Building topical authority: how to do it

What is topical authority?

Topical authority refers to the extent to which Google views your website as an expert in a specific field. In other words: how credible your website is when it comes to a particular topic. Generally speaking, the higher your topical authority is in a specific niche, the greater your chances of achieving good rankings.

Is topical authority important to Google?

Yes and no. You see, topical authority is not an official ranking factor. And you can't really measure it well either. Still, it is an important signal for Google. Here's the thing:

Let’s say you write blogs about dog and cat health. You share tips on grooming their coats, and you might even sell some organic dog food or healthy cat food. In that case, you’ve established yourself as an authority on pets.

Do you suddenly write an article about crypto currencies? Then chances are not very good that it will get you high in Google. After all, Google sees your website as an expert on pets and not crypto. Consequence? Your article about cryptocoins is considered less credible and thus won't rank as well.

Benefits for SEO and your website

By building topical authority, you work towards better rankings in the future. At least for keywords relevant to your field. But there's more.

By focusing primarily on your own field of expertise, you almost automatically create more opportunities for logical internal links within your content. And that, in turn, automatically helps improve the rankings of your existing pages.

This way you also offer visitors more content in which they are probably also interested, so they stay longer on your site. Doesn't seem wrong to us either.

How do you increase your topical authority?

That’s all well and good, but how do you increase your topical authority? Good question. With these tips, you can take a structured approach to building an authoritative website with higher rankings and more visitors:

1. Focus on a niche

Start small. This is easier than focusing immediately on a broad topic for which there is a lot of competition and increases the chances of success. Do you already have quite a bit on your website and already attract some visitors from Google? Then you can see if you can expand step-by-step to be better found on the big topics as well.

2. Do keyword research

A keyword research or keyword analysis is crucial. After all, it indicates what people are looking for and what they want to know. Moreover, it also helps you find subtopics or subtopics for content with which you can go in depth. Or rather, content that increases your topical authority. Longtails and semantically related terms are perfect for this.

3. Create helpful content

And with helpful content we mean content that perfectly meets the search intent of users and with which you really add value. So don't rehash what's already there or have something quickly written by ChatGPT, but really create something unique that shows that you are the expert.

4. Group your content

By literally linking your content together with internal links, you create a kind of small hubs or clusters of relevant content. So this is also how you build a kind of mini-authority for those subtopics from point 2 above.

5. Go for topical link building

Link building is good for your SEO anyway, but here you can also increase your topical authority. After all, a link from another website that is also related to your niche is often worth more than a link from a domain that has basically nothing to do with your topic. As if one expert refers to another expert.

Want to know more?

Wil je meer weten over topical authority? Kun je wel wat hulp gebruiken bij dat zoekwoordenonderzoek, bij het creëren van waardevolle content of bij linkbuilding? Neem vrijblijvend contact op. We kijken graag of we iets voor je kunnen betekenen.