Topical authority in SEO is your website’s perceived expertise and reliability about a specific subject. If your site has high topical authority, Google considers it more trustworthy and ranks it higher in search results than sites it considers less credible.
In this piece, we’ll examine why topical authority matters, how it impacts SEO, and how you can develop a strategy using topically relevant content to help you rank higher.
What you will learn
- What is topical authority and why it matters for SEO.
- Google’s position on topic authority.
- 6 steps for creating authoritative content and building topical authority.
- How to measure your progress.
What is topical authority?
Topical authority in SEO is how knowledgeable and trustworthy search engines think your website is about a certain topic.
Google and other search engines use your website's topical authority to understand your expertise on a subject, which helps them determine how to rank your pages in search queries.
If your site has high topical authority in your niche, you have a greater chance of showing up near the top of search engine results pages for search terms related to that niche.
This means the more helpful content you have, the more website traffic you will have and the higher your search engine rankings will be.
Google’s search engine results are determined by core signals it receives from a website.
According to its Search Quality Raters Guidelines, this includes a page’s E-E-A-T, or experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness score.
In other words, you need to prove to both human visitors and search engines that your site provides reliable information on a particular topic. This is known as your topic authority.
For example, Sprout Social uses its blog to cover a variety of topics related to social media.
Its blog focuses exclusively on social media and uses semantically related topics (words and phrases that conceptually link to each other) to achieve topical authority. More on semantic SEO later.
It covers a wide range of social media topics, including branding and creative, community management, influencers and social listening.
As you can see, Sprout Social doesn’t focus solely on one area of social media, but instead uses a wide variety of resources to cover these topics and provide reliable information about social media marketing.
Topical authority vs. domain authority
There are two types of authority in SEO: topical authority and domain authority. While they are similar concepts, they are not the same thing.
Both play an important role, but whereas topical authority is used to demonstrate your expertise on a specific subject, domain authority provides a holistic view of your site’s overall standing.
In other words, topical authority establishes your site as a reliable resource in a particular niche. Domain authority is a measure of your site’s overall competitiveness in a broader digital sense.
Both topical authority and domain authority contribute to your website's SEO.
Why topical authority matters for SEO
Topical authority is important for SEO because it affects how search engines regard and rank your website in search results.
When your site is seen as an expert on a specific subject, it gains credibility and trustworthiness, which are vital for higher search engine rankings.
That's why over 90% of SEOs consider topical authority an important part of their content stategy.
High topical authority can also lead to a better reading experience. Well-organized content with interconnected topics and subtopics provides a thorough informative source.
Note: When building topical authority, focus on a broad topic, rather than just going after all the keywords related to one specific subject.
Since the release of its Hummingbird algorithm update in 2013, Google has been a semantic search engine. That means it tries to understand the user intent behind search queries rather than just responding with keyword matches.
Using natural language processing, context clues, and user location, Google made its search more conversational and therefore, more accurate.
To ensure your site appears for relevant search queries, Google must associate it with the topic it believes the user is searching for.
If you have a good content marketing strategy with many resources, a high degree of topical relevance, relevant subtopics and a natural internal linking structure, it helps Google understand and discover the content of your site more easily.
This helps establish your site as an authority and trusted source on the topic.
Here’s an example of a website with topical authority.
Investopedia is a resource for financial planning and money management. Its content covers a wide range of topics, from information about the economy to market performance and banking information.
Together, this creates strong topical authority for all things money.
Topical authority can also be as or even more powerful than link building.
Improving topical authority is an economical and productive way to boost search engine rankings compared to the time-consuming nature and expense of generating backlinks which can cost up to $83 per link according to an AuthorityHacker survey of 755 link builders.
You don’t need a huge SEO budget to build strong topic authority. In many cases, it’s easier for smaller organizations to compete with enterprise-level websites with the same content.
Let’s look at a real-world example.
Pretend you live in New York City and want to sell your house. For information on doing that, you may use a query like:
Google’s search results return a variety of results, including this one:
This page has zero inbound links and medium domain authority for a highly competitive term. According to conventional SEO wisdom, this result should be buried somewhere in the lost regions of SERPs.
But because this site has increased trust from users (via ratings) and high topic authority on real estate from search engines, it ranks near the top.
Even though I previously mentioned that there are instances when topical authority can outperform backlinks, it’s important to note that the two are even more powerful when combined.
A site with high topical authority is more likely to generate natural relevant backlinks, as the content is trustworthy and reliable.
It’s also more likely to see increased social shares and improved brand trust from consumers.
What Google says about topical authority
Though it's often discussed in the SEO world, Google didn’t coin the term “topical authority,” and doesn’t explicitly use it as a ranking factor.
In fact, in an exchange on Reddit, Google's SEO advocate John Mueller agrees that the term "topical authority" is just a rebranding of the concept of relevancy, which has long been a part of search rankings.
In other words, it’s not something new that SEO professionals need to be concerned about—it’s already part of their work to optimized websites.
That said, in May 2023, Google released a blog post discussing topic authority specifically for news sites.
This acknowledges the prioritization of local news sources, original reporting, and source reputation when determining how to rank new stories.
While some of this information from Google may seem contradictory, it’s important to realize that even though the search engine giant doesn’t publicly promote topical authority as a factor in search rankings, this is a common industry term that should serve as a framework around which to build your site’s content.
Whether or not you believe in topical authority as an actual relevant SEO term, its principle cannot be disputed.
The idea that your website must demonstrate expertise in its niche by producing quality content is the right approach to better SEO.
6 steps to build topical authority
Here are six ways to build topical authority in your niche which you can use as a template.
1. Pick your niche
The first thing you need to do is select the proper niche. You will want to look for something that is specific enough that there is a need for sufficient content, but not so specific that you’ve pigeonholed yourself.
Ideally, you’ll want a topic that can be subdivided into more niche divisions.
For example, a topic like “personal finance for young professionals” provides many opportunities for subtopics. In contrast, the content you could develop for “investing in eco-friendly startups” is much more limited.
Instead, “investing in eco-friendly startups” can be a subtopic for “investing in startups.”
If you’re having a difficult time identifying your niche, rely on your industry experience.
- Which overarching themes do you keep encountering?
- Is there a broad idea of what many people's questions could fall under?
Conducting audience research is another great way to uncover niches that your business can use to achieve topical authority.
Koray Tugberk, the founder and owner of Holistic SEO and Digital, who is considered the thought leader in topical authority, provided the following case study about how Strike, an investing analytics platform, selected its niche:
As a SaaS stock trading platform, their niche is stock trading.
Covering topics under trading, market analysis, stock indicators and investing insights have helped them establish topical authority.
2. Find semantically related topics
Next it’s time to find related ideas and build a content strategy.
To be considered an authority on a topic, it’s important to have content addressing all, or at least most of, the subtopics included with it.
For example, take a look at the cooking site the Kitchn's navigation menu. You can see how they have several subtopics related to their main topic or niche, cooking.
For example, subtopics like meals, ingredients, dish types and even cooking tools helps search engines understand their wide coverage of topically related terms.
If you are attempting to build topical authority for a cooking site, you’ll want to have content addressing everything from regional to grocery shopping, cooking tips to kitchen organization.
You should perform extensive keyword research to identify new topics and ensure you're not missing major subtopics.
There are several ways you can do this, but the easiest and most common is with topical clustering tools.
Surfer can help you find semantically related topics if you enter a primary topic.
Surfer helped me generate 19 subtopics related to "cooking tips."
Here's a few of them.
Google search engine results pages (SERPs) are also an excellent resource. There are three sections you can use to identify seed keywords:
- Google Autocomplete is a feature that provides search term predictions as you type a query. This is a great way to discover relevant phrases that searchers are looking for.
- People Also Ask, or PAA, is a box on SERPs that shows questions related to the one you searched for. Analyzing the content of PAA can help you discover new content ideas to flush out your topical content.
- "People also search for" is another section on SERPs that shows related search queries others have performed on the topic. It's another great way to identify potential gaps in your coverage of a topic.
Make sure you’re identifying a wide range of informational topics related to your niche, rather than just high-volume keywords.
While it’s important to go after those relevant keywords, your topical authority is based on a broader spectrum and your overall expertise in the field.
3. Build topic clusters
Topic clusters are an SEO strategy in which a central pillar page covering a specific theme or topic serves as a hub around which related supporting pages featuring relevant topics are organized.
They've also been popularly called the hub and spoke model, and content hubs.
The use of topical clustering structures makes it easier for search engines to understand your content depth and simplifies navigation for human visitors.
This, in turn, helps match search intent and establish topical relevance.
To create your own topic clusters, you’ll want to group topically related keywords based on their relationship to one another and the pillar page they fall under.
In fact, this page you're reading is a pillar page for the topic "topical authority."
Surfer automatically groups related pages under their cluster, so you already have topical clusters. The right panel houses the pages for our cluster example on the left.
For SEO professionals, an easy way to think about the pillar page framework is that contains your seed keywords, and supporting pages are based on related keywords.
For a pillar page example to see how a topic cluster works, see this Clique Studios page.
Supporting cluster pages around the main pillar page of web design link to related topics like website responsiveness, the design process, and accessibility.
Each of these pages works together to establish Clique Studios’ reputation as an authority in the field of web design.
4. Aim for topical coverage
Once you have your pillar and supporting pages identified, it’s time to map them out and start thinking about content creation.
Topical maps are the strategic organization of content into topics and subtopics.
It creates a visualization aid to help you track, understand and improve the depth and breadth of your site’s content.
Surfer's topical map can show you your website's topical coverage.
Keywords closer to the center are more relevant to your core topic, while color shades from light to dark purple indicate low to high keyword difficulty.
This can help you identify easier keywords for quick wins (light purple) and more competitive keywords requiring more effort (dark purple).
Start from the center to effectively cover around the core topic for your content strategy.
As explained in this LinkedIn post, Tugberk’s clustering model creates topical maps based on five components that combine natural language with search.
Regardless of the topical mapping framework you use, it is essential you create in-depth, high-quality content to build topical authority.
This is an essential part of Google’s commitment to helpful, reliable, people-first content as outlined in its Quality Rater Guidelines, which emphasize E-E-A-T, or experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness.
To ensure you are achieving these goals on your pillar and supporting pages, consider the following steps:
- Choose a clear topic for your pillar page.
- Brainstorm ideas and perform keyword research to identify cluster pages that will build off and support the pillar.
- Work on creating in-depth content that speaks to your target audience, taking care to ensure that your content pieces addresse different search intents.
- Create high-quality content that is engaging and useful.
- Develop and implement a content distribution plan.
StudioBinder’s pillar page on scriptwriting is an excellent example of topical mapping.
The main page provides a logical hub for different topics related to writing scripts, with obvious links to related subtopics.
If you’re not comfortable with an extensive writing project or want to streamline the process, using AI to generate first drafts for your pages is a great way to expedite the process.
For example, Surfer AI can generate a 3700-word article in just 20 minutes, that is optimized for search engines and follows your instructions for tone of voice, and article type.
5. Implement internal links
Internal links are integral in establishing topical authority. But you can’t just link between pages at random.
You need a logical information architecture that links relevant content together, which is again where content clusters come into play.
For an example of how this works in practice, look at Backpacker.com. To establish topical authority on hiking trips, this site is subdivided into several category pages, including Gear, Trips and Survival.
Clicking on the Gear link takes you to a pillar category page, featuring links to individual articles, as well as sub-pillar pages like Apparel, Backpacks and Footwear.
Backpacker.com also maximizes internal linking by using anchor text to provide links to relevant content.
For example, look at the natural way they’ve created a link to various product pages in an article about sun protection.
You can find relevant pages on your website to link to, or allow Surfer to automate this process for you with Surfer's Insert internal links feature.
Click the "Insert Internal Links" button and Surfer will automatically select anchor texts and insert relevant internal links into your article.
You can then review the added links.
6. Build backlinks
The content of your site is paramount for establishing topical authority, but link building is still important.
A strong inbound link profile can play a crucial role in establishing your expertise in a subject, if the linking sites are relevant to your content.
If you get a reputable site in a related field to link to your content, it will transfer authority and credibility to you, which in turn can boost your chances of ranking in SERPs.
Look at this experience that a user on Reddit shared as an illustration of the power of backlinks.
There are a variety of ways you can generate backlinks, including:
- Writing shareable content: Create content with useful information that people interested in your niche will share with each other.
- Guest posting: Collaborate with another website to create content that benefits you both with a link pointing back to your website.
- Claiming unlinked mentions: Set up a Google Alert to be notified about brand mentions. Reach out to webmasters and ask them to add your link in the anchor text, if they’re not already.
HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, was formerly an excellent source for finding expert quotes and generating links, but the Cision-owned brand was retired in 2024.
3 examples of topical authority
Here are some examples of sites that are doing topic authority right.
1. Mindbodygreen
Dedicated to wellness, mental health, fitness and nutrition, Mindbodygreen uses an extensive internal linking structure to cover a wide range of related topics.
Using pillar pages, it logically subdivides content into categories, which link to subtopics, many of which have their own sub-subtopics.
2. The Spruce
The Spruce focuses on home-related information, including decorating, gardening, entertaining and repair.
Using experts as content creators, it covers a broad range of topics, using a logical organization to brand itself as a go-to resource for all things house and home.
3. Boords
Storyboarding software provider Boords has built a reputation as a topic authority via its blog, which provides resources, news and tools for video professionals.
Offering valuable information, it focuses on the larger topic of storyboarding, while linking off to pages on subtopics like writing comic book scripts, formatting screenplays and storyboards from famous movies.
How to measure and track topical authority
At Surfer, your website's topical authority score is measured using several factors: the number of keywords it covers, the relevance and search volume of those keywords, their ranking positions, and their semantic similarity to the topic.
Our approach includes using the logarithm of search volume and setting a maximum score limit for clusters to prevent biases towards high-volume keywords, ensuring a balanced evaluation of domain authority across different topics.
There’s no doubt about the benefits of topic authority, but unfortunately, it’s not easy to measure. There is no clear definition or guidelines, so there’s no definitive measurement of success.
However, you can indirectly measure topical authority by analyzing your organic traffic and monitoring your backlink profile.
Higher rankings and quality relevant links are usually a good indicator your site has more topical authority.
SEO influencer, Kevin Indig proposes "Topic Share" as a practical metric to quantify topical authority, which measures the proportion of traffic a website attracts from keywords within a specific topic.
To calculate this, Indig suggests analyzing keyword traffic to determine a site's authority based on its rankings and traffic share for relevant keywords.
Key Takeaways
- Topical authority is used by Google and other search engines to determine how trustworthy the information on your site is.
- Google search matches user intent to topical authority to determine the relevancy of a site to query.
- At a lower cost and time investment, it can be as or even more powerful than establishing backlinks.
- A solid topical authority strategy is based on selecting a good niche that is broad enough to included numerous subtopics.
- Pillar pages and page clusters create a good internal link structure that makes it easy for search engines and users to understand content and navigate your site.
- A good topic authority score will help you write content that will capitalize on search engine algorithms to generate more traffic.
