SEO (search engine optimisation) is changing much faster than most people can manage. The inclusion of short snippets from modern AI and relevance on forums like Reddit and Quora means you need to rise above the competition in other ways.
Slapping a few keywords into a blog post, getting some backlinks, and hoping for the best isn’t enough anymore. If you want consistent, compounding growth over the long term, you need topical authority.
How is Topical Authority Impacting SEO?
The idea behind topical authority is to shift your Australian NFP’s website from one of passive engagement on your topic to the highest authority. You have to build trust with your audience by being a relevant resource on your mission or niche. If you help save puppies from euthanasia, you need to be the resource everyone goes to for rehoming pets and finding alternative solutions.
As far as SEO is concerned, you can use a topical authority strategy to elevate your brand by focusing on clustered content highly focused on your subject matter. You do this by:
- Better defining the niche you’re serving
- Make sure your topic is highly relevant to your audience
- Broaden your topic as you become more and more of an authority
The goal here is long-term growth. Having a single article on “how to help older parents fill out end-of-life care forms” isn’t enough if you are a group home. You want all the topics related to your audience, so you become a resource they return to and recommend to friends. You want to mirror the way your audience thinks, then provide the content most relevant to their needs.
How to Build a Strong and Growth-Focused Topical Authority SEO Strategy
Step 1: Find Your Cluster
Time to narrow the focus of your content. Think about the primary mission of your NFP. Do you help the homeless, older Australians, kids, medical patients, or other segments? You want to find the core messaging of your mission.
Think beyond a keyword. If you are a birthing centre, your core focus might be “natural birth support for women in Australia.” If you are a food centre, your core focus might be “feeding those in need around Sydney.”
The trick is to go deep with your content on this core, not wide. Dominate that particular niche with supportive content until your audience starts citing you.
Step 2: Topical Research
Now that you have a core topic, it’s time to do the hard work. You want to go beyond single keywords and into the realm of high volume, long-tail phrases or questions based on search intent and information. A good trick is to look at any content gaps that others in your industry are not fulfilling.
For example, if you help rehome elderly cats, you might use a tool like AnswerThePublic to create content like:
- Are older cats better to adopt
- How to adopt older cats
- Why do people not adopt older cats
- Older cats to adopt near me
- Do older cats adopt kittens
Then, you can use Google’s auto-complete feature to check out what “older cat” pulls up in your area, like:
- Older cat losing weight
- Older cat hissing at new kitten
- Older cat not eating
- Older cat throwing up
- Older cat losing hair
All these topics give you ways to address the needs of your audience while also reframing ideas, so they are aligned with your NFP’s mission. A topic like “older cat hissing at new kitten” can quickly become “7 Ways to Prepare Your Older Cat for a New Kitten.”
The more comprehensive your cluster becomes, the greater the chance Google, Bing, and other search engines will recognise you as an industry leader (i.e., an authority).
Step 3: Cultivate Powerful Content
Stop thinking of your blog or videos as throwaway content. When you’re building a topical authority SEO strategy, you want to think of it like a collection you carefully curate. Your goal is to educate, solve problems, and answer the questions your target audience asks. That means you need pillar pages, supporting articles, how-tos, FAQs, listicles, and case studies.
Bring in the details. Don’t just write pieces with a lot of fluff. Be specific and offer insider tips and tricks that users won’t find anywhere else. Authenticity in your content is one of the best ways to demonstrate you are worthy of being an authority.
Step 4: Interlink Everything
Your topical authority SEO strategy needs to include internal links. You are building a reference “web” using internal links so readers can naturally find other information on related questions, topics, or tips.
If you have pillar pages, they should link to any relevant subpage within a cluster. All those supporting pages should link back to the pillar content. You should have navigation and CTAs that make those connections even easier to navigate.
You want a dense structure that immediately tells any visitor you have exceptional topical relevance to their searches. Google will love that structure, and users will likely spend more time on your website, increasing the chances of volunteering, donating, or engaging with your NFP.
Step 5: Update & Expand
As you implement a topical authority SEO strategy, you’ll start to see a change in your analytics. People will hang out longer and link to your website more often because you are becoming a “living” resource of information directly related to their interests.
Just remember, you do not exist in a bubble. The internet is full of people wanting to usurp your reign at the top. You must update topics whenever trends shift or new information comes to light.
Use tools like Google Search Console to update any statistics, screenshots, recommendations, or add new subtopics. If you want to stay relevant, you’ve got to do the work.
Where to Get Started
Before you can engage in growing your topical authority SEO strategy, you need an immersive, easy-to-navigate, and mobile-responsive website. That is where you’ll house your library of content.
At Web 105, we create stunning and clean websites for Australian businesses, NFPs, healthcare providers, and government organisations. We have decades of experience building the infrastructure that ensures you get an easy-to-follow navigation from landing pages to pillar posts to subtopics.
Give us a call today and let’s start creating your new strategy with an attractive website as the foundation.
FAQs
What is topical authority in SEO?
The perceived authority you have in a specific niche topic reflects your expertise and credibility. That is your topical authority, and search engines love it!
What is the difference between domain authority and topical authority?
Domain authority is your NFP’s website’s overall strength. It is the site age, backlink profile, content quality, and technical performance. Topical authority refers to how much your content covers any given subject in a deep and meaningful way.
How to achieve topical authority?
The quick and easy answer is to develop content that directly answers the questions, concerns, and information searches of your target audience.
