We’ve all learned how to pick out the actual experts from the fake experts in a Google search. Search engines are cultivating that skill as well — and they’re using it to rank your content.
The best way to prove your expertise to a search engine? Establish some topical authority.
In this post, we’ll explain topical authority, how we measure it, and how you can start strategically generating that authority for your own site.
What is topical authority in SEO?
Topical authority is a metric for organic search performance. Using search rank data and traffic data, topical authority quantifies a website’s perceived credibility and expertise for a given subject area in search.
Topical authority is a cumulative metric – it’s quantifying authority for your site on the whole. A single successful blog post isn’t enough to build real topical authority. Content across your entire library needs to be ranking (and converting) across the many search queries within a given topic.
Example
Salesforce is a great, practical example. Type most any question about "CRM" into Google. A Salesforce blog post is likely to be in the #1 or #2 spot every time.
Most of that Salesforce content is high-quality, too: direct, practical, accessible, thorough, and well matched with the search query that it’s winning. Collectively, those blog posts cover a breadth and depth of subjects within the topic of “CRM”.
How do you measure topical authority?
There is no single way to measure topical authority, thought SEO experts tend to agree that it’s a balance of search rank data (ie. rank for relevant keywords, number of keywords) and traffic data.
You don’t need many different metrics to get an accurate view of topic authority. All of the data you need – search rank, impressions, clicks – can be found in Google Search Console.
Integrating and synthesizing that data, however, requires a tool. Google Looker Studio can generate topic reports (though some engineering is required). Ottimo generates topic trend reports automatically, like the one above.
The importance of topical authority
Simply put, winning one-off keywords is no longer a viable strategy for building an audience through organic search. Humans are really good at picking out real authorities and fakers in search. These days search engines are doing a pretty good job, too.
While Google doesn’t offer any formal guidelines for topical authority, it is continuously updating its algorithms to prioritize the most relevant, reliable, and authoritative content possible. When making sense of a particular page on your site, it considers the other content on your website.
If those related pages on your site are also ranking well for relevant keywords, this is an indicator of credibility. As a result, search performance for the content on your site will improve individually and collectively.
Topic Reports feature in the ércule app automatically monitors your site’s authority for any topic area. Type in the topics that you’re trying to “own” in search and the Topic Reports will pull search performance and traffic data for all relevant pages in your library.
How to create a topic report
- Open up the Topic Reports
- Click “New Topic”
- Enter a name into the Topic Name field
- In the Keywords field, add all related phrases you want to track, separated by commas.
Example: Dev tools, developer tools
From here on out, you can find your report in the “Topic Reports” tab.
Now you’re ready to produce, refine, and distribute organic content in order to rise through the search ranks. You need data in order to track the success of those efforts.
More specifically, you need to monitor how all of your content is performing for a variety of keywords within a given topic. That’s the kind of insight provided by Topic Reports.
How to build topical authority the smart way
No matter the current state of your topical authority, you can follow these three steps to start strategically improving it:
- Identify the areas where you have some authority
- Identify your most promising content
- Start building that content calendar
Here are our tips for each of those steps.
Identify the areas where you have some authority
The easiest way to grow topical authority is to build on whatever momentum you already have. This means looking for keywords and queries where you’ve got some traction.
- Are any particular keywords driving our success? The answer here might surprise you. But if particular keywords are driving clicks more than others, you can leverage that momentum.
There’s also an opportunity to generate authority in related queries. Doing so will broaden your reach within the topic.
Identify your most promising content
Surface all of the pages that contain relevant content for your chosen topic. You can build on the authority that these pages have been generating.
Questions to ask:
- Do we actually have content around the topic? If you’ve only got a page or two devoted to the topic then it’s no surprise that your topic authority is low.
- Is the content doing well for this topic? Not every page is going to be a winner. But you can build on existing momentum by working with the content that is (relatively) successful.
Some of this content may already be driving traffic and conversions. Some of it may be falling flat. Both groups have a place in your content strategy moving forward.
Start building that content calendar
By now you’ve cultivated some crucial data:
- Performance baseline. You know where your authority is at. Now you can set an attainable goal for the quarter.
- Existing content with promising performance metrics. Build on these successes by optimizing each page for a particular query or keyword.
- Keywords and queries that have some momentum. The plan now is to improve your search performance for these queries with a mix of new and refreshed pages.
- Keywords and queries where performance is weaker. Some of your existing content might be a great fit for these. However, there might be nothing in your library that can really satisfy these queries.
By filling out a content calendar with content to optimize, you’ll also start to identify the gaps in your library.
The next step is to do some more in-depth topic research and figure out what new content you’ll be creating to keep growing that authority.
Start measuring your topical authority
We created the Topic Reports tool in order to help our clients better visualize their current performance and set strategic goals. You can use it in that same way, too.
To try it out, start a free trial a today. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!
