by olavor
10 replies
  • SEO
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Hi,

This is my first question in the forum. Glad to join.

Here it is:
Pages with no backlinks reduce domain authority?

Let's say a website has 10 pages, 20 backlinks and domain authority of X as a result of those backlinks. Now let's say, that website adds several pages to it and none of them get backlinks.
Will that website domain authority be reduced (becoming less than X) because now the link juice will need to be redistributed among more pages or it will remain the same?

Thanks
#authority #domain
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Domain Authority is not based on the average number of links each page on the domain has. If it was, sites like Tumblr would have absolutely awful DA's. The majority of their pages never get seen, much less linked to.

    That being said, DA is not a ranking factor, so I really would not worry about it much.
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  • Profile picture of the author olavor
    Hi Mike,

    Thanks for the answer.
    Tumblr example is great. It makes total sense.

    I asked because on the link below Dr. Peter Meyers from Moz says the following:
    "the broader answer is "Yes", it can absolutely decrease your authority"
    https://moz.com/community/q/can-incr...main-authority

    Sites with higher domain authority usually rank higher.
    That's why I think it's worth worrying about this.

    Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by olavor View Post

      Hi Mike,

      Thanks for the answer.
      Tumblr example is great. It makes total sense.

      I asked because on the link below Dr. Peter Meyers from Moz says the following:
      "the broader answer is "Yes", it can absolutely decrease your authority"
      https://moz.com/community/q/can-incr...main-authority

      Sites with higher domain authority usually rank higher.
      That's why I think it's worth worrying about this.

      Thanks
      They don't rank higher because of their Domain Authority though. Google does not look at any of Moz's metrics.

      That's why I am saying that obsessing over them is a HUGE waste of time.

      Dr. Pete would know better how Moz's DA works. If he says it can decrease it, maybe it can, but looking at examples like Tumblr, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
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    • Profile picture of the author cbpayne
      Originally Posted by olavor View Post

      Sites with higher domain authority usually rank higher.
      Correlation ≠ causation
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  • Profile picture of the author olavor
    Thank you Mike and cbpayne,

    I agree with you two that Moz metrics are not used by Google and higher DA is not the cause for good rankings.
    But Moz metrics are created with the best of their knowledge of what is important for Google.
    Thus, the correlation of higher DA, higher rankings.
    Since Google doesn't provide some similar metric for us to use(not sure PR is available and still good for this), I have found that trying to increase DA is a good strategy for better rankings. But that's a completely different discussion from the original question.

    So, back to the main point but putting DA to the side, let me rephrase my question.
    Would you say that in the scenario that the website adds many more pages and they don't have links to them, the website rankings for existing pages will not be affected due to a redistribution of link juice to the newer pages?

    Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by olavor View Post

      So, back to the main point but putting DA to the side, let me rephrase my question.
      Would you say that in the scenario that the website adds many more pages and they don't have links to them, the website rankings for existing pages will not be affected due to a redistribution of link juice to the newer pages?
      Thanks
      That's now how link juice works. There is not a finite amount to be distributed among the website.

      Linkjuice, link strength, link quality, whatever you want to call it, mostly comes from PR... PAGErank. Page, not domain.

      Each page has its own amount of PR to pass on. It doesn't matter how many pages are on the site.

      The only way you are going to screw up your rankings by having more pages is if your site structure sucks. For example, you have sidebar links to every page on the site. That is going to weaken all your internal links and potentially hurt the rankings of the pages you care about.


      And all of this is a prime example on why you should focus on things that rank pages, not on increasing your DA. If what Dr. Pete says is true, you could get rid of pages with no external links to improve your DA, but you will see no benefit from it in your rankings. So what was the point?
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      • Profile picture of the author olavor
        ok, good. Thank you. That helps a lot.
        Just as a side note. I heard PageRank is called that way because it was created by Larry Page, not so much because it happens to be a metric of a web page. Not sure if that's true though.
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by olavor View Post

          ok, good. Thank you. That helps a lot.
          Just as a side note. I heard PageRank is called that way because it was created by Larry Page, not so much because it happens to be a metric of a web page. Not sure if that's true though.
          That is part of the name. It is also because it is a page metric, not domain wide metric.

          They just got lucky that Larry's last name was Page.

          If it was being named after its creators, they would have had to call it PageBrin or BrinPage or something like that.
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    • Profile picture of the author olavor
      Did you see the link I sent from Moz on the discussion above?
      Dr. Peter Meyers from Moz says it does affect DA.
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