How to improve your Page Authority?

[Cedric]

What are some of the best methods to improve the page authority of a website?

I know creating high quality content helps adding value to the PA. As well as building backlinks with similar and reputable websites. What else can be done to improve the PA ?

 

[cbpayne]

PA as calculated by MOZ is totally based on links. Content has nothing to do with it and is not used in the calculations by MOZ.

(unless you consider content attracts links)

 

[Dilip]

Backlinks help a lot. You also need some relevant content that matters.

Unlike in the old days, Google understands the content. They now prefer verified content and authors.

 

[Arantor]

Content was always the way to get page authority - because people referring to you was always how the game was played. But these days Google has gotten better at weeding out copy sites and spam sites.

 

[Dilip]

Google bot is too smart these days. Look at Analytics, if they never shared that dashboard, will we ever know that they know so much?

Google knows a lot of things about websites, traffic and webmasters. The internet is completely how they define.

 

[cbpayne]

Content was always the way to get page authority - because people referring to you was always how the game was played. But these days Google has gotten better at weeding out copy sites and spam sites.

Care to explain how MOZ calculates content into the PA (HINT... they don't)

 

[Arantor]

Hint: don't try strawman arguments, it's not very becoming. I never said content was *calculated* into anything.

Content was *always* the way this worked - not because the content *itself* is scored, because that's insanely difficult to objectively measure. But if you have 100 links pointing to you on a given subject, where there's clearly some contextual relevance, chances are you're more authoritative on a given subject. Ditto if when searching for a term on Google and you turn up in the results and the user doesn't come back to Google for a second opinion, it can be inferred that the content was a good match for the search query. (Google does track this.)

Having good content is *literally* the original way to produce inbound links from other sources, it's been that way forever, and it's been the basis of Google's PageRank since before they were called Google (although there are plenty of other 'signals' now for authority)

As for weeding out copy sites and spam sites, if the same content appears on multiple domains, it's a clear sign that something's a duplicate, the only question becomes whether the little site copied the big one in the hopes of ranking, or the big one copied the little one thinking no-one would care (both happen).

 

[Shawn Gossman]

For page/domain authority, I would look at several ranking factors.

On a blog, it will be "much easier" but on a forum, it will be way more challenging since it's user-contributed. You have to make sure you never try to force your members to practice SEO standards otherwise you'll likely scare them off or deter them from posting.

Building a community, a real community, IMO is more effective on a message forum than SEO.

But if you do want to help authority through SEO, here are some ideas:

1. Create a content frequently. Create the best content possible and try to do so every day. Other people may not be creating the best content like you are but your best content can help.

2. Links. The more websites that link to you, the better. However, the types of sites matter. if their content sucks and they do sketchy things, your link on their site will be worse for you than good. You want backlinks on websites that have the best content and that are relatable to yours. That's who you want sharing your links.

3. Speed. Make sure your forum is as fast as it can be. Each time you have significant downtime, it will hurt your ranking.

4. Mobile. Develop a forum to be mobile first. I'm typing this on my desktop but I'm old and about as obsolete as this desktop lol. Most younger folks have never even had their own computer. Their mobile devices are all that they need. You could make a forum all about using desktop computers and I promise you that 95% of your users will be using the forum on their phones.

These are a few good ways you can aim at getting better page/domain authority. But while Google may have some kind of slight ranking factor for this... this is mainly a Moz factor more than a Google factor.