Domain Authority vs Page Authority: What's the Real Difference?
Domain Authority (DA) measures how strong your entire website is. Page Authority (PA) measures how strong one specific page is. Both scores run from 1 to 100 — higher means a better chance of ranking on Google. They were both created by the SEO tool company Moz, and both are estimates, not official Google ranking factors.
If you're a small business owner or marketer trying to grow organic traffic, you need to understand both. Your DA tells you whether your website can compete in your niche at all. Your PA tells you whether a specific blog post or landing page can outrank the page next to it in search results. This guide breaks down the difference between domain authority and page authority, how each one is calculated, and how to improve both.
both scores
What Is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority is a score that predicts how likely your entire website is to rank in search results compared to competitors (Moz, 2025). It's calculated by analyzing your backlink profile — the number and quality of other websites linking to yours — along with dozens of related signals.
Three things matter most when you look at your DA score:
It's relative, not absolute. A DA of 30 might be excellent for a local plumber but weak for a fintech startup. What matters is how you compare to competitors in your specific niche.
It's logarithmic. Moving from 20 to 30 is far easier than moving from 70 to 80 (Moz). That's why established brands seem "stuck" at high scores — every extra point takes exponentially more effort.
It's not a Google ranking factor. Google doesn't use DA. It's a third-party estimate that helps you benchmark your site's overall strength and track progress over time.
New websites start at DA 1. Global brands like Wikipedia sit near 100. Most small businesses land somewhere between 10 and 40, and closing the gap to your competitors' scores is usually the realistic goal.
For a deeper walkthrough of what DA is and how the score moves, see our guide: Domain Authority Explained.
What Is Page Authority?
Page Authority works the same way as Domain Authority, but at the individual page level (Moz, 2024). Instead of scoring your whole website, it predicts how well one specific URL — a blog post, a product page, a landing page — will rank.
Two pages on the same website can have very different PA scores. Your homepage usually has the highest PA because it collects the most links. A brand-new blog post with no backlinks might sit at PA 1 even on a high-DA website.
PA is influenced by:
- The number and quality of external links pointing to that specific page
- Internal links from other pages on your site flowing authority to it
- The authority of the domain it lives on (a page on a high-DA site starts with an advantage)
- Content quality and relevance to search intent
PA also changes faster than DA. A single link from a major publication can lift one page's score noticeably, while your overall DA barely moves.
Domain Authority vs Page Authority: The Key Differences
The difference between domain authority and page authority comes down to scope. DA is the reputation of your whole house; PA is the reputation of one room. Here's how they compare side by side:
| Feature | Domain Authority (DA) | Page Authority (PA) |
|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Your entire website (domain) | One specific page (URL) |
| Scale | 1 to 100 | 1 to 100 |
| Scale type | Logarithmic | Logarithmic |
| Main driver | Backlinks to your whole domain | Backlinks to that specific page |
| Stability | Changes slowly over time | Can jump or drop with a single link |
| Best used for | Benchmarking against competitors, vetting link opportunities | Predicting whether one page can rank, prioritizing content updates |
| Google ranking factor? | No — third-party estimate | No — third-party estimate |
Which One Should You Focus On?
Both — but for different jobs. The honest answer is that page authority is what actually wins rankings, while domain authority is the foundation that makes winning easier.
Use Page Authority when you want a specific page to rank
If you're trying to get your "best CRM for small business" post onto page one, look at the PA of the competitor pages already ranking. That tells you how much link-building and content work your page needs.
Use Domain Authority when you're evaluating the big picture
Comparing your DA to competitors shows whether you're investing enough in link building overall. It's also the standard metric for judging whether a website is worth getting a link from — a link from a DA 60 site in your niche is worth far more than ten links from DA 10 sites.
Conductor's SEO research puts it well:
all your pages' authority combines into your domain authority, so if you want to rank one page, focus on its page authority; if you want to gauge your site's overall ability to rank, watch domain authority (Conductor).
How to Check Both Scores
You don't need paid tools to start. Moz's free Link Explorer shows both DA and PA for any URL once you create a free account (Moz). Semrush and Ahrefs offer similar metrics — Authority Score and Domain Rating respectively — though the numbers won't match Moz's exactly, because each tool uses its own data and algorithm.
Moz · Link Explorer
Semrush · Authority Score
Ahrefs · Domain Rating
If you want a step-by-step method, our guide on how to check Domain Authority covers the tools and what the numbers actually mean.
One warning: don't obsess over the absolute number. These scores fluctuate as tools update their indexes and as competitors earn or lose links. The useful question is never "Is my DA good?" but "Is my DA higher than the sites I'm competing with?" For benchmarks by industry, see what is a good Domain Authority.
How to Improve Domain Authority
Improving DA means strengthening your whole website's reputation. The levers are:
Earn high-quality backlinks.
Links from authoritative, relevant sites in your niche carry the most weight. Publishing original research, detailed guides, and useful free resources attracts these naturally.
Remove toxic links.
Spammy or irrelevant backlinks can drag your score down. Regular audits of your link profile help you spot and disavow them (Moz, 2025).
Build internal links.
A clear internal linking structure helps distribute authority across your site and makes every page easier to crawl.
Fix technical SEO.
Page speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability don't directly raise DA, but a technically sound site earns and keeps links more easily.
How to Improve Page Authority
Improving PA means strengthening individual pages. The tactics are more targeted:
Build links directly to the page you want to rank.
Outreach should point at that specific URL, not just your homepage.
Add internal links from your strongest pages.
Linking from a high-PA page to a page you want to boost passes authority efficiently.
Refresh the content regularly.
Updated, comprehensive content earns links and keeps rankings over time.
Match search intent exactly.
A page that fully answers the searcher's question earns engagement signals that support ranking.
Here's the honest part: doing all of this manually is slow. You need to research keywords, audit your backlinks and your competitors' backlinks, write content that earns links, send outreach emails for links, and keep every page updated. For a full playbook, see our guide on how to increase Domain Authority.
Let an Agent Do the Heavy Lifting
If you're a small business owner, the hardest part of building authority isn't knowing what to do — it's finding the hours to do it. This is where an automated approach changes the math.
Votrix AI is a fully automated SEO and GEO agent that handles the authority-building work end to end:
- ✓It audits your backlinks and your competitors' links using DataForSEO data, so you can see exactly where your authority gap is and which links to chase first.
- ✓It researches keywords and analyzes competitors, identifying the pages you should create and the pages already ranking that you can outrank.
- ✓It writes and publishes articles and pages for you, and finds underperforming pages and rewrites them — the same refresh tactic that lifts page authority.
- ✓It sends outreach emails to earn backlinks and brand mentions, the single most important driver of both DA and PA.
- ✓It checks whether Google and AI crawlers can actually read your site, so your authority work isn't wasted on pages search engines can't see.
- ✓It tracks whether ChatGPT, Claude, and Google AI Overviews mention you — because authority increasingly determines whether AI assistants recommend your business, not just whether Google ranks you.
- ✓Connect it to Google Search Console and you see real rankings, clicks, and impressions alongside the authority metrics.
It's free within the free quota, and you pay by usage beyond that. You can see the full feature list on the Votrix AI SEO Manager page.
DA vs DR: One More Term You'll See
While comparing tools, you'll also run into Domain Rating (DR), which is Ahrefs' equivalent of Domain Authority. DR measures the strength of a website's backlink profile on a 0–100 scale, while DA is Moz's predictive ranking score. Same idea, different tool, different numbers. We break down the details in Domain Authority vs Domain Rating.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "page authority" mean in SEO?
Does your website domain matter?
What are the 5 components of SEO?
What is DR in keyword research?
Which matters more: page authority or domain authority?
Is Domain Authority a Google ranking factor?
- Moz — What Is Page Authority? How Do I Influence Page Authority? — https://moz.com/learn/seo/page-authority (checked October 2026)
- Moz — Domain Authority: What is it and how is it calculated — https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority (updated March 2025, checked October 2026)
- Conductor — Authority in SEO: domains, pages and links — https://www.conductor.com/academy/authority/ (checked October 2026)
- WP Developer — Domain Authority vs Page Authority: Complete Guide — https://wpdeveloper.com/domain-authority-vs-page-authority/ (May 2026) — 2026-10-31 16:14 UTC