What Is Topical Authority? The Importance Of Topical Authority For SEO

What is Topical Authority?

When it comes to SEO and gaining views through an organic site visit, the authority of your content and its relevance to the topics you are discussing is a very important aspect to consider. The meaning of topical authority refers to having content on your webpage that is valuable, informative and relative to what your website is all about. Having this information easily accessible ensures that you are providing information that will not only draw users in but hold their attention and provide them with high-quality information that is relative to the topics you discuss. This information is often a broad scope of a variety of different things that fall within your websites information bracket and it assures both users and search engine crawlers that you have reliable and valuable information for people to read up on. Things like keywords and phrases are still however valuable and they offer search engines the opportunity to evaluate the relevance of your information, these keywords and phrases, however, should be added to the content with the intent of providing valuable insight and keyword stuffing is not appreciated within this data. The importance of topical authority should never be underestimated and content creators should always be looking at ways to increase the awareness of their readers on the topics that they are experts in! 

How Does Google Work and Why Does The Topical Authority Matter?

Google is a search engine that puts a large amount of importance on things like good content. Google rewards web pages that have good content by ranking them higher on search engines results pages and so it is no surprise that this search engine then places importance on topical authority and the relevance of the content that is discussed on your webpage. Google itself is a search engine that holds a lot of authority, and users trust that should a webpage rank highly, Google has done a good job of monitoring and reporting on the relevance and authority of the content on a specific page. Topical authority is, therefore, an extremely important feature according to Google, and this should be remembered as you are optimising your webpage and your content for this search engine. While Google has been the search engine to place specific importance on this, many others are following suit and are looking for websites that have content that holds a high authority, so even if you are not looking to specifically gain standing on Google, it is still a very important SEO factor to take into consideration. 

How to Build The Topical Authority?

Create Pillar Content

To better understand who you are and the topics you are discussing, it is important that your content be in-depth, covering all aspects of the topic from the most basic ideas to more complex data. This well-rounded amount of information will offer your readers the chance to gain a full and proper understanding of the topic at hand, with all possible questions answered within the content. Authority builders should think of the content they are creating in terms of pillars, all supporting one thing, but in order for the object to be fully supported, each pillar needs to stand tall on its own and remain strong. When it comes to your content, you need to make sure that your audience has a full understanding of the topic and that all pillars of content are as strong as each other! 

Research Subtopics and Create More Content

Web pages that are looking to gain credibility should have an assortment of different subtopics discussed within the content. These different subtopics can branch out from your original content and discuss matters that perhaps did not relate to your original content. These different subtopics often appear on separate pages on your website, though it is important to remember that they should all be linked together. In doing this, you are covering multiple bases and ensuring that your users who are viewing and reading your content have all the information they need to gain a full understanding of the topic you are discussing. 

Answer All Possible Questions

By answering all possible questions relating to the topic, you are not only ensuring that your readers have a good understanding of what you are discussing, with all possible information included but you are also given the opportunity to include an array of keywords. As one of the most important on-page SEO factors, keywords can help you to rank highly on search engine results pages, as the search engine crawlers that index your pages are able to find many different keywords to associate with your content. This will ensure that you are gaining high-quality traffic from multiple sources and searches! 

Use Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

LSI keywords refer to the keywords that are phrases and words that should be included within your content as they are the most basic concepts that your readers should be able to understand. These keywords may seem to be an obvious addition to your content, but very often, if you are not an experienced writer, they are sometimes quite easy to miss. The inclusion of LSI keywords is a relatively new addition to search engines algorithms but including them will ensure that your site has topical authority! LSI keywords offer another reason why writing should be done by those experienced within a specific field and not having these keywords included could lead to authority issues. 

Add Internal Linking

Using internal linking to your advantage is just one of the ways that you can increase the topical authority of your webpage. By creating links between your landings pages and the pages where your content is displayed, you are assuring search engines like Google that your content is all related to one relevant topic, and that the topic that is being discussed is one that you are an expert in! The linking of different pages also allows for users to better make their way through your page, by moving from one topic to another and gaining a broad understanding of the information you are providing. 

Build More Links

WHile the idea behind topical authority is to create well-rounded and dense content, it is still important to consider the basics when trying to increase rankings on search engine results pages. Having extra links leading to your page can help to increase the flow of traffic that makes its way to your webpage, and having good-quality links will always lead to high-quality traffic! While concentrating on your content, be sure to still put time and effort into finding and building relationships and getting as many high-quality links leading to your webpage as possible. 

How to Create Content in Terms of The Topical Authority?

Answer User Intent in All Your Pages

Before you put pen to paper and begin creating content, it is important to nail down what exactly the user intent is. When creating content that is in line with topical authority, it is important that you determine exactly what your target market is looking for and fully answer each of the questions that may be associated with this topic. If your webpage holds no valuable information, users may go to another website that may have a larger variety of information on the topic, and you may have lost a potential customer. It is therefore valuable to ensure that the topics that you are covering branch over certain topics and discuss, in detail, the information that could be valuable to a specific user.

Expert Knowledge

Having content that clearly outlines and defines topics in a teachable way, such as through guides or technical articles, provides Google with information that the content you are providing has been developed through knowledge and experienced channels. Expert knowledge and information provide search engines with ways to categorise and understand what your webpage offers, also making it easier for these engines to index your content according to the best searches, providing you with high-quality traffic. 

How Does Topical Authority Help You To Rank Higher?

With a large amount of high-quality information, an assortment of relevant keywords and many different pages all linked together, you can be certain that your page will rank higher! Topical authority is becoming a ranking factor that has led many websites to take off, exceeding the competition and ranking highly for an assortment of different topics! Topical authority helps you to rank higher through a variety of different tactics and having a search engine note that your webpage is one that has authority will lead you to not only rank for multiple searches but be ranked highly! The following are just a few ways that topical authority can help to rank higher than your competitors! 

How to Optimize Internal Links for Topical Authority?

When it comes to building internal links, you have to make sure that they are effective and relevant to the content you are creating. Having a wide variety of different links that are each relating to topics from other pages on your website will offer search engine crawlers assurance that not only do you have a ton of different content but that it is all related to each other! One of the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to optimising these links is that they insert links within content haphazardly, without taking the actual content into account. While having an assortment of internal links is important, it is also imperative that these links are placed well within the content and that they make sense. nonsensical internal links will actually decrease the authority of the content and lead you to rank lower and receive less traffic. It is also detrimental to how a reader makes his/her way through your content and it can be distracting to have incorrect links leading to irrelevant pages within your content. 

Why is Topical Authority the New SEO Strategy?

When marketers and website developers hear the word Authority, they immediately think of things like domains and links and how important it is that these different features come from authoritative web pages and sites. There are however many different types of authority and it is becoming increasingly more important than the content itself has some authority and is relevant. As content becomes more important to search engines and topical authority SEO becomes an even more valid ranking factor, many are thinking as to why this is the case. Topical authority leads to many different web pages having to create valid, authentic and diverse content, all designed to offer users the best possible understanding of a specific topic. This is incredibly important to search engines as having an authoritative site that they can refer to for an assortment of different searches is beneficial to them, and if this content is recognised to be created by experts, why should they not use this valid information and supply it to their users? This way of thinking has ensured that topical authority has become an SEO factor that is highly influential! 

What are The Benefits of Topical Authority for SEO?

The benefits of topical authority in SEO are seen through looking at two things. The first, and most obvious, reason why topical authority improves your SEO is through the rankings o search engine results pages. With far more keywords and authoritative content, you are more likely to rank highly and receive clicks through search engine results pages. An authority builder SEO will always provide this as one of the main reasons why websites should provide an assortment of information on a given topic and increase the number of keywords that appear within this content. The second, and less obvious, reason is that as you become an authoritative site and become recognised as one by search engines, you are far more likely to receive offers from other web pages to appear as backlinks. This increase in the number of backlinks leading to your website increases the amount of traffic to your page. 

How Can Our Expert Team at Markethinkers Help Its Customers to Build a Solid Content Marketing Strategy?

Here at Markethinkers, we are all about ensuring that your content is not only optimised but that it is well read by the users that make their way to your webpage. When it comes to topical authority within your content marketing strategy, relevance and having high-quality information is always something that we put first. Our Professional SEO Consulting team works hard to provide our customers with content that is able to draw users in and hold their attention and our SEO Copywriting team is able to manufacture and produce wholesome content that is in line with your brand’s philosophy. As Markethinkers, we are able to analyse the market and create content that will be recognised by search engine crawlers as valuable and provide a space where your own customers are able to fully relate to and understand the topics that are discussed. With our team of experts on your side, the limits of authority will never be an issue and you can be sure that your content will have topical authority!