So what about my sites, DA or PA?
Domain Authority or Page Authority are helpful tools for determining a site’s value, but they are not how Google looks at your site. These are numbers generated by Moz, a 3rd party company that is a leader in the online search and search engine optimization community.
Google uses its own in-house formula they called PageRank. At one point Google offered a free tool to track your, but they removed support for that tool, and later the tool itself. Their reasoning seemed to be that they did not want site owners to focus on moving that sole number.
Instead, (it appears) they want the content creators to focus on the quality of their content. I call this process providing content with context. The context is addressing the questions people are searching for in the search engines in the best way. This often means providing detailed answers to questions and covering topics related to the target keywords thoroughly.
IE: If someone searches “Why did my sites DA go down?” The best answer may be one that not only directly addresses that question, it should also provide added context.
Does Google use DA in any way?
It does not appear that Google uses DA or PA. These two private measures include a look a data simplified in its approach. The last time Google shared this data, some clever industry leaders did a great deal of testing. You can find an excellent page about Google’s 200 ranking factors here.
Many of the measures that Google uses are not available to Moz or other platforms. A good deal of Google’s data comes from in-house data and analytics of visitor’s use of your website itself.
If you read the Backlinko article, you can skip down to item number 134 and learn a little about Rankbrain. Which is how Google’s systems see the interaction of visitors with your website content and the larger website. Based on my experience, I believe this data is the leading factor. This is why you might have a website ranking in the number one position for many search terms, yet the Moz measure of DA or PA will be low.
I do not have access to the DA or PA formulas used by Moz, but you can see that one factor appears to be how many search terms or keywords you are ranking for. So if you have a site that has say 100 pages that rank on page one for search results, you may still rank at 16-30 for DA. Once you have thousands of pages ranking in the top 100, you might see a much higher DA or PA score.
Another factor is how heavily quality backlinks are weighted for DA and PA. Google certainly looks at backlinks, as well as social traffic measures, but Moz appears to give these more weight than Google. Perhaps it is because they have more access to this data, and they promote tools to monitor this same content. It does seem natural that they would focus on their area of expertise. Something you can also keep in mind is that Moz does not (at this time) track your disavow list for backlinks. This means you may be affected more by inferior quality backlinks for the DA or PA number than you might be with Google.
So, what does this all mean?
Should you work to improve your websites, DA or PA?
I think you have to view the DA and PA numbers in the proper context. These are a tool. An imperfect tool that Moz created to fill a need in the marketplace for SEO professionals. So keep that in mind when you watch your numbers fall and rise.
Just like older tools based on data like Citation and Trust Flow, your Domain Authority or Page Authority will not determine your ranking. It will not on any of the major search engines. It can be a useful tool to monitor improvements you make to your site, and the progress you are making in site outreach.
For Reference:
Citation Flow is a number of predicting how influential a URL might be based on how many sites link to it.
Trust Flow is a number predicting how trustworthy a page is based on how trustworthy sites tend to link to trustworthy neighbors.
As your site’s content grows your numbers should grow over time. Ranking for more related keywords and focusing on content with the context that adds value for your visitors is the ultimate move for the win.