Backlinks are a confirmed Google ranking factor. However, search engines prioritize quality over quantity. A single link from a high-quality site may provide more SEO value than multiple low-quality links.
That's why it is generally recommended to evaluate the credibility, authority, and trustworthiness of a potential linking website before acquiring a backlink from it. For this, you need to consider multiple factors. Domain authority and page authority are two of those factors.
They provide an estimate of the overall strength of the linking website and the specific page from which you will receive a backlink. Besides this, there are multiple other reasons why you should consider DA and PA before link collaboration.
What are DA and PA?
Domain authority (DA) and page authority (PA) are third-party SEO metrics. Domain authority score is used to estimate the overall authority and ranking potential of a site in the SERPs. On the other hand, page authority predicts the ranking potential of an individual page of a website.
Both these metrics are evaluated on a scale of 1 to 100. The higher scores indicate stronger estimated ranking potential. Getting a backlink from high DR sites may provide meaningful SEO outcomes.
Remember, DA and PA aren't officially recognized by Google as "SEO metrics." Still, they are widely acknowledged and used by SEO professionals globally.
5 Reasons to Check DA and PA Scores Before Acquiring Backlinks
Below are five key reasons why you should evaluate the domain and page authority of the potential linking website before finalizing the collaboration.
1. Understanding the Overall Strength of the Potential Linking Website
The overall strength of the linking website significantly impacts the SEO value that will be passed to your site. Measuring the domain authority score provides a quick indication of how authoritative and credible the linking site is in search engine results.
A high domain authority score indicates a stronger backlink profile. So, checking the domain authority score beforehand can help you decide whether pursuing a backlink collaboration will be worth it.
Remember, acquiring a backlink from a high DA site may pass more SEO value than one with a low authority score. However, you should never consider domain authority as a sole indicator of a website's strength and backlink quality. Always use it in combination with the following factors:
- Niche relevance
- Content quality
- Organic traffic
2. Assessing the Authority of a Specific Linking Page
While domain authority gives a good idea about the overall authority of the linking website, it is also essential to assess the ranking potential of the specific page from which you will acquire a backlink. That's what page authority does.
Assessing the PA score of an individual webpage before building a backlink is very useful. This is because a website can have a good domain authority score, but its individual webpages may offer little authority.
Therefore, evaluating PA can offer another benchmark when comparing potential linking pages. It is suggested to acquire backlinks from pages that have a high PA score, as this will offer more link juice than a link that is placed on a newly published page with little or no authority.
3. Avoiding Link Collaboration with Low-Quality or Spammy Sites
Another reason to check DA and PA scores before building backlinks is that they can serve as an initial screening step when evaluating potential linking websites. Some websites usually have poor-quality content, excessive outbound links, irrelevant topics, and a toxic backlink profile.
So, considering the domain and page authority scores can serve as an initial screening step to quickly identify low-quality sites.
A website with low DA and PA scores generally indicates that it has less link-based strength. This way, you can easily decide whether to pursue link building with that site. SEO professionals usually suggest going with higher scores.
However, low authority scores do not always mean that the website is spammy or low-quality. This is because newly launched websites usually have low DA and PA scores, but they may be publishing top-tier content.
That's why you should not avoid a website simply because of its poor score; instead, you should combine DA and PA with other quality assessment factors:
- Topical relevance
- Content accuracy and depth
- Technical SEO
- Overall website structure
4. Comparing Potential Linking Websites with Each Other
When building backlinks, you will definitely come across a number of websites that are relevant to your niche and target audience. You can analyze and compare the domain and page authority of all sites to ultimately prioritize the ones with high scores.
Let us explain with an example.
Three niche-relevant websites are ready to offer link placements on their webpages with the following DA and PA scores:
- DA - 30 and PA - 15
- DA - 50 and PA - 30
- DA - 80 and PA - 45
These scores can provide a rough comparison of the relative link strength of each website and page. However, you should not treat these scores as the final deciding factor.
5. Benchmarking Competitors
Before launching your own link building campaign, you will analyze the backlinks of competitors...right? As a common practice. So, a better approach is to evaluate the domain and page authority scores of the website and pages from which the competitors have acquired backlinks to ultimately decide whether you should pursue similar backlink opportunities.
However, do not just blindly copy the competitor's backlink approach by solely considering authority scores. You should pay attention to the quality and relevance of each backlink opportunity on your own.
Moreover, benchmarking competitors will also help you identify gaps in your link building strategy. For example, if the competitors are consistently acquiring backlinks from relevant and high DA PA sites, and your website does not, then this highlights opportunities for:
- Outreach
- Digital PR
- Guest posting
- Other link acquisition strategies
So, after going through these reasons, you will have a good idea of why to check DA and PA scores before building links.
How to Check the Domain and Page Authority Score of a Linking Website
One convenient way to check the domain authority and page authority of potential linking websites is to utilize DA PA checker. It quickly analyzes the given website URL and reports its DA and PA scores.
You can easily find a variety of DA PA checkers online. Choose one based on your personal preferences. For a better understanding, we are attaching a screenshot of one such tool below; check it out.
As you can see, the DA PA checker has not only provided the authority scores but also mentioned other insights, including spam score, domain age, and indexed pages. These metrics will provide additional information about potential linking websites.
Bottom Line
Domain authority and page authority scores are among the most important to consider when evaluating websites for link building. These metrics help you prioritize quality sites by evaluating their overall strength and the authority of the page from which the link will be received.
Besides this, there are multiple other reasons why you should check DA and PA scores before collaborating with a site for link building. This blog has covered some of the major reasons in detail.
