Puzzled. High domain authority, but low page authority?

[K-WINTER]

I have a question regarding how a page's authority can be low but the domain authority be high. I'm using the SERP report in moz to compare competing pages.

1. The page I'm working on is an ecommerce category page. Moz says it has very low page authority, has been indexed for a little over a year, it's domain authority is a moderate 50, and has no root domains linking to it. It is more relevant than the other pages (has more products for sale that fit the keyword searched for), has a decent amount of copy on the page, but ranks around #10 in the search results.

2. The competing pages are also ecommerce category pages. The 9 ranking higher have domain authority varying from 30-75, and 1 or 2 root domain links to them. Their number of products that match the keyword searched are all over the board, some have many matches, some have only 6 or 8 results. Some have a moderate amount of text on the page, some have very little text on the page. Yet they have page authority in the 30s-40s.

3. What goes into page authority that I'm missing which would make these other pages have so much more authority when they are just slightly better in the other metrics listed above? What am I missing here?

[Mike.Bean]

It could be that your product page is after multiple categories. Each category page your products go through makes it harder to accumulate a high PA. Click into each category leading up to your product and watch the PA lower and lower. DA is always the same.

As you mentioned, it would be nice if you could get some links directly to that page. Try to get a short video / pdf on that product page. This could help as well.

Could we get the url to your product page for further evaluation?

Thanks!

[K-WINTER]

I don't want to dismiss the question, as I'd like to gather more feedback from others.

However your reply Mike did get me thinking. The other categories at that level all have page authority in the 30s. We did move that page about 4 months ago on our site. We did 301s and google followed the move successfully. However, I'm wondering if that's a limitation of the Moz page rank algorithm, the moz database is smaller so it has more trouble following 301s. Maybe it thinks the page is only 4 months old or Moz just recently discovered it causing the Moz Page Rank algorithm to fail in these types page moved of scenarios?

[Mike.Bean]

Yes, we've been there many times. As I was wondering in my recent Q&A Loss of PA & Links - 301

A good way to view your link loss is to use open site explorer on the page that's 301 redirected, and then again on the page its redirected to.

Even though you have a 301 and most of the "juice" is passed, not quite all of it. It seems to me not very much at all actually. You need to try and do a re-link building campaign to get people to change the url to your new pages. - A daunting task if I may add.

[K-WINTER]

Thanks for that link Mike. Interesting to read your posted link, saying only 85% of link juice transfers. I checked the old url only had 1 link and it was fairly weak so I'm not worried about that one link moving over.

I think it's more likely moz hasn't updated in our situation since moz essentially has the url at zero and the url moved had a 31 page authority. Maybe it will update the next time moz reindexes the sites pages.

To continue the original discussion, I'd still be interested in what goes into page authority? I cannot find a detailed explanation on moz.com. What would make these other pages have so much more authority when they are just slightly better in the other metrics listed above?

[Mike.Bean]

PA vs. DA

[Mike.Bean]

Also you could try to Fetch As Google. That may speed up the process.

[K-WINTER]

Thanks I already read that. Doesn't explain what goes into it. Just  gives a broad definition of what it is and how to find what your PA is.

[Mike.Bean]

Ok I think I got this. Haha. Domain Authority and Page Authority Metrics. You're looking for video part 2.

[DavidLee]

Hey Keith, just wanted to drop in and let you know we do not automatically re-crawl all links in our index as every index release starts from scratch, so we would need to "re-discover" any links to update. It took us 6 months for all of our metrics from SEomoz.org to move to Moz.com when we made the name switch 2 years ago. Fresh links to the same pages will help re-queue them once you see the link in Just Discovered.

Hope this helps

[K-WINTER]

Aha, that confirms my earlier thoughts about moz not updating since it moved. Thanks for clarifying!