Become Number 1 in Your Industry
Are you ready to establish your website as the leading authority within your industry niche? Topical authority SEO is the key to ensuring that your website consistently delivers deep, credible content across your subject area. At Now Media Group, topical authority has been a strategy we’ve tailored to our clients, skyrocketing their organic traffic and elevating their online presence.
Experience real results by contacting our team to schedule your free website evaluation and going over this unique content marketing strategy!
Table of Contents
Topical authority is an SEO concept that aims to establish a website as the go-to authority on specific topics by comprehensively covering all related aspects. It’s not just about ranking high on search engines, rather topical authority is about building trust with your audience and showcasing your website’s knowledge and credibility in specific topics.
Building topical authority starts by understanding the audience’s queries, diving deep into a topic, and expanding the website’s knowledge base through interconnected content. Unlike traditional SEO strategies that prioritize link building or single keyword optimization, the aim to build topical authority focuses on providing expertise in a niche over time through comprehensive topic coverage.
Semantic search is a game-changer in how search engines interpret user queries. It refines search accuracy by incorporating personalization through context, past searches, and understanding the precise information users are seeking to fulfill their intent.
In the context of topical authority, search engines like Google construct a knowledge graph for websites, deciphering not just the substance of individual pieces of content but also gauging the overall expertise of the website on specific subjects. This contributes to the topical relevance and usefulness of search results provided to users.
E-E-A-T, an acronym for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, is a fundamental concept in Google’s guidelines to evaluate search result quality. Expertise is confirmed when content authors possess:
This allows them to provide unique insights on a particular topic. Authoritativeness is gauged by the industry reputation of both the content creator and the website, looking for endorsements via citations from reputable entities. Trustworthiness entails:
You can’t build topical authority on your website without the foundation of SEO basics.
On-page optimization includes implementing title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags, that help search engines understand the topic and relevance of a page. Meta descriptions influence click-through rates from SERPs and should effectively summarize the topic to improve relevance signals.
Header tags structure content hierarchically, guiding search engines in context understanding and topic identification. H tag subheadings enhance the readability of long-form content, contributing to a better user experience, and helping readers to easily skim content.
A logical site structure and user-friendly navigation aren’t just for the aesthetics of your website, but they also help search engines understand the relationship between topics and pages, bolstering topical authority. Content silos organize website content by keyword-based themes, which enhances content visibility and supports topical authority. An evergreen URL structure fosters consistency and aids in making the website’s content clear to search engines and users. Inbound links are also a great way to ensure that your website is easy to navigate through.
To establish topical authority, you need to target not just the best keywords, but all the relevant keywords under your specific topic or niche. This includes creating keyword clusters that you can use on each page, making sure you cover all semantically related topics, and avoiding duplicating any content. We suggest creating a pillar page for each topic. This pillar page allows you to include all relevant links to each subtopic and ensure you don’t miss any relevant information needed.
Establishing topical authority is a continuous process. It requires an intensive effort to cover topics thoroughly, develop content that aligns with user intent, and craft pillar pages and content clusters.
To establish your site as the main resource for a subject, you need to cover all possible aspects and angles of a given topic. Creating in-depth, well-researched content that’s genuinely helpful to the user is key to building topical authority. Regular content audits and updates ensure ongoing relevance, engagement, and improved SERP rankings.
Understanding user intent and creating content that matches their searches and queries is fundamental to establishing your website as the topical authority. Comprehensive guides and long-form content provide deeper topic coverage and respond to user searches more completely, more likely to rank well in Google. Quality, relevance, and user engagement of the content are vital components that contribute to establishing topical authority.
Pillar pages and content clusters are a key part of the strategy to help build topical authority. Pillar pages provide a broad overview of a topic and are supported by related sub-articles or cluster content.
Building topical authority requires covering all distinct topics related to a common topic in a content cluster, signaling to search engines an expertise on the subject. Semantic search optimization involves organizing content into strategic clusters to enhance topical depth and optimize for topically related keywords related to the pillars.
Link building is essential in both establishing and showcasing a website’s topical authority. Pages with numerous backlinks, particularly from trusted sources, tend to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). By attracting quality backlinks, you not only improve topical authority but also contribute to a site’s overall Domain Authority.
Internal linking is key to creating a network of contextually related content that indicates topical authority to search engines. Building a keyword map for interlinking and varying anchor text are among the strategies used to strengthen internal links and improve SERP positions.
A strategic internal link structure:
High-quality topical backlinks, which come from websites relevant to the content’s topics, are crucial for gaining topical authority. Linking out to authoritative content can help define a topical structure, showing search engines that a website’s content is part of a larger, reputable information ecosystem. Networking, both online and at industry events, is essential for acquiring backlinks and establishing long-term relationships with other authoritative sources within a topic’s domain. To secure high-value backlinks, producing impressive content for peers in the industry is key.
Keeping track and measuring topical authority aids in assessing your progress and making required adjustments. An upward trend in impressions is a strong indicator of a successful content strategy, showing your site’s progress toward earning more clicks for head keywords.
The difference between backlinks and topical authority lies in the fact that backlinks measure a website’s overall authority based on its backlink profile, while topical authority measures a website’s authority on a specific topic based on the depth and breadth of content.
SEO topical maps are visual representations of the relationships between topics and subtopics on a website. They provide a clear structure for search engines to understand the content hierarchy, making it easier for them to crawl and index web pages.
Semantic search enhances topical authority by refining search accuracy through personalization and understanding user intent and search queries, enabling search engines to gauge a website’s expertise on specific subjects. This ultimately helps in establishing topical authority for the website.
Building topical authority is not a one-time task, but an ongoing journey. It involves consistently creating high-quality content, nurturing relationships, and leveraging the right tools. And, Now Media Group can do that for you! Remember, your goal isn’t just to become an authority in your niche, but to use that authority to provide value to your audience and make a lasting impact.
Contact our digital marketing agency today to get started! We’ll create your custom topical authority strategy and get you to the top of the search results.
We have been working with Now Media Group for the past 7 years. They manage our website, social media, Google ads and implant-specific marketing. There are many options available for online dental marketing. Now Media has gone above and beyond in helping us grow our practice and help attract high-value and well-qualified dental implant and full arch cases.
Dr. Matthew Huff
Precision Dentistry & Implants of Kerrville
We have been using Now Media Group for many years. They have done an amazing job with our website, search engine optimization, online registration portals and social media marketing. If it’s Internet related, they are one of the best in the business. Many of our graduates use their services and the feedback has always been nothing less than excellent.
Dr. Randolph Resnik
Resnik Implant Institute
Now Media is a top notch company that I highly recommend for your marketing needs. They not only updated my sites, they made them more attractive, brought more traffic to them, and in return this is resulting in more cosmetic and implant cases being treated.
Dr. John Nosti
Smile Design NYC
“Met Now Media when I was a COO of a multi-site, multi-brand dental practice. Was so pleased, I now use them for our Med Spa and the SEO is so good- we get calls for services we don’t even advertise other than a page on the website! Now Media Group are SEO masters and have a fabulous team. Highly recommend and worth the $!”
Theresa LaBranche
Front Door Medspa
I started a roofing business in the summer of 2022 and I can confidently say that Shannon, Brandan, and the entire Now Media team is one of the main reasons why we are thriving going into our first full year in business. From our website build to marketing and SEO they’ve been AWESOME.
Steven Friedman
Thunder Bay Roofing
I have been having good results with Now Media optimizing my website. Mark the owner is very hands-on and very responsive to any concerns. We have definitely improved our new patient numbers since using Now Media. I would highly recommend Now Media.
Dr. Michael Kreimer
Michael Kreimer, DDS
