With so many changes to Google’s algorithm and search results (SERPs) in 2024, SEOs and their clients might be wondering: Does topical authority matter anymore?
In this article, we aim to answer that question, finding out if it’s still relevant for 2025.
TL;DR:
- Topical authority is an SEO concept that means that Google thinks that this website is the go-to authority on a particular topic.
- An excellent example is HubSpot. They built inbound marketing software and invented the term “inbound marketing”, thereby becoming the topical authority on inbound marketing.
- Achieving topical authority isn’t easy. You need to produce enough high-quality content on a particular topic that covers it in-depth. Your company and everything you publish, including every landing page of your website that’s relevant needs to show that you are the expert on that particular topic.
- It isn’t just on-page SEO (web copy), or SEO content marketing (Blogs), it’s also your social channels and, of course, link-building and backlinks.
- Your whole website, social channels, and everything off-page needs to point search results to your website. So, it makes sense that what you are an authority on is aligned with your core products and services.
Let’s dive into topical authority . . .
HubSpot demonstrates its topical authority as the go-to source on “inbound marketing”, with a whole suite of SaaS software to support companies that need an inbound marketing funnel.
Why Topical Authority Still Matters
1. Google’s E-E-A-T Guidelines
Topical authority is another way of defining Google’s focus on Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Search engines prioritize content from sources they perceive as experts in a particular field.
Building topical authority signals expertise, helping your site rank higher for relevant queries. We know this is explicitly part of how Google ranks websites as a result of their ranking factors algorithm leaks earlier in 2024.
2. Semantic Search and Context
With advancements in natural language processing (e.g., Google’s BERT, MUM, and AI Overviews), search engines now understand content in a more nuanced way. You also need to factor in how and what you rank for in Bing if you want to appear in SearchGPT results.
Establishing authority in a topic demonstrates depth and breadth of understanding, making your site more likely to rank for both broad and niche keywords.
Keyword stuffing and even buying loads of backlinks to cover a particular area of topical authority won’t achieve the same results as publishing lots of in-depth content pieces. You can’t fake being an expert. Even if you work with content writers or a content marketing agency, you need to provide subject matter expertise otherwise it will come across as low-quality content.
3. User Intent Alignment
Users trust sites that consistently deliver high-quality, authoritative content.
By delivering on topical authority, SEOs can better meet their client’s user’s expectations, which reduces bounce rates and increases engagement—factors that influence rankings indirectly.
It’s a win-win when a company decides to implement topical authority. It brings in more traffic, more clicks, and higher conversion rates and you rank higher in SERPs.
5 Steps to Build and Maintain Topical Authority
1. Content Depth and Coverage
- Create a comprehensive content hub on your niche topics, including detailed guides, FAQs, and thought leadership pieces.
- Use internal linking to connect related articles, signaling to search engines that your site offers in-depth knowledge.
- eBooks and video transcripts are useful too, and distributing content through social channels will also be picked up by Google.
2. Consistency in Content Creation
- Regularly publish fresh content to reinforce your authority on key topics.
- Make sure these are in-depth content pieces using the Hub and Spoke model, not 500-word low-quality articles.
- Update older articles to reflect the latest information and trends.
- When you are updating older articles make sure to optimize them for semantic and long-tail keywords, interlink whenever possible, and create a bullet point summary at the top that would be useful for AI Overviews.
3. Build Backlinks
- Backlinks, link-building, and Digital PR are all useful for SEO. It doesn’t matter if you pay for backlinks as long as the links come from reputable sources that make sense for your company, sector, and topical authority.
- Earn backlinks from reputable websites in your niche to signal credibility. Google does count backlinks as part of their ranking factors, and they are important.
- Engage with communities, forums, and social media to build recognition and trust outside your site. Getting backlinks on Reddit and listing website’s is helpful for SEO too.
4. Optimize for Semantic Keywords
- Use related keywords and long-tail keywords to cover a topic comprehensively.
- When you see in SERPs or SEO tools, “what people also asked?”, is a great way to create content that supports the core articles or landing pages.
- Implement structured data to help search engines understand your content better.
- Internal linking and backlinks to core landing pages and pieces of content also support enhanced authority-based SEO.
5. Optimize for Google AI Overviews & SearchGPT (in Bing)
- Remember with SearchGPT, the dialogue it returns is more conversational than search results in Google’s SERPs.
- People are asking long-tail keyword questions, so long-form content with “snippets”, along the lines of what appears in Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) is what ChatGPT will be returning to the questions people ask.
- For ChatGPT Plus or Team users: Bing is the answer!
- For Free users, ChatGPT scraps a database that was last updated in 2022.
- So, let’s focus on Bing: Check how your website, content, and any PR articles or backlink blogs or other content online (including social media) appear in Bing SERPs for keywords that are driving traffic.
- Sign up for Bing Webmaster Tools and improve your site’s performance in search. Here’s a useful guide on how to use this from Neil Patel.
- If you rank better for certain keywords and phrases in Bing then that’s good because it means you’ll have a better chance of appearing in SearchGPT for questions your potential customers are asking.
- If there are gaps you can fill in those search results, then get guest articles and blogs published so that when SearchGPT pulls in results from Bing, articles with links to your website appear.
- Anything that works for Google will work for Bing. But, you might have a better chance of appearing in SearchGPT results because there’s a lot less competition and a better chance of securing top-ranking positions.
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