Unless you do not know what’s going on in the SEO world, you have surely heard of topical authority as it has been used hundreds of times among the SEO community. But what is Topical authority in SEO? What does it mean and how does it work is crucial to know
As it is commonly discussed in the SEO community, it is obvious that topical authority is quite a crucial element in website ranking. SEO Syrup will guide you through the journey of understanding what is topical authority in SEO. What is its importance and key strategies? So let’s get started.
What Is Topical Authority?
Topical authority means you cover everything on one specific topic and tell the search engine and the visitors that they will get to know all about that specific topic on your website. In simple words, showcase your website as an authority on any specific topic.
Hence, you will cover everything on the topic in-depth like an expert, and search engines will reward you with a high ranking on SERPs.
It is helpful practice as you can imagine ranking on top for every keyword related to your niche. You can enjoy high ranking even without a huge number of link-building efforts. So, if you are someone in the search engine optimisation world who can and is willing to write about everything within a topic, topical authority can be your way to dominating search engine result pages.
How To Build An Effective Topical Authority In SEO Strategy?
Emerging as a topical authority is not possible if proper strategy is not followed. Here is how you can build effective topical authority.
Create A Well-Researched Content Strategy:
You should be competent enough to start working on any topic. Therefore, building a strong content strategy is very crucial. Start with in-depth keyword research and a detailed outline of content strategy. It should include a solid plan for a website to emerge as a topical authority. The site should contain every related blog, content, and keyword that will interest the target audience and get organic traffic for your website.
Your focus should be on providing authentic information and reliable knowledge to the readers. Get your content popular within the relevant industry and start by sharing your insights on the relevant topics. Make sure you are confident to write about chosen topics.
Create Topic Clusters:
While choosing the topics to write about, the first thing to be done is to focus on key topics that will be used as pillars of your website.
Start by writing the best content on core topics/ foundation topics and then begin with branching these into sub-topics and related content. Mostly the sub-topics have a smaller search volume and a lower difficulty rate than the core key phrases.
While writing on the sub-topics or relevant topics, ensure that you are linking all to the core topics of the website and developing a relation among them. Focus on interlinking for best ranking results.
Comprehensive Understanding Of User Intent:
Many digital marketers prefer to build and implement a campaign that revolves around the user intent and improve their topical authority. It is no doubt the best policy! Writing for the audience means your content will resonate with what’s trending on search engines and eventually increase user engagement.
Google Search Engine has become quite smart these days and understands the user intent very quickly. So, if your website develops the content according to user engagement it will get a positive ranking by search engine bots.
Nowadays Google does not just show the results against the typed queries. On the contrary, it tries to establish the intent behind the query and deliver the most relevant result. For instance, if someone types the best pizza in [area]. It will try to show the best results and place the open restaurant at that time on the top.
Therefore, while you are creating a content strategy you should consider the user intent for topic-specific keywords. It can be informational, how-to blogs, etc.
You can also write topics that the search engine itself wants. You can check it yourself by typing your chosen keyword and see what type of blogs appear at the top.
Link Building:
Link building with other authoritative websites is one of the best ways to improve a website’s topical authority. However, building links with strong DA and relevant to your industry is not an easy job. There are several ways to get links from authoritative websites such as guest blogging and mentioning influencers in your content.
Build Broken Links:
The next step is as important as backlinking i.e., building broken links. Keep checking the websites and find any broken external links on other websites and once you find them offer the web owners to exchange them with your site link as an alternative.
Broken links usually hinder the UX – user experience which is not good for website ranking. By reaching these websites, you build a healthy networking relationship and also get good backlinks as well.
Conclusion:
So that’s all about topical authority in SEO! Topical authority is important as it builds trust with visitors and search engine algorithms, supports natural link-building, and reduces marketing expenses. However, you can only get these benefits with effective strategies such as creating a sound content strategy, creating backlinks, building broken links, and establishing strong content according to user intent.