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How To Strategically Build Your Brand's Topical Authority Online 

Date published: February 03, 2025
Last updated: February 3, 2025

Every brand has its area of expertise. This is your unique selling proposition. It’s your competitive advantage that helps you stand out in your field — at least, that’s true if you can build your topical authority.

Topical authority is the process of successfully signaling your subject matter expertise (SME) online. Typically, this happens through the creation of high-quality, comprehensive content that is higher ranking in search engine results. This is aimed at building thought leadership rather than other content marketing goals, like brand awareness or conversions.

Establishing your topical authority is a critical part of a holistic growth marketing strategy. Recent updates in Google’s algorithm prioritize expertise, and the world’s largest search engine is rewarding established topical experts with greater traction in search. This includes ranking higher in SERPs and being pulled into AI Overview summaries.

If you’re not sure how to infuse your content with perspectives that reflect topical authority, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve gathered our team’s thought leaders and created a step-by-step resource (along with examples) to help you strategically build your brand’s topical authority in the year ahead.

Let’s dive in.

1. Research and Clarify

The first thing we always recommend to any brand is to do your research. Data and a rich understanding of your brand will be your best friend during the research process. Here are a few questions to help you get this started:

  • What is your swim lane? What are the topical areas you should be known for above everything else? Based on that, what pages on your site are already getting the most traffic that coordinates with those swim lanes? 
  • What does your company do? Where do you provide unique value within your swim lane? 
  • What areas do your offerings focus on? Where should your brand stand out based on the products and services you offer? Based on research, where can you differentiate yourself from others in the industry?

You already know your company like the back of your hand. As you answer these questions, think bigger. Use competitor keyword research to find the search queries that are driving your target audience to search for solutions you can provide. Consider how these relate to your brand and services, and then use that information to target your swim lane topics.

2. Review Your Current Site

Don’t add to your site’s content until you’ve conducted a content review. A blog audit can help you understand what content you have surrounding each topic cluster you want to build. Vectorizing your site can also provide a clearer picture of where your site stands in relation to topical authority.

Vector map for topical authority

Along with seeing what you have, this reveals helpful insights. You can see what articles already perform well and which ones need optimization. You can also find ones that might need to be deleted entirely if they don’t have topical relevance.

We did this for a company in the insurance space and saw that they had great relevant content for one state where they did business. While this was a win, it also revealed other target states where the brand wasn’t ranking well for geographically targeted keywords. This helped us find areas of opportunity to expand quality content in those areas to better showcase their knowledge in those target states. Seeing gaps in content is just as important as seeing what you already have. 

A thorough site analysis helps you see the value of current content, where you have gaps, and where there are opportunities for growth and a higher ranking. This orients you and makes it easier to take effective next steps.

3. Build Your Onsite Authority With Content

Once you have a thorough understanding of industry trends, competitor analysis, and your own website audit info, you can start to build your onsite authority through fresh content. This should be well-optimized to ensure it is easy for search engines to find. 

It should also be educational and personal. Educational content goes beyond sales and marketing CTAs to educate users about your brand, your solutions, and relatable consumer pain points. 

In the AI age, generic information isn’t helpful anymore. Personalize your content with unique perspectives and personal examples that show your company and its leadership have hands-on expertise and cutting-edge insights. Use things like customer feedback, unique takes on the industry, and questions from your sales team to inform your topics, too.

Don’t be discouraged by the up-front investment here. There is a domino effect to focusing on topical areas within your swim lane. 

When working with a healthcare brand (See? Using a personal example!), we found that building strong topical authority in one area helped us gain topical authority in other areas much more quickly. The foundational work in one area will often help give you a leg up when you start targeting the next topic cluster. Google already sees you as having a high topical authority, and it allows your content to cut through the white noise in different areas of expertise faster.

Quality content is key for ranking well in organic search at this point. You need a strong base of informational content that can inform AI Overview summaries, knowledge panels, and similar AI-generated content. Keep in mind this is easier content to create. 

4. Build Thought Leadership for Your Experts

Along with creating informative content, you need to cultivate thought leaders. This has become an essential part of any content strategy. It makes sense, too. If your content enhances your brand’s topical authority, where does that influence come from? The people behind it.

It’s important to invest in who those thought leaders are. Who are your brand’s experts? Who are the thought leaders in your midst? Who has key information essential to your brand’s success?

These are your experts. They don’t have to be expert writers. Just make sure they are working with content creation teams to provide unique information and editorial feedback. Have them byline your onsite content and build out bios on your site for them.

Byline for topical authority

It’s also a good idea to have them byline resources and thought leadership pieces on third-party sites. Authoring something on Forbes, Entrepreneur, an industry publication, or even social media such as LinkedIn can help reinforce their clout as leaders in their fields. This ultimately has a trickle-down influence on your content as Google connects the dots and sees that your site content is created in collaboration with recognized experts.

The bulk of your content strategy should be focused on this type of content that is perspective-driven and will show the brand’s unique POV. This authoritative content is how you build thought leadership in your industry and set your brand apart from the pack.

5. Develop a Strong Linking Strategy

Despite the recent shakeups with Google’s search algorithms, linking still matters — and it’s an essential part of building topical authority. 

Internal linking strategies tie your website’s content together. As you create your content, make sure to link back to relevant sources and related content across your site. 

If you mention a product or feature, place a internal link to its correlating product page or money page to move them down your sales funnel. Make sure your internal links are using good anchor text, too. Link to a keyword or phrase that honestly cue a reader to what is on the other side of that blue text. 

Backlinks are also important. These are links from third-party sites that point back to your own website. In early 2025, Backlinko released fresh data showing that pages with a lot of backlinks continue to perform better than others. Invest in a SEO strategy that builds credibility through backlinks from quality sources to your onsite content. These can come from a business publication with a high DA (domain authority) or an industry publication with a targeted readership.

Be the Lighthouse: Building Topical Authority in Uncertain Times

Digital marketing is changing faster than ever. While content marketing remains at the core of an effective growth strategy, the kind of content you create matters.

This is why you want to use your content strategy to do more than create SEO-rich content. Use it to build your brand’s topical authority online. This is one of the most effective investments of marketing resources you can make in the current age of fewer clicks, changing user expectations, and the growing use of AI Overviews.

If you need help creating your topical authority-building strategy, our experienced team at Relevance can help. Reach out for a free strategy session, and together, we can explore how to take your brand to the forefront of your industry’s conversations. 

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