Topical Authority Is the New Keyword Research

Topical authority can be described as “depth of expertise.” It’s achieved by consistently writing original high-quality, comprehensive content that covers the topic.

The world – and the lexicon of – search engine optimization (SEO) has changed in recent years. Content marketing creators used to have to worry about page rank, domain authority, and backlinks. But keyword research has given way to establishing topical authority and internal links are as important – if not more so – than backlinks.

Building topical authority is proven to increase ranking for existing keywords. It’s also a great way to expand the number of keywords for which a site ranks. The best part? Achieving topical authority with quality content is well within your control.

In this article, we’re going to dig into everything you need to know about topical authority so you can adapt your content strategy accordingly. We’ll look at what it means for content creators, why it’s important, and how to achieve it. First, we’ll look at how search engines identify sites with topical authority. Then we’ll delve into the details on the E-A-T algorithm that makes it all possible.

What Is Topical Authority?

Topical authority can be described as “depth and breadth of expertise.” It’s achieved by consistently writing original, high-quality, comprehensive content that covers a specific topic – from any of the myriad of ways a user might think of that topic. 

Topic authority is highly correlated to topic clustering. Your target audience is eager to learn all aspects of a particular topic – from what it is – to how it applies to them, as well as all of the related subtopics associated with that subject.

Topical Authority Is Key in SEO Strategy

Google is fully invested in semantic SEO and as such, external link relevance will likely decrease over time. We speculate that links will probably never go away. Inbound links are signals of relevance and authority. But going forward there will be an additional emphasis on topical authority – and internal linking.

Topical authority equates to depth on a given subject. For instance, content marketing is a broad topic with many relevant subtopics such as SEO, blogging, and lead generation. Each of those topics has other relevant topics. So if you’re creating an article page about blogging, you might mention content creation, CMS, and SEO, among other topics. You can easily imagine how vast the list of relevant topics will be.

That’s for a single article. If you want to create an authoritative website, you would want to cluster as many articles around the topic of blogging as possible. So while you might mention a CMS in one article, you should also dive in and do an entire article on CMS (and, of course, add your internal link).

Topical Authority Impacts Natural Language Processing

One of the questions I get asked is, if your target audience typically knows the “What Is” question, you might wonder if you really need to have that type of article on your topical map. Without hesitation, I say “yes!” for three reasons.

1. With the adoption of voice search and generative AI, search engines need content that has been optimized for natural language processing. Creating topical models that include a variety of the types of questions a user may ask assists the engine in understanding the context of all your content. Natural language patterns include asking “what is”-type questions. 
2. In voice search, Keywords do not play an important role as Google scans the entire page and displays the most relevant section in the searches.
3. In semantic SEO, a search engine is optimized to focus on context – not just keywords. It captures the key questions that users are asking, understanding the search intent. 

If 50% of the time people want to know what a subject is (the “what is” question) the search engine is tracking the sites that answer those questions. Interlink your long tail posts with the introductory post (and vice versa). You will find you get a lift from having the head question answered. 

More on Understanding User Intent

Search intent is a big one that we stress to our users, and it’s has all the SEO experts talking, too. Moz is calling it ”searcher task accomplishment,” which is a way of asking, does your content serve the user’s ultimate goal? In other words, user intent.

Google “records” when a searcher finds the answer they’re looking for, and the algorithm will boost pages that end a user’s search. Think of it this way. If a searcher for “women’s leather bags” clicks on a listing in the SERP, goes to that site, and doesn’t bounce, it gains ranking cred. If they do bounce, that page may either stay the same or go down in ranking.

For this reason, it’s essential that your content answer any and all questions that your audience may be asking. The most common questions should get their own pages. Others may be grouped into FAQ or supporting pages. You can brainstorm what your users might be asking. You can also look at search data to find the most common queries related to your focus topic. Ideally, you should do both to ensure that no question goes unanswered.

MarketMuse displays the search intent of the top entries in Google’s search results page along with the primary intent. This way you can see the extent to which intent fracture exists. Intent fracture happens frequently and occurs when Google is trying to satisfy many different intents for the same search term.

The Importance of Topic Clusters

To show that you have strong topical authority, you will want to create topic clusters. In essence, a topic cluster offers relevant content around a given subject.

Going forward, organizations that cover a topic with the most depth will own the future traffic flow for related searches. Check out this interview that our co-founder, Jeff Coyle, gave on the importance of topical authority.

As Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mu says, you’ve got to be awesome. But what does that mean in terms of content creation? How can we be sure how content is operating at that level?

If topical authority is defined as a website’s “depth of expertise,” how do you know where your content stands? How do you know what topics you’re missing today? That’s where MarketMuse can help.

How to Optimize for Topical Authority With MarketMuse

MarketMuse is a content planning and search engine optimization solution that helps you execute a topical authority strategy. The SaaS platform can help you create top-ranking, authoritative content every time.

Given a keyword group that you want to rank for, MarketMuse analyzes top-ranking content to identify the related keywords (i.e. topics) that you should have in your content. Our patented systems and methods for semantic keyword analysis also analyzes the content on your site to reveal areas where you lack coverage and to what degree.

MarketMuse enables you to identify your gaps and prioritize topics. It also allows you to create detailed content briefs. These are blueprints your writers can use to create topically comprehensive content.

Our Research Application helps create best-in-class content, assisting you in building the most comprehensive page on the web for your focus topic. That’s because our topic modeling analyzes thousands of pages instead of the top 20 or 30, which is the approach our competitors take. Taking that extra effort results in a topic model that is far more robust than anything else on the market.

Here, we entered ‘mobile device management’ into Research to see how we could create a new in-depth page on that topic.

Research analyzes all the competitive content for this subject and returns a list of semantically related topics ordered by relevance. The ‘Suggested Dist’ column indicates how often the competition mentions the topic, while the ‘Variants’ column shows how many variants of the topic were found.

Variants can be used in a couple of ways, either to improve your writing by adding variety to the terms used, as well as to find possible subjects in a topic cluster. While corporate data and mobile apps could be part of a cluster around the topic ‘mobile device management,’ you could also create a topical cluster around ‘corporate data.’ Topics to create content around the ‘corporate data’ cluster include ‘corporate data security,’ ‘corporate data breaches,’ and ‘corporate data analytics.’

Identifying Content Gaps

Using MarketMuse, it’s easy to identify content gaps. If you’re using Optimize, look for any red squares in the first column that have a count of zero. That indicates the term has not been mentioned anywhere in the blog post. The second column suggests how often a term should be mentioned.

Content gaps can also be identified using Heatmap. Anywhere you see a red square, that’s a content gap. The x-axis (left-to-right) shows the URLs appearing in the top 20 of the search engine results page (SERP). The y-axis (up-to-down) is the list of relevant topics. A row with all red squares indicates a topic is not being addressed by the competition, offering a chance to differentiate your content.

A column with many red squares reveals a page with many content gaps. Hopefully, that’s not you!

Using MarketMuse for topical optimization is a user-friendly process that ensures you’re creating the most authoritative and relevant content. Our team can either train you on how to get the most out of the platform, or we can make your blueprints for you as a service. Either way, it’s an effective step that has gotten invaluable results for our clients.

Zooming Out: How to Build Topical Authority on Your Site

We’ve just covered how to optimize your individual posts for topic comprehensiveness, but you want to ensure that your entire domain has topical authority. To achieve this, you need to do two things: organize your topic-optimized content into clusters and answer user intent in all your pages.

When your content is comprehensive, well-organized, and speaks directly to your audience’s questions, you can’t lose. Here’s how to do it.

Topic Clusters

We advise our clients to structure their content in a way that’s logical for both humans and search engines. This entails identifying your focus topics, creating a pillar page for each, and then writing supporting content for those pillar pages. This is called topic clustering, and it’s an intuitive, proven way to organize your content for SEO.

Step 1: Determine Your Focus Subjects. The number of focus topics will depend entirely upon your business. Generally, you will want to have a pillar page for every type of product or service you provide. Focus topics should be broad enough to have subcategories; a Women’s Accessories page could have hats, gloves, jewelry, and bags as subtopics. It should be specific enough that a searcher landing on your page will find it relevant, e.g. Types of Handbags, Shoulder Bags vs Cross Body, Bags for Formal Occasions, etc.

Step 2: Create Pillar Content. If you’re not using MarketMuse, here’s what you should do:
Read through the top-ranking pages for your key term.

• Note every related topic mentioned within them.
• Brainstorm to determine which topics are not discussed by the competition.
• Include the appropriate ones in your outline.

If you’re using MarketMuse, you can easily create a content brief for your pillar pages. Run your focus topic through the Research application and use the metrics and recommendations provided.

Step 3: Write Supporting Content. Use the MarketMuse topic model of your focus topic as a guide. Instead of writing about bags in general, get more specific. Address the type of bags you sell, the materials they’re made of, and size specifications. Further, each of those supporting pages should speak to user intent. 

Unlike pillar content, which determines the breadth of your site, supporting pages are where you can gain content depth and get down to the nitty-gritty. For those using standard keyword research, you’ll find that these pages are the ones where you target long-tail keywords.

Step 4: Leverage Internal Links. Use MarketMuse connect to find the best internal linking opportunities along with appropriate anchor text. Each pillar page should be treated as a hub for that topic. Use internal linking to connect it to every piece of supporting content. For instance, using the Women’s Accessories example again, all your pages on bags, jewelry, hats, etc. would link back to your pillar page on Women’s Accessories.

Conclusion: Topical Authority = A Better Internet

As a content strategist, your goal should be to identify all the areas where you can be the authority – the expert. Subsequent content will be ideal assets to help you get high in search ranking. Link generously between these assets – and offer “off ramps” for the different personas.

For example, near the top of a “deep” article – geared to a more expert reader, offer a link to a higher level page, like what we did at Coveo.

Instead of people bouncing – they find a more appropriate path for their journey.

Regardless of how people get to your site, your goal should be to have captivating and satisfying content that your visitors will find valuable – and provide alternate paths for them to follow.