A topical authority map gives you a framework for making sure that your website blogs and insights maintain concentrated attention on your business’ core area of expertise. It helps you gain more of a share of a topic online versus competitors and helps you be seen and known online as the authority on your specialist topic. Let’s look at the ways a topical authority map adds value for your business.
Optimise your web content deeply according to your business objectives
Keep your blogs and insights focused on your business’ core area of expertise
Be seen and known online as the authority on your specialist topic
Use the topical authority map to strategically prioritise your web content
Boost your marketing strategy with the topical authority map
Educate customers about your products and services
A thorough, well-thought-out and manual process of topical authority map creation
Enhance your website's Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)
Step 1
Firstly, we decide on your ‘core entity’. This topical authority terminology basically means what your business’ core area of expertise looks like as the keywords customers type into search engines. It is essentially what your business knows or does best.
Step 2
We examine Google search and a range of SEO data (including competitor analysis) and look at every page of your website to determine your core entity. From this, we establish all of the attributes that are connected to this core entity.
Step 3
With the core entity and attributes (the two vital elements of a topical authority map) in place, now we organise the hundreds of attributes by subgroup (this helps to see the different aspects of your core entity more clearly).
Having a comprehensive topical authority map provides you with clarity as to what blog and insights content you should be including on your website. In a nutshell, it makes sure that all of your content is based on your core entity. Strategic thinking is borne out of this topical authority data so that we can together prioritise which attributes to focus on first for blogs (including long form blogs) and insights.
To do this, we need to again consider search engine trends, your business and marketing objectives and your seasonal marketing calendar.
A topical authority map provides a great framework for making sure that your website content is relevant to your business’ core entity (a keyword or keywords about what your business knows or does best). It therefore builds your authority according to that main specialist area.
Building topical authority across your website helps to ensure your web content is deeply optimised to capture people’s search queries on search engines in your niche topic. It helps to increase session time on your site (boosting brand perception, customer loyalty and conversion rates). It provides another way to educate existing and prospective customers about your products and services, and creates a ‘knowledge base’ of blogs to add further credibility and give your business a competitive edge.
We will look at the topical authority map to see which of its attributes we should focus on first for blogs, long form blogs and insights. We will look at which attributes best serve your business objectives and marketing strategy.
AI tools can generate ideas for a topical authority map and group attributes by subgroup. However, AI tools do not currently generate a topical authority map that covers a core entity extensively to the same extent as a good manual process of topical authority map creation.
A topical authority map enhances your website’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) by showcasing expertise on specific topics, boosting authority and building trust with people and search engines.