How to Check Your Website Authority and PageRank in 2024

Last Updated: October 14th, 2024
By Adam Bilter

Knowing your website's authority score is fundamental to any SEO strategy. Whether you're benchmarking against competitors, tracking the results of your link-building campaigns, or diagnosing why your rankings dropped, website authority metrics give you the data you need. This guide covers every major metric you should track and how to check them — many for free using our PageRank checker tool.

What Is Website Authority?

"Website authority" is a general term referring to how much trust and credibility Google and other search engines assign to your website. Higher authority means your pages are more likely to rank well for competitive keywords. Authority is built primarily through:

• The quantity and quality of backlinks pointing to your site
• The age and history of your domain
• The quality and depth of your content
• Technical health signals like page speed and mobile-friendliness

Key Website Authority Metrics Explained

Google PageRank (Estimated)

Google's internal PageRank score is the original measure of a page's importance based on its backlink profile. Although Google stopped publishing toolbar PageRank in 2016, it remains an active internal signal. Tools like CheckPageRank.net estimate your PageRank on a 0-10 scale based on your backlink data. A PR score of 0-2 is typical for new or small sites. PR3-4 represents a moderately established site. PR5-6 is strong. PR7+ is reserved for major websites with thousands of high-quality backlinks.

Domain Authority (DA)

Developed by Moz, Domain Authority is scored 1-100 and predicts your overall ranking ability. DA is calculated using your backlink profile, including the number of referring domains and the quality of links. A DA of 30+ is a decent baseline; 50+ is strong; 70+ is excellent.

Trust Flow and Citation Flow (Majestic)

Majestic provides two complementary metrics:

• Citation Flow: Measures the quantity of links pointing to your site (0-100)
• Trust Flow: Measures the quality of those links based on how close they are to trusted seed sites (0-100)

The ratio between Trust Flow and Citation Flow is important. A healthy site typically has a Trust Flow that is at least half of its Citation Flow. If Citation Flow is much higher than Trust Flow, it suggests many low-quality links.

Page Authority (PA)

Page Authority (also from Moz) measures the ranking strength of individual pages rather than the whole domain. Use PA to identify which of your pages have the most link equity and to find opportunities to improve underperforming important pages.

How to Check Your Website Authority for Free

Our free domain analysis tool provides all of the following in a single check:

• Estimated Google PageRank (0-10)
• Domain Authority
• Page Authority
• Trust Flow
• Citation Flow
• Total external backlinks
• Total referring domains
• EDU and GOV backlinks
• Global and US Alexa rank
• Spam score

Simply enter your domain at checkpagerank.net and you'll receive a comprehensive authority report within seconds.

How to Interpret Your Authority Scores

Benchmarking Against Competitors

Your absolute authority score matters less than how it compares to the top-ranking sites for your target keywords. If you want to rank for a keyword where all top 10 results have DA 60+, you'll need comparable authority to compete. Check the authority of your top competitors to understand the barrier to entry.

Tracking Progress Over Time

Authority metrics move slowly. Check them monthly rather than weekly. A consistent upward trend in Domain Authority and referring domains over 6-12 months confirms your link-building strategy is working.

Identifying Authority Gaps

If your content quality is strong but you're not ranking well, the gap is usually authority. Look at your Trust Flow relative to Citation Flow — a low ratio suggests link quality issues. Look at your referring domain count — if competitors have 5x more unique linking domains, that's your gap.

How to Improve Your Website Authority

• Earn backlinks from high-authority, relevant sites
• Diversify your referring domains — 100 links from 100 different sites beats 100 links from 10 sites
• Remove or disavow toxic backlinks that hurt your Trust Flow
• Create genuinely link-worthy content — tools, research, comprehensive guides
• Build a strong internal link architecture to distribute authority across your site

Start by establishing your baseline today. Check your page rank and website authority here — it's free, instant, and gives you all the metrics you need in one place.