What Is Topical Authority in SEO? (How to Build It for Clients)

white-label reseller agency professionals mapping content topics

While writing high-quality, optimized content is integral to ranking well for targeted keywords, it alone isn’t enough to get ahead of the competition in the SERPs. Outranking the top competitors in any industry requires owning a particular niche or area of interest. In a nutshell, digital marketers and content writers must focus on topical authority.

Topical authority refers to positioning a client’s brand as a knowledgeable expert with coherent and valuable content showcasing a deep understanding of a particular topic and all related concepts.

Diversified content, updated data, and quality text with relevant industry technology can help convince Google bots that your client’s website is valuable and deserves high rankings in the SERP.

While the importance of targeting keywords is decreasing with Google algorithms focusing more on topicality and expertise, long-tail and quality keywords are still important. When they match the search intent and queries of users, it increases the chances of ranking higher on SERPs.

Should you aspire to establish topical authority for your clientele, consider the remarkable advantages of forging a white-label partnership with Rocket Driver.

Based in the bustling heart of New York City, we’re an esteemed white-label reseller agency offering cutting-edge solutions at incredibly competitive prices, empowering agencies around the globe to enjoy a multitude of benefits without straining their finances.

By partnering with Rocket Driver, your agency can leverage its extensive experience, all-encompassing white-label digital marketing services, and meticulously crafted white-label agency tools, all designed to enable you to scale like a Fortune 500 titan.

Book a 1:1 demo to explore how our white-label digital marketing agency has guided our partners in crafting content that yields impressive conversion rates.

What You Need to Know about Topical Authority

Topical authority is the measure of a website’s expertise on the relevant subject. The higher your content quality, the better the topical authority will be. Google will automatically rank the content higher than competitor websites with weaker topical authority. Each topic represents an entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph.

The concept of topical authority was introduced in 2013 with Google’s Hummingbird update. Before this update, the search engine’s algorithms focused primarily on backlinks and keywords that helped identify what a web page is about.

Although these ranking factors are still crucial, Google views content in a broader context, including the website’s topical authority. The information help decide where a page should rank for a particular query.

Google uses authority signals to evaluate how resourceful the webpage is for user searches. However, when talking about authority and SEO, it’s important to keep in mind that domain authority and topical authority are not the same.

Topical authority is established from the content’s on-page superiority, uniqueness, relevance, and quality. Meanwhile, domain authority refers to technical SEO support, such as link building. Both come together to enable search engines to form a comprehensive picture of the type of content on the website.

Topical Authority Helps Achieve Many Marketing Goals

Imagine if your client’s website could rank for every possible keyword associated with the niche without extensive link-building or other SEO activities. In the SEO world, it is believed that topical authority is a great way to increase the chances of being found on SERPs.

Authority refers to the influence or power a specific piece of content has over others on the internet. You must create authoritative content to help your client’s website rank high on Google.

Topical authority helps build trust and credibility with search engines and searchers. It proves that your client’s website is the platform to gain in-depth knowledge about a particular subject. When every facet of the topic is covered with high-quality content, Google will reward the website with better rankings.

If you’re ready to increase topical authority for your client, Rocket Driver experts are here to help. They’ve got the tools, experience, software, and tactics required to build effective SEO and content strategies to help your clients dominate the search results.

Book a demo with the experts at our white-label digital marketing agency to get started on a journey toward ultimate success.

What You Need to Know about Topical Authority

A topical authority is the measure of a website’s expertise on the relevant subject. The higher your content quality, the better the topical authority will be. Google will automatically rank the content higher than competitor websites with weaker topical authority.

You need to publish informative content that covers the topic comprehensively, along with robust internal linking and plenty of backlinks from other authoritative sites, to achieve the status of topical authority.

Google uses authority signals to evaluate how resourceful the webpage is for user searches. However, when talking about authority and SEO, it’s important to keep in mind that domain authority and topical authority are not the same.

A topical authority is established from the on-page superiority, uniqueness, relevance, and quality of the content. Meanwhile, domain authority refers to technical SEO support, such as link building.

Topical Authority Helps Achieve Many Marketing Goals

white-label digital marketing agency specialists reviewing outcome charts

#1- Improved Organic Traffic

A topical authority ensures that more prospects head to your client’s website than their competitors. When better topical authority helps achieve higher rankings in the SERPs, it automatically drives more traffic, boosting the chances of increased conversions.

#2- Increased Backlinks

When you successfully establish your client as a topical authority on a particular topic, it’s a lot more likely that other sites will link to the content. That’s because your client’s website ranks higher and is seen as the expert on the subject. Whenever someone searches for a cite-worthy site, the client’s website will be high on the list.

#3- Improved Brand Reputation

People only trust experts. When a website dominates various search results related to a specific topic, they’ll consider the brand an expert. It will significantly boost brand awareness and reputation, resulting in better opportunities and more loyal customers for the business.

How to Build Topical Authority

white-label content marketing agency professionals working on building topical authority

#1- Fail-Proof Content Strategy

Today, SEO is about sending the right signals to search engines and readers. The content must be optimized to demonstrate Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). This helps build authority and signals to search engines that a website is trustworthy. This can be achieved by devising a comprehensive content strategy.

The strategy should account for curating consistently high-quality content streams with keywords, topics, and other aspects that will interest the client’s target audience.

Determine what others in the industry are doing to grab readers’ attention and refocus your strategy to include popular topics and areas not tapped properly. You can also research the phrases they use to ask questions about certain topics and use the insights as inspiration for content.

As content operations expand, create a seamless user experience by posting consistent content. Deciding how a brand sounds, looks, and feels and ensuring the content exudes the same tone of voice is important before you begin to scale the content.

The next step is to plan the best time to publish the content so it takes the readers on a journey to more content by touching various purchasing points on the website. You should also consider when, how, and at what time you’ll share the piece of content on the listings, website, and relevant social media platforms.

Call us to learn how our affordable white-label content and social media services can support your agency’s goals of helping your clients build topical authority!

#2- Topic Clustering

When choosing topics to surround the content, focus on key topics that can be pillars for the client’s website. Each topic cluster comprises cluster content and a pillar page.

The content created for these core topics must be superior, allowing you to branch out into other relevant topics with comparatively smaller search volumes. Don’t forget to link the smaller how-to, what-is, and evergreen guides with the core topics and other relevant smaller topics.

Topic clusters not only improve topical authority but also signal to search engines that the website covers the subject as deeply as possible. This makes it easier for Google bots to crawl and index as well as rank the content.

white-label reseller agency professionals discussing topical authority strategy for a client

#3- User Intent

Search engines are becoming increasingly good at understanding user intent. When someone searches for information on a particular topic using specific phrases, the algorithms establish the intent behind the specific search to deliver relevant results.

Keyword research is, therefore, a critical step in building topical authority. Try to pick seed keywords that represent entities in Google’s Knowledge Graph. Make sure the content strategy accounts for the user intent.

If you find the intent was informational, a how-to guide will be better suited than a products page. Follow the ‘Do, Know, Go’ theory to hone in on the interpretations of algorithms about the user’s search intent.

#4- Improve Crawl Efficiency

This refers to how easy or challenging it is for search engine bots to crawl and index pages on a website. If the spiders have difficulty navigating through the web pages, the efforts of creating contextually-relevant and high-quality content will go in vain.

Sitemaps, URL structure, and link building are all effective in improving crawl efficiency. Adding useful and relevant internal links with carefully-sought anchor text to the content will aid search engines in understanding the website’s hierarchy and structure.

#5- Increase Publishing Velocity

Although quality is the most critical aspect of content marketing, ‘creating more content and posting frequently’ is another tactic that’s a close second, as per a Content Marketing Survey by Semrush.

Increasing the velocity of content is an incredible way to prove subject matter expertise as long as the quality isn’t sacrificed. You can hire white-label content and copywriting services from Rocket Driver if you feel the need to bolster content writing and marketing efforts.

Covering one topic in different formats with content repurposing is also a great way to keep things fresh. For instance, a webinar can be turned into infographics, video segments, or articles featuring quotes from the professionals who hosted the presentation.

Incorporating Topical Authority into the SEO Strategy

white-label digital marketing professionals brainstorming ideas for topical authority 

If the SEO strategy you created for a client isn’t successfully helping increase their topical authority, outsource the task to Rocket Driver.

Rocket Driver’s team of experts is poised to help your client’s website weather any major SEO storm on the horizon. Our seasoned professionals provide turnkey solutions backed by data-driven insights to enhance visibility, ranking, user experience, CTR, bounce rate, and conversions for your client’s website.

Our white-label reseller agency’s comprehensive offerings have empowered countless agencies to diversify revenue streams and boost profitability. When you partner with Rocket Driver, you gain unparalleled access to resources that grant your agency a competitive edge in the fiercely contested online landscape.

With a decade-long track record in the industry, our white-label digital marketing agency empowers marketers to leverage services such as website design, graphic design, search engine optimization, social media management, reputation management, sales funnel marketing, listing optimization, and SMS marketing.

Don’t hesitate to book a demo for more information about the exclusive services offered by our white-label reseller agency in NYC at ultra-competitive rates. Help is just a phone call away!

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