The lead post in this series is Mastering Topical Authority: A Comprehensive Guide to Boost Your SEO.
No evidence based research?
I use AI engines for research and for the generation of ideas about what to write about and what perspectives might be interesting.
For this post I went to my preferred AI tool, Perplexity AI, and entered the following prompt:
“Has anyone done any evidence based analysis on the impact of topical authority on search rankings?”.
Five such examples were provided, with links, so I read all five.
- Impact of Topical Authority & Search Rankings: Matters in 2024
- How to Build Topical Authority (and Why it Matters)
- What Is Topical Authority & How Does It Work
- Building Topical Authority: The Key to SEO Dominance
- WHAT IS TOPICAL AUTHORITY? THE BEST STRATEGY TO BUILD IT!
They contained nothing resembling evidence based research.
They were all “What is? Why should you care? How do you do it?” posts.
I conclude that “topical authority” is a definition, rather than a set of ranking signals or a measurable outcome of any kind.
We define topical authority is that being the thing that high ranking sites have.
Does this mean “topical authority” is a framework?
Yes, I think.
And it’s a very useful one.
As this post is part of a series about topical authority (What it is, why you should care, how you do it, etc), rather than repeat any of the framework here, I link instead to a different post in this series:
How Google uses topical authority to determine expertise
In hindsight, that title may be a bit misleading. Google doesn’t “use” topical authority per se, they DEFINE it.
But that doesn’t affect the framework. So I hope you find that post useful.
