Domain Authority Just Wont Budge

[jonnyholt]

I've put off asking this question for a long time because I know what the short answer is, but I've been working the SEO on http://www.photojennette.com for almost a year now pretty constantly and all of the measurements are positives except for authority.  Traffic has more than doubled, links sending visits has doubled, external followed links is 500% up, keywords sending is way up, pages within the site have way more links and are more diverse in their own SEO, but no matter what I can't get PA and DA to budge. In fact at one point DA dropped a point or two. (although OSE and Moz Analytics shown that competitors lost a point or two at the same time so I didn't think much of it.)  I feel like I had a good grasp on what helps DA but I'm starting to question that.  Anyone have any ideas?

[EGOL]

Traffic has more than doubled, links sending visits has doubled, external followed links is 500% up, keywords sending is way up, pages within the site have way more links and are more diverse in their own SEO....

Nice work.

....  but no matter what I can't get PA and DA to budge

Why are you worshiping this stuff?

[jonnyholt]

Because I'm still not seeing a #1-3 ranking for some of my main target keywords and the people who are have higher DA and PA by 5-10 points and I teach SEO and I want to be able to explain everything involved.

[EGOL]

In my opinion, people who have the most successful websites do not pay any attention to DA and PA.  They pay even less attention to the DA and PA of their competitors.  Instead they are spending that time making their site awesome.

If I was teaching SEO, DA and PA would not be part of the curriculum.

[MoosaHemani]

Although EGLO is right! The DA and PA has nothing to do with your website rankings and I literally seen examples where a website with more DA and PA are ranking lower than the one with less DA and PA.

But if you want theory why your DA is stuck to one place or has gone down so the easiest answer to this will be because of the Moz.com’s index update.

Hope this helps!