SMBs: Establishing Yourself as the Go-To Expert Through Topical Authority

Feeling like you're constantly battling giants in the online arena? As a small to medium-sized business (SMB) owner, the world of SEO can often feel overwhelming. You pour your heart and soul into your products or services, but getting seen amidst the noise of bigger players can seem like an insurmountable challenge. 

You're not alone in wanting to be recognized as the absolute expert in your industry, the first name that comes to mind when someone needs what you offer.

But what if there was a strategy that could level the playing field, allowing you to not just compete, but truly stand out? Enter the concept of topical authority. Now, that might sound like another piece of complicated SEO jargon, but trust me, it's a game-changer, especially for SMBs. 

So, what is topical authority and why should your SMB care? In the world of SEO topical authority, establishing yourself as the go-to expert can feel like a David vs. Goliath battle. But there's a powerful strategy that levels the playing field: topical authority.

Demystifying Topical Authority for SMBs

Let's break down that “what is topical authority” question in a way that makes sense for your business. 

Think of it like this: instead of trying to be a jack-of-all-trades across the entire internet, you focus on becoming the undisputed master of a specific subject. Search engines, like Google, are constantly trying to deliver the most relevant and trustworthy information to their users. 

Topical authority signals to these search engines that your website is the go-to resource for everything related to your chosen niche.

SEO Topical Authority: Your Comprehensive Guide 

Topical authority in SEO refers to your website's established expertise and credibility on a specific subject or niche. Search engines use topical authority to determine which websites are the most reliable and comprehensive sources of information for a given topic.

Unlike domain authority, which measures the overall strength of a website, topical authority focuses on expertise within a particular area. Building strong topical authority demonstrates to both search engines and users that your site is the go-to resource for learning about that subject. 

What this means: A website with high topical authority consistently provides high-quality, thorough, and reliable content on a specific topic. This content demonstrates expertise and helps establish trust with users and search engines.

Imagine a local bakery. They might not be the biggest business in town, but if they consistently produce the most incredible sourdough bread, using the finest ingredients and sharing their baking secrets, they become known as the sourdough experts. Their reputation, their authority on sourdough, grows. The same principle applies online. It's not about having the biggest website with the most pages; it's about having the deepest and most comprehensive knowledge in a specific area, making your site the natural choice for anyone seeking information on that topic.

Why Topical Authority is Your SMB's Secret Weapon

For SMBs, building topical authority isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a powerful secret weapon that can unlock significant growth. Here's why:

• Attracting Highly Qualified Leads: When you establish yourself as an expert, you attract an engaged audience that is genuinely interested in your niche. These aren't just casual browsers; they are actively seeking information and solutions you can provide.

• Standing Out from Larger Competitors: You might not have the marketing budget of a multinational corporation, but you can have deeper, more specialized knowledge in your area. This allows you to attract an engaged audience and establish yourself as a leader in a way that generalist behemoths can't.

• Building a Loyal Customer Base: Trust is paramount in business. By consistently providing valuable and insightful content, you build trust with your audience, fostering loyalty and repeat business.

• Improving Search Engine Rankings for Relevant Keywords: Google and other search engines reward websites that demonstrate expertise. By focusing on a specific topic and creating comprehensive content, you're more likely to rank higher for the keywords that matter most to your business.

Think about it: wouldn't you rather be the recognized expert in a specific field than just another face in the crowd? Topical authority helps you achieve exactly that.

Ready to start building your authority? 

Sign up for a free 7-day trial of SERPrecon and see how we can help you analyze the top-ranking content in your niche.

Step 1: Finding Your Niche – The Foundation of Your Authority

Before you can become the go-to expert, you need to define your area of expertise. This is where finding your niche comes in. For SMBs, niching down can be incredibly powerful. Instead of trying to cover a broad spectrum, focus on a specific segment where you can truly shine.

Here’s how your SMB can identify its niche:

1. Consider Your Expertise and Passion: What are you truly good at? What do you and your team know inside and out? What aspects of your business are you genuinely passionate about? Your enthusiasm will shine through in your content.

2. Analyze Your Existing Customer Base and Their Needs: What problems do your current customers have? What questions do they frequently ask? Understanding their needs can reveal valuable niche opportunities.

3. Research Market Demand and Competition: Are there underserved areas within your industry? Are there keywords with decent search volume but less intense competition? Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and SERPrecon can help you analyze this.

4. Identify Underserved Areas Where You Can Become the Expert: Sometimes, the best niche is a sub-segment that larger players overlook. This allows you to become a big fish in a smaller pond.

For example, if you run a general home improvement business, you might niche down to "eco-friendly kitchen renovations" or "custom deck building for sloped backyards." 

This allows you to define main subjects on your website with much greater precision than just "home improvement." 

By focusing, you can create highly targeted content that attracts the right audience and establishes you as the specialist.

Step 2: Building Your Foundational Pillar Content

Once you've identified your niche, it's time to build your foundational content, often referred to as "pillar content" or "cornerstone content." Think of this as your ultimate guide to a broad topic within your niche.

A good pillar page is:

• Comprehensive: It covers all the essential aspects of the main topic in detail.

• In-Depth: It goes beyond surface-level information, providing valuable insights and actionable advice.

• Covers a Broad Topic Within Your Niche: While focused, it should address a significant area of interest within your chosen niche.

• Link Hub for Related Content: It serves as a central hub, linking out to more specific supporting content on related subtopics.

How to build it: Building topical authority involves strategically creating and organizing content around core topics. This involves:

1. Identifying Core Topics: Define main subjects your website will cover. For example, a smartphone website might focus on smartphone types and brand features.

2. Creating High-Quality Content: Developing in-depth content that thoroughly addresses different aspects of your chosen topic. Think beyond single blog posts – create pillar pages, in-depth guides, and other valuable resources.

For a local nursery specializing in organic gardening, a pillar page might be "The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Own Organic Vegetables." This page would cover everything from soil preparation to pest control, linking out to more specific articles on topics like "best organic fertilizers" or "dealing with common tomato plant diseases."

Step 3: Creating Supporting Content – Expanding Your Expertise

Your pillar content is the foundation, but the supporting content is what truly expands your topical authority. This includes blog posts, articles, FAQs, case studies, and other pieces of content that delve into specific subtopics related to your pillar page.

The key here is to:

• Reinforce Your Pillar Content: Each piece of supporting content should explore a specific aspect of your pillar topic in more detail.

• Interlink Strategically: Link your supporting content back to your pillar page and to other relevant supporting articles. This helps search engines understand the relationships between your content and strengthens your overall topical authority.

For our organic gardening nursery example, supporting content could include blog posts like the below. Each of these would link back to the “Ultimate Guide” pillar page.

• "5 Common Mistakes New Organic Gardeners Make" 

• "Choosing the Right Companion Plants for Your Vegetable Garden"

• "A Month-by-Month Guide to Organic Pest Control."

Remember the difference between domain authority and topical authority? Domain authority is a general measure of your site's overall strength, while topical authority demonstrates your deep expertise in a specific subject. You might not have a high domain authority yet, but by consistently creating valuable supporting content around your pillar pages, you can build significant topical authority. This strategic approach of creating and organizing content core to your niche is what sets you apart.

Ready to see what kind of supporting content your competitors are creating? Sign-up for a free 7-day trial of SERPrecon to analyze their strategies.

The Power of Internal and External Linking

Strategic linking, both within your own website (internal linking) and to other reputable websites (external linking), plays a crucial role in building topical authority.

• Internal Linking: Connect related content within your website to help search engines understand the relationships between different pages and strengthen your topical authority. 

  • When you link from a supporting article back to your pillar page, you're telling Google that this is a core piece of content. Similarly, linking between related supporting articles helps create a web of knowledge around your topic.

• External Linking: Building high-quality backlinks from reputable websites in your niche. While you don't have direct control over who links to you, you can increase your chances by creating exceptional content that others find valuable and want to share. 

  • Additionally, linking out to authoritative sources can enhance the credibility of your own content.

Think of your website as a well-organized library. Internal linking helps readers (and search engine bots) navigate between related books and chapters, while external linking points to other trusted sources of information, reinforcing the credibility of your library.

Measuring Your Topical Authority

It's important to understand that there isn't a direct "topical authority checker" that gives you a numerical score. However, you can gauge your progress by monitoring several key metrics:

• Tracking Keyword Rankings for Your Niche Topics: Are you starting to rank higher for the keywords that are most relevant to your niche?

• Analyzing Website Traffic and Engagement: Are you seeing an increase in organic traffic to your pillar pages and supporting content? Are users spending more time on these pages and engaging with the content?

• Monitoring the Quality and Quantity of Backlinks: Are you attracting backlinks from other reputable websites in your industry?

• Observing Improvements in Organic Search Visibility: Are you appearing in more search results for a wider range of relevant queries?

Tools and Resources: While there isn't a single definitive "topical authority checker," many SEO tools provide data that indirectly reflects it. Analyzing your backlink profile, keywords rankings, and overall site performance offer insights tools specifically designed to aid in content strategy and keywords research can also assist in building topical authority. 

• SERPrecon, for example, helps you analyze the top-ranking content and identify relevant keywords, giving you valuable insights into what's working for others in your niche.

Real-World Examples of Topical Authority

You might be thinking, "This sounds great in theory, but does it actually work for SMBs?" Absolutely! Here are some relatable examples:

• A local bike shop that creates comprehensive guides on bike maintenance, local cycling trails, and reviews of different bike models establishes topical authority in the cycling niche.

• A small accounting firm that publishes in-depth articles and FAQs on specific tax regulations and financial planning for small businesses becomes the go-to resource for that information.

• A website dedicated solely to reviewing and comparing different camera models would exhibit strong topical authority in photography, whereas a website covering diverse topics would likely have weaker topical authority in any specific area.

These examples demonstrate that even with limited resources, focusing on a specific area and consistently creating valuable content can position you as the expert.

SERPrecon: Your Partner in Building Topical Authority

At SERPrecon, we understand the challenges SMBs face in the competitive online landscape. That's why we've developed a powerful SEO SaaS tool designed to help you build unshakeable topical authority and achieve your search engine ranking goals.

Here's how SERPrecon can be your partner in this journey:

• Related Searches and Questions: These are the related searches and queries that showed up alongside your query in the search results page. 

  • Examples: "people also searched..." Including information that answers these questions in your content could improve your relevance and help you show up in more places.

• AI Overview: SERPrecon shows you the current Google AI Overview results and resource links for your search/keyword query. 

  • This provides you with the exact content you need to include on your website to give you the best chances of ranking. 

  • It also allows you to easily analyze your competitors (the resource linked websites), and learn from their content strategy.

• AI Powered Content Outline: SERPrecon analyzes the top ranking sites for your query/keyword and provides you with a detailed content outline, so you know exactly what content to include in your strategy to give you the best chance of ranking.

With SERPrecon, you can:

• Analyze Top-Ranking Content in Your Niche: See exactly what your competitors are doing right and identify gaps in their content.

• Identify Relevant NLP Keywords: Discover the specific language and concepts that Google associates with your target topics.

• Provide Outline Suggestions for Comprehensive Content: Get a roadmap for creating in-depth pillar pages and supporting articles.

• Understand the Competitive Landscape: See which sites are already top authorities in your niche and learn from their strategies.

Don't just guess what kind of content Google wants to see. Use SERPrecon to gain a competitive edge and start building your topical authority today! 

Sign up for your free 7-day trial here: https://app.serprecon.com/create-account

Key Takeaways and Actionable Steps

Building topical authority is a long-term strategy, but the rewards are well worth the effort. Here are some key takeaways and actionable steps you can take right now:

1. Identify your core niche: What specific area can you become the undisputed expert in?

2. Brainstorm pillar content ideas: What are the broad, foundational topics within your niche that you can cover comprehensively?

3. Start creating high-quality, in-depth content: Focus on providing real value to your audience.

4. Strategically interlink your content: Connect your pillar pages with relevant supporting articles.

5. Analyze the top-ranking content in your niche: Use tools like SERPrecon to understand what's working.

Conclusion

Establishing yourself as the go-to expert through topical authority isn't about overnight success. It's about consistently providing valuable, in-depth content that demonstrates your expertise and builds trust with both users and search engines like Google. For SMBs, this strategy offers a powerful way to stand out, attract the right audience, and achieve sustainable growth. Even if you feel like a small fish now, by focusing on building topical authority in your niche, you can become the recognized leader in your corner of the web. 

Start your journey today, and let SERPrecon be your guide.