The Complete Guide to Building Topical Authority

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and content marketing moves fast and one concept has risen to prominence as a key driver of organic search success: topical authority. We will delve into the intricacies of building topical authority, exploring its significance, strategies for implementation, and the tools that can help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche.

Topical authority refers to the depth and breadth of expertise a website demonstrates on a particular subject or set of related subjects. It's not just about having a lot of content; it's about having high-quality, interconnected content that thoroughly covers a topic from multiple angles. Search engines like Google have become increasingly sophisticated in their ability to understand context and semantics, making topical authority a crucial factor in determining search rankings.

For marketing and SEO agencies, content marketers, and bloggers, building topical authority is no longer optional—it's essential. So I am going to take you through step-by-step in my process for building topical authority and utilizing multiples free and paid tools to complete the workflow.

The Foundation: Research and Planning

Before you can begin building topical authority, you need to lay a solid foundation through thorough research and planning. This process starts with identifying your niche and conducting comprehensive keyword research. While it might be tempting to cast a wide net, focusing on a specific area allows you to develop deeper expertise and stand out.

So we start off with a common understanding, let’s say you’re a law firm based in Boston. I think the approach I would take is finding #1 what is the most common questions asked by clients or the most common issues they are facing #2 couple that with related billable hours and begin to write and connect content that addresses those issues while focusing on content that relates to the revenue of the firm.

Begin by analyzing your current content and identifying the topics where you already have some traction. Look for patterns in the questions your audience is asking and the problems they're trying to solve. Tools like Google's Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs can provide valuable insights into search volumes and related keywords, helping you map out the landscape of your chosen topic.

This is possibly the best free way in which you can easily begin your keyword research, Google Keyword Planner. You can easily complete competitor research, topical research and sort and download keywords that you will target.

Step 1

Open the keyword planner and input a competitor’s website in the Discover New Keyword portion of the tools. You can use this section to either identify keywords across the website in which they are ranking or you can identify keywords that a specific page ranks for by inputting the url for that page.

In this step we can also select the language we are targeting and the countries we want to compete within. Simply press get results and let’s move to the next step.

Step 2

This is where we are going to select the countries we want to target. I assume most individuals reading this will want to target English speakers. Now the breadth of your selection may differ. If you are based in Calgary, Alberta and your business is local you will want to specify that city as your target.

Now, if you are like me and work for a SaaS or other type of start up or enterprise you may want to target the english speaking world. For me my selection is the United States (obviously), United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Singapore. I usually avoid including India because it can skew data making results for search volume seem outlandish, which will prevent you from accurately understanding your audience size. Also, there will be significant overlap between the above mentioned countries and India either way. Keep in mind conversion rates will vary by country significantly.

Step 3

Now we have some results, in my examples I am checking out Ahrefs. They produce some of the best and most actionable SEO content on the internet and they are a great resource to help model Decipher SEO content in terms of quality.

The keyword planner has identified 2,226 keywords that Ahrefs is ranking for in the English speaking countries I selected. From here I would recommended sorting the keywords and going through them briefly just to see if they are a match for the topics you are looking to cover.

But, I will let you know I usually will do this for about 5-6 competitors so I have a large swath of keywords to begin narrowing down on, often 30-40% of these keywords will overlap or be duplicates between related competitors.

From this section of the keyword planner, we can also receive the forecast of the number of potential traffic we could get by targeting these keywords in the selected countries.

Step 4

The next step in my workflow is going to be downloading this list of keywords into a Google Sheets. Once the list is downloaded I can begin to sort and filter through the keywords in a much easier manner.

As you conduct your research, think beyond individual keywords to broader themes and concepts. Topical cluster planning is a powerful approach that involves organizing your content around core topics, with subtopics branching out to cover various aspects of the main theme. This structure not only helps search engines understand the relationships between your content but also provides a clear roadmap for your content creation efforts.

It is often useful to have the broader themes already chosen. This way when we begin to sort and filter the keywords we have a logical manner in which to sort them into their appropriate themes.

Crafting a Comprehensive Content Strategy

With your research in hand, it's time to develop a content strategy that will establish and reinforce your topical authority. This strategy should outline the types of content you'll create, the key topics you'll cover, and how these pieces will interlink to form a cohesive body of knowledge.

Step 1

What I did in this step is organize the table, remove the duplicates and remove all medium and high difficulty keywords. The reasoning behind removing the medium and high difficulty keywords is because we are a much smaller company than Ahrefs and Semrush and I would assume most reading this guide are as well. With that in mind the point of targeting low difficulty keywords is to get some easy wins at the beginning of the process of implementing a SEO strategy.

So let’s focus on those low difficulty keywords and begin identifying those that belong at the Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU).

Step 2

For this next step I use the Anthropic Console to help sort through my keywords to identify those with a purchase intent of 8-10 based on a scale of 1-10. You could do a similar thing with most AI chat’s, Decipher SEO’s AI chat or sign up for the anthropic console and $10 will be enough to run this type of filter for 2-3 months.

I know most of you will be unfamiliar with how to use the console on Anthropic, so I’ll outline a little bit of how to get started. Once you have added some credits to you account, head to the workbench. Click on generate a prompt, here we will add our what we need the prompt to complete. Make sure to add all variables you want to include for the prompt that Anthropic will generate for you.

Below is an example of the prompt I used for Phase 1 of Decipher’s SEO strategy. If you click on the pencil icon you can add the keywords into a list of variables to be analyzed. It is actually super user friendly. I would say try analyzing between 10-20 keywords at a time for purchase intent because Anthropic has a rate limit of around 1600 tokens with the workbench feature.

Step 3

I have taken all the keywords that Anthropic has reported is being a 7 of higher in purchase intent and gather them into a single sheet.

Out of the 1,600 or so keywords I analyzed it returned about 130 being 7 or higher for purchase intent. We have trimmed a lot of fat in the previous step. We still need to sort these into topical clusters so let’s do that in our next step.

Step 4

Here we go back to the Anthropic workbench, this time I gave it the responsibility to group keywords into 4 groups based on theme. The 4 themes i chose were AI in Marketing, SEO, Content Strategy and Topical Clusters (I know it’s meta a topical cluster on topical clusters).

Using the 130+ keywords on my BOFU sheet, I processed them through this prompt to help me create the keywords my clusters would target. It is actually surprisingly simple.

Content Creation: Quality and Depth

When it comes to building topical authority, quality trumps quantity every time. Your content should be well-researched, accurate, and provide genuine value to your readers. This means going beyond surface-level information to offer insights, analysis, and practical advice that can't be found elsewhere.

Step 1

Now that I have my keywords clustered into their respective topics, I created article ideas and make linking each article with the keywords that I intended to target.

You can see below in the image, I am working on the SEO cluster. There are a lot of keywords that overlap thematically. I don’t want to make 24 different article for each keyword, grouping closely related keywords is essential. We are going from quality over quantity with our content.

Here you can see the articles that are colour coded with their corresponding keywords. I use the green highlight beside it to mark which articles have been completed. The two I didn’t highlight are because I think the lack a bit of relevance to the topics I want to cover for Decipher SEO. From here I can expand the articles and the keywords. I try to keep a pace of 2 high quality article per week, but this is planned out for the entire year well ahead of publishing.

Here is an Example

Ahrefs is known for their excellent content. It drives traffic, engagement, conversation and the most important revenue! Below is an article on how founders can get started with their SEO. I would recommend anyone reading this article to analyze Ahrefs content to understand what quality content means. It is answering a question, providing actionable steps and images that elucidate those steps.

I will give you a few things to analyze any article that you want to understand at a deeper level for you SEO strategy. These points should help standardize any review.

1. First look at the title, let’s copy it and do a quick google search and see the other articles that are competing in the same space.

2. Next, look at the title and look at the url, is the title the slug, is it a keyword? Some larger companies put the keyword they are targeting in the slug, some just use the title. Look at your competitors understand what they are optimizing and use that information to create your own advantage.

3. Let’s look at the images, how many images does the article have? Are they screenshots? Custom images? Statistics? This will give you an idea of how many images you should be including in your article. And also what images are driving search traffic. In my opinion it is usually custom images with statistics. These always peak my personal interest more than screenshots. But screenshots are better for hammering home a point you made in your article.

4. Now let’s look at the topics that are being covered in the article. Understand the headings, how in-depth are they covering each heading. Is there something they are missing that you could add. Also an important point is breaking your content up into short paragraphs to improve readability.

5. Look at their internal links, were they are placed. For semantic SEO this is important, it is also important not to use the same text to link to a specific article in different articles. Look at their external links, what is the domain rating of those external links. These things all help improve rankings with search engine and improve you article performance.

On-Page Optimization: Balancing SEO and User Experience

While creating high-quality content is essential, optimizing that content for both search engines and users is what will help you maximize its impact. On-page optimization involves a range of techniques designed to improve your content's visibility in search results while ensuring a positive experience for your readers.

Start with the basics: use descriptive, keyword-rich titles and meta descriptions that accurately reflect the content of each page. Structure your content with clear headings (H2, H3, etc.) that help both users and search engines understand the hierarchy of information. Include relevant keywords naturally throughout your content, but prioritize readability and value over keyword density.

Pay attention to your URL structure, ensuring it's clean, descriptive, and includes relevant keywords where appropriate. Use alt text for images to improve accessibility and provide additional context for search engines. And don't forget about page speed—optimize your images and minimize unnecessary scripts to ensure your pages load quickly on all devices. Google has a good tool to review you site speed.

One of the most powerful on-page optimization techniques for building topical authority is internal linking. By strategically linking related pieces of content, you create a web of information that demonstrates the depth of your knowledge on a topic. Automated internal linking tools can help you identify opportunities to connect your content, ensuring you're building a strong, interconnected knowledge base that both users and search engines can easily navigate. Decipher SEO can specifically help with this, as our topical authority map automates internal linking inside of a topical cluster.

Promotion and Link Building: Amplifying Your Authority

Creating great content is only half the battle—you also need to ensure that content reaches your target audience and earns recognition from other authoritative sources in your field. A robust promotion and link-building strategy is essential for amplifying your topical authority and improving your visibility in search results.

You need to link to important pages within you website. The order of importance from my experience is the home page, pricing page and the cornerstone article for the topical cluster you are working on. This helps lend authority to those pages. You can see below on a site I’ve worked on before that the home page by far as the most internal links followed by the pricing page.

Here you can see how these links help influence the home page having the highest page authority on the website. Keep in mind these ratings are not used by search engines to determine rankings. Rather the were developed by MOZ and other SEO tools to give you a general idea of how your site is performing.

The page authority and the domain rating can diverge like you see here. For a website with about five months of work put into it on the SEO side these numbers are good and they are able to generate thousands of clicks through programmatic SEO.

For links directing to your website, start by leveraging your existing networks. Share your content across your social media channels, email newsletters, and industry forums. Engage with your audience by responding to comments and encouraging discussions around your content. Bulk social media posting tools can help you maintain a consistent presence across platforms without overwhelming your schedule.

Reach out to influencers and thought leaders in your industry to share your best content. Consider collaborating on content or offering to guest post on reputable sites in your niche. These relationships can lead to valuable backlinks and expose your content to new audiences, further cementing your authority in the field.

I’ll give you an honest opinion here though rather than a generalist view. Most of these links will be paid coming from sites with high domain ratings. My advice is do not pay unless your budget is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead you need to be a little cheeky, create content that will generate inbound links, which are tools. Check out ubersuggest and put any competitor site and you will see the pattern that tools are often 90%+ of the inbound links for most big websites.

Additionally, I would suggest creating an affiliate program. Affiliates will either have larger social media platforms or great websites that lead to conversions. The links they will send to your website can be a great way to increase authority while also increasing revenue, which is the real point of all this effort anyway.

Don't underestimate the power of semantic SEO tools in your link-building efforts. These tools can help you identify related topics and entities that you should be targeting in your content and outreach strategies. By aligning your content with the broader semantic context of your niche, you increase your chances of earning relevant, high-quality backlinks that boost your topical authority.

Measuring and Maintaining Your Topical Authority

Building topical authority is an ongoing process that requires consistent effort and regular evaluation. To ensure your strategy is effective, you need to measure your progress and adjust your approach as needed.

Start by tracking your search rankings for key terms related to your topic. Tools like Google Search Console can provide insights into which queries are driving traffic to your site and how your pages are performing in search results. Monitor your organic traffic growth and engagement metrics like time on page and bounce rate to gauge how well your content is resonating with your audience.

Pay attention to your backlink profile, tracking both the quantity and quality of links pointing to your content. Tools like Ahrefs or Moz can help you analyze your backlink profile and identify opportunities for improvement. Look for patterns in the types of content that are earning the most links and engagement, and use these insights to inform your future content strategy.

Regularly audit your content to ensure it remains accurate and up-to-date. As your industry evolves, so should your content. Update older pieces with new information, expand on topics that have become more relevant, and prune or redirect outdated content that no longer serves your audience or your SEO goals.

Consider using a topical authority tool to visualize your content ecosystem and identify gaps in your coverage. These tools can help you create a comprehensive SEO topical map, ensuring you're addressing all relevant aspects of your chosen topic and maintaining a balanced, authoritative presence in your niche.

Conclusion: The Path to Lasting SEO Success

Building topical authority is not a quick fix or a short-term strategy. It's a long-term investment in your online presence that can yield significant rewards in terms of search visibility, audience trust, and industry recognition. By focusing on creating high-quality, interconnected content that thoroughly covers your chosen topic, you position yourself as a true expert in your field.

If you can trust me, give the process at least 6 to 12 months, remain consistent, do not get stop. That is the true differentiation between your SEO success or failure, just DO NOT STOP.

Remember, the key to success lies in balancing technical SEO knowledge with a deep understanding of your audience's needs and interests. Use the strategies and tools we've discussed to create content that not only ranks well in search engines but also provides genuine value to your readers.

As you embark on your journey to build topical authority, consider leveraging the power of AI and automation to streamline your efforts. Tools like those offered by Decipher SEO can help you plan your content clusters, optimize your internal linking structure, and scale your content production without sacrificing quality. By combining these cutting-edge technologies with your unique expertise and insights, you can create a content ecosystem that establishes you as the go-to authority in your niche.

Start building your topical authority today, and watch as your organic reach, engagement, and conversions grow. With patience, persistence, and the right strategies, you'll not only improve your SEO performance but also build a lasting foundation for success in the ever-changing digital landscape.