Key Takeaways
- The future of SEO: Increasing topical authority means being recognised as an expert in a specific niche, which is crucial for SEO success and future AI-driven search engine features.
- Content strategy: Develop content that aligns with your audience’s search intent, covering relevant subtopics deeply. Use a keyword cluster strategy with long-tail keywords.
- Building topical authority map: Create a topical authority map by grouping subtopics under relevant themes and branching out to cover specific user queries.
- Quality: Produce in-depth, unique content tailored to your niche, adhering to Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust).
- Multi-Channel SEO: Optimise your presence across various platforms, to enhance your overall online visibility and increase topical authority.
From bankruptcy to global domination with topical authority
In 2007, experts declared the iPhone “will struggle to break into the mainstream.” Yet, consumers queued for hours to get their hands on the device, as half a million phones were sold within 24 hours. This was a landmark moment. Steve Jobs stood at the top of the world, taking Apple from the verge of bankruptcy to one of the most trusted tech companies in the world in 10 years. In short, Jobs increased Apple’s topical authority.
While many experts had predicted the iPhone would fail, consumers didn’t care. These experts were not experts in the latest, most innovative technologies. However, Steve Jobs and Apple were. Hence, consumers trusted Apple. This is the point when thinking about increasing topical authority – it’s about being seen as an expert in a specific niche rather than an expert in everything.
However, just like Jobs built credibility over those 10 years by focusing on innovative consumer technologies, increasing topical authority is critical for SEO.
Why increasing topical authority is important for SEO
In 2023, Google introduced a system designed to prioritise and deliver expert content to users, known as topical authority. The goal was simple. The more insightful content generated around a specific topic, the higher the probability Google can understand user intent and provide them with valuable resources.
However, increasing topical authority has sparked fierce debate, which is unsurprising if you have spent more than a few minutes on social media as you will realise people can get heated about anything. Yet, some people have suggested anyone can increase topical authority simply by writing extensively on a given subject. Unfortunately, the reality is more complex.
Establishing topical authority is a complex solution. It requires a combination of factors, from Entity SEO to effective promotion. However, while increasing topical authority may have complexities, it is undeniably crucial for SEO success, especially as artificial intelligence (AI) search engines are set to become more widespread over the next five years.
These AI advancements will significantly influence SEO practices in the coming years. Consequently, acquiring and increasing topical authority will be essential for your AI search engine strategy.
For now, awareness of these changes remains low in the industry. However, being prepared is critical. This includes being prominently featured in AI-driven search features, such as Google AI Overviews (SGE) and enhancing your visibility for AEO.
How to Gain Topical Authority in SEO
To increase topical authority, creating content that aligns with the search intent of your target audience is critical. This ensures that the information provided is relevant and valuable, directly addressing the needs and queries of your audience.
However, increasing topical authority is only one component of a broader Entity SEO strategy. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how to optimise for Entity SEO, laying the groundwork for a robust topical authority.
So, before working on increasing topical authority, you must identify your entities and build a knowledge map.
Outlined below are the key strategies for establishing topical authority:
1. Find subtopics for your entities to increase topical authority
Once your entities are identified, you can begin constructing your topical authority map (more on that later). The first step is to identify relevant subtopics. The goal is to ensure you have considerable content depth – a key ingredient for increasing topical authority.
For instance, if you run a website selling heart-monitoring straps for athletes, one of your entities might be “exercises to increase heart rate variability (HRV).” Therefore, your subtopics will need to cover the various elements of this entity such as “biofeedback training” or “cold water exposure.”
An effective starting point is to imagine writing a book that explores every facet of increasing heart rate variability (HRV). What chapters would you include, and what insights would they offer?
To perform this exercise, consider using an AI tool like ChatGPT. Provide it with your entity and ask it to generate subtopics.
2. Discover what your audience asks
After discovering your subtopics, you can dive deeper into your niche to increase topical authority. Therefore, gather and address the questions your target audience has.
There are several different sources you can use including:
- Performing competitor research – Identify what questions your competitors have answered. This includes your business competitors and websites that rank highly in search results for your subtopic.
- Analysing social media – Platforms like Quora and Reddit are great resources for discovering what people want to know.
- “People also asked” – When you search for a topic in Google, the search engine will also tell you other questions people have asked about it. This is a great resource for content creation ideas.
By leveraging these sources, you can ensure your content comprehensively covers the relevant questions and topics your audience cares about, thereby increasing your topical authority.
For example, if you offer a mental health coaching app, identifying questions from Google about specific features users find beneficial can guide your content strategy, making it more relevant and authoritative.
3. Keyword research helps provide context for higher topical authority
In 2013, Google launched its Hummingbird update, designed to understand user intent. Consequently, the importance of keywords diminished as Google better understood the semantic meaning behind a search.
However, semantic keywords play a crucial role in increasing topical authority. For example, imagine you sell wearables for rock climbers. The keyword “wearables” is unlikely to help you rank for an article about the best wearables for measuring Vo2 max when climbing. Wearables can allude to many different technologies and users.
Therefore, it’s important to research keywords that align with your content and intentions. A highly effective approach is to employ a keyword cluster strategy, which involves incorporating multiple long-tail keywords into your content. Long-tail keywords are phrases often used by visitors to find a specific outcome. For example, the wearable company may use a long-tail keyword like “how to increase Vo2 max while climbing.”
These targeted search terms help Google recognise your content as a relevant response to specific queries, enhancing your topical authority.
However, using SEO tools can have limitations. They often lack semantic meaning and focus on high-volume search terms. So, while this may help improve visibility on some content, it does not necessarily establish authority.
One solution is to use a tool like SEMrush. Not only does it help you find keywords, but it also utilises AI to analyse your website so you can discover if the keyword is on topic and aligned with your target users’ search intentions.
4. How to build a topical authority map: Creating the right structure
Using the knowledge graph, you created as part of your entity SEO optimisation, coupled with the subtopics, questions, and keywords you have obtained, you should build a topical authority map.
While a knowledge graph focuses on defining relationships between entities to help search engines understand content context, a topical authority map is more about strategically planning content to establish yourself as an authority in a particular subject area.
Therefore, the first step to building a topical authority map is to group your subtopics into relevant themes under their respective entity. For example, under the entity of “digital mental health tools,” you might have subtopics like “stress management apps” and “online cognitive behavioural therapy resources.”
However, to increase topical authority you will also need to consider the hierarchy of your content. For example, these subtopics can be branched out further by aligning the questions and keywords you have discovered for each. So, broader topics should form the base of your map, with more specific subtopics branching out. This ensures a logical flow of information and means you can continue going deeper into a specific entity and subtopic.
An effective way to achieve this is to think of your subtopics as “topic clusters.” At the heart of the cluster is your subtopic. Consequently, you build links or branches from the subtopic to address specific user queries to increase topical authority.
5. Creating quality, niche, and in-depth content for increased topical authority
The best way to obtain topical authority is to provide broad original insights, laser-focused on a specific niche. Therefore, when creating content, you should demonstrate how all these broad topics fit together.
For example, if your content is about training regimes for HRV and you have built your topical authority map effectively, you should be able to touch on other aspects such as sleep and diet. This doesn’t mean you should cover them in depth in the same article. Instead, reference them and link to them. This helps to build your web of knowledge to demonstrate topical authority.
Moreover, consider what unique insights you have. For example, here at Antlerzz we monitor and analyse vast quantities of online behaviours related to health trends. This enables us to add fresh insights into our content. Consequently, our content adds additional value to Google’s search index and users in our niche.
Quiet Mark regularly commissions external research as part of its digital PR campaigns. These insights are highly valuable, and industry publications often need such information.
6. Using AI-generated content won’t increase topical authority
AI is a great assistant, but it won’t make your website rank. While Google has stated content can be created using AI tools, mass-produced AI content will harm your search rankings.
This is because interest in auto-generating content has increased 317% within 2 years. Consequently, search engines like Google face a significant issue.
AI tools like ChatGPT aggregate and regurgitate existing information. Therefore, allowing mass-produced AI content to rank highly and build topical authority, risks de-incentivising unique content creation.
We have already seen the issues it can create with Perplexity AI being accused of plagiarism. Increasingly, questions are being asked about the legality of AI content and the copyright status of AI art.
Moreover, if an AI produces the content, it’s not exactly a signal of your knowledge and topical authority. As a result, Google has been de-indexing AI content, which is likely to continue.
Therefore, if you use AI tools to create content, you must understand how to humanise the output and develop content that does not trigger Google’s AI detection algorithms. While online AI detectors can help, they are only correct 66% of the time.
Yet, the issue goes beyond AI detection. Trust in tools like ChatGPT has fallen leading to a decline in search traffic for the AI Chatbot after a series of issues with its accuracy.
Therefore, AI tools should be used, but do not rely on them to increase topical authority.
7. Follow Google’s quality guidelines
When increasing your topical authority, it is worth remembering Google’s quality guidelines. Key to this is the acronym E-E-A-T which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust.
Although E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor, it plays a role in how your content is viewed and prioritised. However, meeting these guidelines requires a multi-pronged approach.
For example, demonstrating expertise requires more than stating you are an expert. Instead, consider how you build your authority off your website.
However, make sure you control the factors in your power. For instance, a part of building trust will include fact-checking your information and sourcing reputable authors.
8. Build backlinks to increase topical authority
Backlinks might be diminishing in importance, but they still play a role in off-page SEO strategies and building topical authority. Unfortunately, this can take time, and AI cannot build backlinks automatically for you. While it is possible to use tools like ChatGPT to enhance the link-building process, you still require significant time and effort.
The reason backlinks remain powerful is that they send a strong signal that other people in your niche consider you to be an expert. Therefore, focus on promoting yourself amongst industry leaders and encourage links from high-authority websites aligned to your niche.
9. Embracing a Multi-Channel SEO Approach
Over the next decade, SEO will transform. Backlinks will continue diminishing in importance as search engines enhance their understanding of your wider online presence.
Therefore, think beyond Google and optimise your multi-channel SEO approach and presence on other platforms. In the future, search traffic will depend on search types. This means consumers will be less concerned by the best search engine and more about which one is most appropriate for their search query. Consequently, you must optimise for multiple platforms.
While Google will remain a prominent player in the search industry, you must consider factors like how to build an Instagram strategy that attracts more followers.
This will require going beyond a basic social media strategy, understanding how the algorithms work on your chosen platform, building a niche, and increasing engagement.
Moreover, multi-channel SEO can help you promote your website and encourage people to view your content. This further increases your topical authority as people seek the information you share.
Topical Authority enhancements are the future of SEO
Topical authority will become increasingly more important in the future of SEO. Search engine algorithms will evolve meaning they better understand concepts, content, expertise, and authority using multiple online signals. Consequently, if you are not focused on increasing your topical authority, your content will not get seen online.
However, it’s often easy to get lost in SEO jargon. Therefore, try to think of topical authority in the simplest of ways. Imagine you have gut health problems and have spent years looking for a solution. Which of the following people would you trust most to help:
- Your GP. They are a generalist in their field and have lots of knowledge but are not experts in gut health.
- Dave, the guy on the bus. He makes homemade remedies he found on YouTube.
- A local gut specialist. They seem knowledgeable but only recently graduated.
- A specialist gut doctor and professor. They have spent years researching gut issues and been recognised by their peers.
Most people will pick the final option. This is because not only are they specialists but they are also recognised by others. Ultimately, this is the way to increase topical authority. Think beyond keywords and focus on expertise, reputation, and recognition.
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