How to Use Topical Authority to 10X your Organic Traffic
Make topical authority your mantra if you are craving to improve your traffic.
Where do you go if you want to eat a Burger?
McDonald’s or some fancy restaurant in New York?
I would go to Mcdonald’s.
You would too. I assume.
Why?
McDonald’s specializes in making burgers and has burger choices that no other food chain will provide. So, McDonald’s have authority over other food chains no matter how luxurious they are.
If you replace burgers with a niche-specific topic on a particular website, we call it “Topical Authority.”
You might have experienced this!
You search for a query on the internet, and in the SERP results, you may find some sites ranking way ahead of some high DA sites.
Caution: Do not take Featured snippets into account — That is a different story altogether.
Do you know why?
You get such results because the site that ranks ahead has topical authority over the particular topic rather than the so-called “high DA” site.
Let me explain to you with an example.
See the below image
When searched “topical authority,” we can see clearscope outranking Neil Patel’s blogs.
This does not mean that Neil Patel has less knowledge on that particular topic. He does.
But clearscope had covered multiple queries on the topic — “Topical Authority,” which allowed the search engines to vouch for clearscope.
Now, What Is The Difference Between Topical Authority And Domain Authority?
Topical Authority mainly focuses on On-Page activity, whereas Domain Authority is highly off-page.
Let me put it up in other words.
To establish a topical authority, you need to create quality content along with on-page SEO;
While to establish high domain authority, all you need is link juice. And if it is Do-follow, Well! You are doing a better job.
You can increase your domain authority by gaining quality backlinks and reducing your spam score.
To be frank, Domain Authority is an imaginary score that helps search engines calculate how serious the site is, whom the site has communicated with using its links, etc.
But Topical authority, on the other hand, is an On-page SEO activity where you can create content around a specific niche or sub-niche in a category that helps google understand the site better through content.
Which One Should I Rely On To Improve My Traffic?
Both. Both are essential for your site to perform better. It could be even better if you lean more on topical authority than domain authority, you will get greater results.
If you want me to put it in numbers, you can focus 70% on topical authority and 30% on backlinks (domain authority).
How To Create A Topical Authority For Your Niche?
Topical authority is not rocket science. But you will need the below-mentioned resources to create and successfully structure your topical authority.
- Content strategy.
- List your targeted topics based on search intent.
- Build “Topic clusters” or Pillar pages
- Create a solid internal link structure.
- Create a content marketing strategy. (Repurposing strategies)
Apart from these five steps, you must follow SEO best practices to establish topical authority.
How to create Content Strategy to establish Topical authority?
There are many ways to do a content strategy to gain topical authority. Many strategists might use SEO tools to filter out keywords. But the classic way is to create topical authority using Google Analytics and Google search.
How?
- Use Google analytics to identify the best-performing pages.
- Use the “People also ask” section to know the search queries.
- You can also find content ideas for your cluster by looking at the “related searches” section.
How to know my Topical Authority Score?
You cannot. First of all, understand this!
Be it domain authority or topical authority, there are no pre-determined metrics for any search engine. It is an imaginary scale measure.
To put it more simply,
Domain authority is like latitudes and longitudes. Both are imaginary lines, but these two L’s help measure every nook and corner of the world, right!
You can see your Domain Authority, but you can only feel and analyze the Topical Authority!
Does that make sense? Wait, I will explain!
You can use any SEO tool and enter your URL to know the DA. But you can understand that the site has a Topical authority once you enter it and run through its topical presentation, content, UX, and so on.
Finally,
Topical authority is one of the best content strategies that even big sites hesitate to create. But you know what — The more organized you are in content, the more you will connect with humans and search engines. Connection creates trust.
If you agree on this, I cannot help myself telling you that topical authority is the best way to 10x your organic traffic FASTER!
