When SEOs talk about the strength of a specific page — not the whole domain, but one particular URL — they are often referring to Page Authority. It is a metric that attempts to predict how well that page will rank in search engine results pages, based primarily on the quality and quantity of backlinks pointing to it.
Understanding Page Authority, what drives it, and how to deliberately build it for your most important pages is a core skill in competitive SEO.
What Is Page Authority?
Page Authority (PA) is a metric developed by Moz, scored on a scale of 1 to 100. A higher score indicates a stronger page that is more likely to rank well. It is calculated using a machine learning model that correlates dozens of link-based signals with actual Google rankings.
It is important to note that Page Authority is a third-party metric, not something Google itself uses or publishes. Google's own internal equivalent is PageRank — which still exists and influences rankings but is no longer publicly shared. Moz's Page Authority is widely used as a practical proxy for estimating a page's ranking potential.
Ahrefs has a similar metric called URL Rating (UR), and Semrush has its own page-level scores. All of these are approximations based on publicly observable link data rather than direct access to Google's algorithms.
Page Authority vs Domain Authority
These two metrics are frequently confused. Domain Authority (DA) measures the ranking strength of an entire domain — the cumulative weight of all backlinks pointing anywhere on the site. Page Authority (PA) measures the strength of a single specific URL.
A page on a high-DA domain does not automatically have high PA. If that specific page has few backlinks pointing directly to it, its PA may be quite low even on an authoritative domain. This is why page-level link building — targeting links directly to your most important individual pages — matters separately from domain-level authority building.
What Factors Influence Page Authority?
Page Authority is driven almost entirely by links — specifically the links pointing directly to that URL:
Number of unique referring domains — how many different websites link to this specific page. One site linking ten times is worth much less than ten different sites each linking once.
Authority of linking pages — a single link from a page with high PA is worth more than dozens of links from low-PA pages. Quality matters far more than quantity.
Relevance of linking pages — links from topically related pages carry more weight than links from unrelated content.
Internal links — the internal link equity flowing to a page from the rest of your site contributes to its overall strength. Pages that receive many internal links from strong pages on your own domain rank better than isolated pages.
How to Build Page Authority for Your Key Pages
Target external backlinks directly at your most important pages. Most link building campaigns default to building links to the homepage. While homepage links improve domain authority, they do not directly boost individual pages. When doing outreach or broken link building, specifically request links to the target page you want to strengthen.
Use broken link building. Our broken link checker can scan competitor sites and find broken outbound links pointing to content similar to yours. When you create better replacement content and earn those links, they go directly to your target page — maximising the PA benefit.
Optimise internal linking to your target pages. Review your site's internal link structure with our internal link checker and ensure your highest-priority pages receive strong internal link coverage from your most authoritative existing pages. This distributes domain-level equity directly to the pages that need it most.
Create genuinely linkable content. The pages that naturally accumulate the most backlinks tend to be original research, comprehensive guides, free tools, and data-driven studies. If you want a page to have high PA, the content needs to be the kind of resource other sites want to reference.
Check your anchor text profile. When building links to a specific page, vary the anchor text across different links. Over-optimising the anchor text profile for a single page — too many exact match anchors — can trigger algorithmic filters. Use our anchor text analyser to monitor the distribution for your key pages.
How to Check Page Authority
You can check Page Authority for any URL using Moz's free Link Explorer tool or their browser extension. Ahrefs and Semrush provide equivalent page-level metrics in their respective tools. For monitoring trends over time, set up regular checks on your most important pages so you can see whether your link building efforts are moving the needle.
Summary
Page Authority reflects the link equity pointed at a specific URL. Build it by earning high-quality backlinks directly to your target pages, strengthening internal links pointing to those pages, and creating content that naturally attracts references from other sites. Track it alongside domain authority to get a complete picture of your site's ranking potential at both the page and domain level.
Missed the previous article? Read: How to Check If Your Website Has a Google Penalty