEO software company Moz, that predicts how well a single web page is likely to rank in Google search results. A higher score means a stronger page. It is a relative, comparative metric: a PA of 45 is meaningless on its own but tells you a lot when you line it up against the pages you are competing with for a keyword.
The most important thing to understand up front is that Page Authority is not a Google metric. Google does not publish it, use it, or care about it. Moz built PA by training a machine-learning model on many known ranking signals — chiefly the link profile of the page — to approximate ranking strength. Other tools sell their own versions of the same idea under different names: Ahrefs calls its page-level score URL Rating (UR), and Semrust and Semrush use metrics like Authority Score. They are all third-party estimates, and they will disagree with each other.
Page Authority is best treated as a thermometer, not a thermostat. It reports a temperature; it does not set one. You cannot raise the score directly, and chasing the number itself is a trap. What you can do is improve the underlying things the score measures — mostly links to that specific page — and watch PA rise as a side effect. Think of it as a quick, directional read on how much ranking power a URL has accumulated.
Page Authority is a prediction of ranking ability, not a ranking factor. Improving the score is a symptom of doing good SEO, never the goal itself.
Page authority vs domain authority
The single most common confusion is Page Authority vs Domain Authority, and the difference is simple: Page Authority scores one URL; Domain Authority scores the whole website. A single blog post has its own PA, but every page on the same site shares one Domain Authority (DA) — the site-wide equivalent. A brand-new article on a powerful site inherits a strong DA but starts with a weak PA until it earns its own links.
That distinction matters because it changes what you work on. If your DA is low, the whole site lacks authority and you need site-wide link building and time. If your DA is healthy but one important page has a low PA, the fix is targeted: get more links — external and internal — pointing at that specific page. Here is how the two metrics line up:
| Aspect | Page Authority (PA) | Domain Authority (DA) |
|---|---|---|
| What it scores | A single page / URL | The entire website |
| Scale | 1-100, logarithmic | 1-100, logarithmic |
| Made by | Moz (third party) | Moz (third party) |
| Main driver | Links to that specific page | Links to the whole domain |
| Varies per page? | Yes — every page differs | No — same across the site |
| Best use | Compare competing pages for a keyword | Compare whole sites |
| A Google metric? | No | No |
In practice you read them together. A page with high PA on a high-DA site is very hard to outrank. A high-PA page on a weak domain can still punch above its weight for a specific query. And a low-PA page on a strong domain is your biggest opportunity: the domain's strength means a handful of good links to that URL can move it quickly. For the site-wide side of the equation, read what is domain authority.
What drives page authority, and what is a good score
Page Authority is driven overwhelmingly by links to that specific page. The model weighs both external backlinks (other websites linking to the URL) and the quantity and quality of those links far more heavily than anything on the page itself. A page with 30 relevant links from trusted sites will out-score a longer, better-written page with two. This is why link building sits at the center of moving PA — start with how to get backlinks for free.
The second big driver is internal linking. Links from other pages on your own site pass authority to a target URL, which is why orphaned pages — pages nothing links to — tend to have the lowest scores. A deliberate internal-linking structure funnels authority from your strongest pages to the ones you want to rank, and it is the fastest lever you fully control. See what is internal linking for the method. Not every link counts equally, though — a rel="nofollow" link passes less signal, so understanding nofollow vs dofollow links helps you judge which links actually move the needle.
So what is a good page authority score? Because PA is logarithmic, the scale is not linear — climbing from 20 to 30 is far easier than climbing from 70 to 80, and the very top scores are reserved for pages like the Wikipedia homepage. Use these rough bands as a guide, always compared against the pages ranking for your target keyword:
- 1-20 — new or lightly-linked pages; normal for fresh content.
- 20-40 — an established page with some links; competitive for long-tail keywords.
- 40-60 — a strong page that can compete for moderately competitive terms.
- 60+ — a well-linked page on an authoritative site; hard to outrank.
The honest answer to "what is a good score" is: higher than the pages you are trying to beat. If the top results for your keyword average a PA of 35, you need to get into that range, not chase an arbitrary 60.
How to improve page authority
You improve Page Authority by improving the things it measures — you cannot edit the number directly. The work falls into a short, repeatable list, in rough order of impact:
- Earn quality backlinks to the page. A few links from relevant, trusted sites move PA more than dozens of low-quality ones. Create something genuinely link-worthy — original data, a tool, a definitive guide — then promote it.
- Strengthen internal links to the URL. Add contextual links from your most authoritative existing pages, using descriptive anchor text, to pass authority to the target.
- Fix orphaned and weakly-linked pages. Every important page should be reachable in a few clicks and linked from related content.
- Improve the page so it earns links naturally. Better content is what makes other sites willing to link — depth, accuracy, and a clear answer-first structure all help. See how to improve website ranking on Google.
- Be patient. PA updates on Moz's crawl schedule, and links take time to be discovered and counted. Do not expect same-week movement.
One caution: because PA is a third-party score, do not optimize for the number at the expense of the reader. Buying links or spamming directories can inflate a score briefly while doing real damage to how Google actually treats the page. The durable play is to build links the honest way and treat any rise in PA as confirmation you are on the right track.
Finally, remember that on-page factors still decide whether that hard-won link authority converts into rankings. A page can have a great PA and still underperform if its title, headings, and answer-first structure are weak, or if AI crawlers cannot read it. You can run a free SEO + GEO audit on any URL to check those on-page and GEO signals in one pass — a useful companion to a link metric, since PA tells you how strong a page is while an audit tells you whether the page is set up to use that strength.