How to Build Topical Authority in 2025 (+ Free Tool)

Recent changes in Google's algorithms have redefined what it takes to achieve authority in 2025.

And if you want to build content around new trends, establishing authority is crucial.

This article challenges conventional wisdom, revealing strategies from successful content creators.

Using first-hand experience and input from colleagues, I’ll explain why merely "comprehensive" content falls short and what truly establishes subject matter expertise now.

It’s a new framework for understanding topical authority.

Let's begin with a definition.

What Is Topical Authority?

Topical authority is a website's demonstrated expertise in its core subject matter.

A site with strong topical authority is recognized by both Google and readers as a “go-to” resource.

In the eyes of readers (and search engines), the site has established a reputation for sharing high-quality, detailed, and helpful content.

A website with strong topical authority helps users gain insights and solve problems. This is why it will typically rank higher on search engine results, attracting more organic traffic, backlinks, and conversions.

Perhaps more importantly, a high authority site generates word-of-mouth recommendations and attracts loyal readers, viewers, and subscribers. That can open new revenue streams.

While this article will emphasize topical authority as expressed on a domain you own, realize that it’s possible to use a social media channel like YouTube to establish or further topical authority.

Note: Remember not to confuse topical authority with website authority. The concept of topical authority is related to a specific series of pages. Website authority is a domain-level metric. Topical authority can indirectly influence your website authority, but website authority is not a definitive metric and is measured differently by different SEO tools.

Topical Authority vs. Topic Clusters

Before we go further, it’s good to note what topical authority isn’t.

• Topical authority refers to the quality of a website or series of web pages
• Topic clusters are one of several SEO-based models for creating and organizing these pages

How to Achieve Topical Authority in 2025

So, what’s different about building topical authority today?

Here are my recommendations and those of my colleagues.

1. Choose Broad Topics Strategically

The first step is choosing which topics you want to be known for.

You can begin with some creative thinking and keyword research.

First, jot down 3-5 broad topics core to your niche that you want to express expertise in. You can whittle these down before you make a final decision of where to start.

Example: Imagine you’re a content marketer working for an agency. You’re helping an organization launch a nonprofit to educate readers on the life, works, and ideas of a historic author.

Right in the nonprofit mission statement, there may be a clue to areas you want to create topical authority in:

• The biographical details of the author’s life
• Information on their written works
• Exploration of the ideas contained in those works

Where Are You Winning?: Identify your most popular articles or those driving the most conversions. Do they cluster around 1 or 2 themes?

Identify this topical relevance, and then work backward to the seed keyword you want to establish authority on.

Example: Culinary Herb Kits

Imagine you own an online store that sells gardening kits.

Although you offer kits to help your customers start vegetable and flower gardens, your indoor culinary herb kits are the most popular. So are the related blog posts on herbs.

Using the Semrush Keyword Overview, you see that “culinary herbs” has a Keyword Difficulty score of “Easy.” So, you choose this as your first area of topical authority.

You can then create a separate page for each culinary herb.

Additionally, you could branch out with articles on the history of culinary herbs, their use in beverages, health benefits, recipes, and so on.

To find ideas related to your core topic, try the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool.

For our example topic, Semrush returned these ideas:

• Culinary herb garden
• Culinary herb identification
• Chinese culinary herbs / Mexican culinary herbs
• Culinary herb wreath
• Culinary herbs and their uses
• How to grow culinary herbs

Consider Trending Topics: Seek out high-traction subjects relevant to your niche. These topics are primed for exponential growth.

You can use Exploding Topics to discover these.

Imagine you’re consulting with an individual who wants to build a subscriber-based newsletter on AI trends.

Enter “AI” and you’ll find trends around products, methods, and other AI-related topics.

Since Exploding Topics displays a 5-year trend for the topic, I can avoid subjects that have already peaked or are trending down.

2. Provide Information Gain

As you work on your topical authority pages, consider what will set your content apart from top-ranking competitors.

For each page, include something unique and valuable. This is referred to as information gain.

Information gain is a key concept in this Google patent.

The patent says:

In other words, your content has to be better than everyone else’s. If your page is just “as good as” top-ranking content, Google has no incentive to put you on page 1.

The factors that distinguish your content can range from small to significant.

For instance, information gain could come from:

• Original data, research, theories, or insights
• First-hand experience or interviews
• Clarity from definitions, in contested ideas, and in recommendations
• People Also Ask data in search results

Note that an article with superior information gain does not necessarily need to be longer than competing articles.

It simply needs to contain additional, valuable information.

3. Highlight EEAT

Next, prioritizing EEAT in your topical authority content is essential.

Here, I’m mainly referring to the initial letters of that acronym: first-hand experience and/or expertise.

Why it’s important: Often, your information gain will be from EEAT.

Google’s Helpful Content Updates have impacted sites with insufficient EEAT.

Among the affected:

• Sites that were the envy of the SEO and business world lost 50-75% of their traffic or dive-bombed into flatlining
• Sites whose content marketing was successful for many years shut down

It’s true that there are many reasons various sites got hit by HCU.

But as Google improves machine learning systems like RankBrain, experience and expertise will be increasingly important.

You can increase the “experience” in EEAT by:

• Commissioning experts, specialists, and those with first-hand experience to write for your site
• Have your writers incorporate original quotes from such individuals
• Include comments from your own customers or in-house team

To get original quotes from those with expertise, do a quick Q&A via email with them. You can either publish this as a sidebar or pepper in the quotes throughout the article.

4. Use Good SEO Techniques

Good foundational SEO is still important in 2025.

Specifically, be sure to:

• Meet search intent
• Stick to SEO copywriting best practices
• Fact-check your content
• Organize your content in a logical way, both on the page and in your sitemap

Writing about topics means you'll need to cover each subject in detail. 

Google is encouraging publishers to use subject-matter experts because they produce the best possible content on the topics they know well.

It's also essential that your expert writers use semantic keywords so Google understands the breadth and quality of the content they publish.

Organizing Content: Topic Clusters and Libraries

Now, let’s look at topic clusters as they relate to topical authority.

Clustering can help you to plan and organize your topical authority content.

Remember that clustering is about more than adding links. It’s a way to ensure you deliver value and expertise across your site.

Creating Topic Clusters

Topic clusters begin with the creation of a pillar page.

A pillar page covers the keyword that you wish to achieve topical authority in. In our example above, we focused on the keyword “culinary herbs.”

The pillar page connects to various other pages that elaborate on subtopics.

The combined aim of the pillar and subtopic pages is to thoroughly cover your topic.

Cover the topic well, but broadly, in the pillar page. Don’t go into minute detail. Reserve the details for the subtopic pages.

Here’s a diagram of a pillar page linking out to related subtopic pages:

Interlinking: By adding internal links between the pages within your topic cluster, you facilitate discovery for both users and Google, showcasing your extensive content on the subject.

The Library Model

Topic clusters, and even blogs, aren’t the only model for organizing content.

Jimmy Daly of Superpath has an interesting article on how the structure inherent in blogs can lead to shallow coverage of topics. (See “Your Blog Is Not a Publication, but It’s Not Just a Library Either.”)

Shallow coverage will, of course, undermine topical authority.

Daly proposes the library model as a potential alternative to a traditional blog.

Logic and Ease of Use

You shouldn’t think you’re restricted to using a single model to organize your authority content, though.

You can also combine organizing models, such as deploying topic clusters within a library framework.

However, you choose to organize your content:

• Use logic to organize it
• Make related content easy for users (and Google) to find
• Use internal links and signposts to guide people through topics and subtopics

More Ways to Build Authority With Content

In addition to incorporating experience, expertise, and originality, consider the role of surprise when producing content.

Claude Shannon, an American mathematician who laid the groundwork for information theory, once said, “Information is surprise.”

Applying Shannon's idea to marketing, we can assert: High information value, as perceived by Google and readers, depends on how unexpected it is.

If your SEO copywriting strategy becomes formulaic, you’ll lose the ability to provide the element of “surprise.”

Surprise is something that attracts prioritization in the environment because it is scarce.

When you consider information as surprise, you’ll start to observe the principle in action all around you.

Surprise is not the only way information gain occurs. It’s not a necessary condition for information gain.

However, surprise may be a necessary characteristic of optimal information gain.

Create Space to Experiment

After recent Google algorithm updates, have you seen big declines in topical authority and traffic?

And in this circumstance, do you see no clear relationship between cause and effect?

Many sites have found themselves in this position, struggling to know how to move forward.

I learned, from a fascinating CEO I worked for, to always question the marketing orthodoxy. Experimentation has long been considered important in digital marketing.

And when it comes to unclear cause and effect, my thinking is based on the work of Dave Snowden, an expert in knowledge management.

Snowden has long contended that “best practice is, by definition, past practice.” It’s only useful in conditions where there is a clear linear connection between cause and effect.

His Cynefin Framework defines various spaces in which we operate, depending partly on the perceived relationship between cause and effect.

Each category in the Framework (Obvious, Complicated, Complex, Chaotic) has an associated model for action.

I recommend that you become familiar with his explanation of the complex domain. He says: “you don’t know what the right solution is until you act.”

Changing search engine algorithms can leave us in complex environments where the factors behind change aren’t clear, and the solutions are not predictable:

If your agency or business saw itself in this position:

• Relax restraints: allow staff some leeway to experiment
• Try new site structures and new types of content
• Allow people to move quickly on new ideas
• Track SEO outcomes (rankings, SERP features, engagement, conversions) to understand what is working

Begin with ideas from this article or your staff. Then, as Snowden recommends, “amplify” what works, “dampen” what doesn’t.

Google’s Consensus and Debunking Scores

Lastly, it pays to read how Google fights disinformation and to learn about consensus scores and their relationship to ranking.

These scores come into play when choosing the key subjects you want to build topical authority on.

In short, Mark Williams-Cook recently discovered Google code that reveals consensus scores.

(Mark is the author of one of our favorite SEO newsletters.)

It appears Google, when assessing web pages, assigns scores to passages based on whether they agree, contradict, or are neutral compared to consensus views.

The code also tests search queries to detect if the user seeks debunking information.

If the searcher wants information that debunks YMYL-based consensus, it’s likely Google’s search results will seek to counter this by providing results that reiterate the consensus.

It makes sense that Google’s consensus-seeking would bear heavily on YMYL sites.

But Williams-Cook found that for other topics, “Google intentionally tries to have some consensus, some neutral, some non-consensus.”

When thinking about topical authority, there are some lessons to learn:

• Building topical authority via SEO for a non-consensus YMYL site is risky.
• For a non-YMYL site, valuable contrarian views or hypotheses may be the missing element for ranking higher.

Conversions: Making the Most of Your Topical Authority

Now, let’s look at how you can make the most of your topical authority as you build it.

You need to be able to contact your prospects directly in the event of an unexpected downturn in Google traffic.

Here are several ways to make the most of topical authority by capturing conversions and opening up new lines of revenue.

Subscribers, Courses, Community

Email newsletters: Consider leveraging unique content and tone to create a newsletter that attracts droves.

Example: Pirate Wires Daily. Bold, impudent, and concise, this newsletter is unlike any other.

Online courses: If your niche lends itself to online courses, you’ll rejoice to know there are pre-built platforms like Pathwright and Teachable that provide everything you need at low cost.

Examples: Ligonier Connect and Ben Burns’ The Futur.

Online communities: If a membership community is a good fit, consider using MigthyNetworks to launch yours.

Niches like health, wellness, coaching, spirituality, design, and entrepreneurship, and hobbies all lend themselves to online communities.

And finally, consider tying all your platforms together with remarkable communications to maximize engagement.

This is where multi-channel automation comes in.

Multi-Channel Marketing Automation

Topical authority attracts visitors; this automation keeps them returning. Tools like Braze track visitor preferences and behavior to send targeted automated messages.

How it's done: Create customer journeys (a series of messages) using drag-and-drop software.

Triggers: Pre-program message series based on events or conditions like:

• Profile creation
• Ebook downloads
• Newsletter/event signups
• Course registration
• Subscription type
• Message engagement
• Repeat visits
• High lead score

Multi-channel: Journeys can span multiple platforms, including email, Facebook, WhatsApp, SMS, print, and in-app messages (personalized notifications appearing when users visit your site).

Most of these automation tools use Clearbit to pull in biographical and additional contact information for these users.

Here’s an example of how I used multi-channel automation for a client. It’ll give you an idea of what’s possible.

• Facebook as community: Created engaging anecdotes (content snacks) and targeted ads to attract followers.
• Attract to website: After two months, published content to draw followers to our website.
• Offer freebie: Visitors were offered a free ebook in exchange for contact information.
• Returning visitors saw personalized pop-ups that acknowledged their previous actions and suggested relevant content.

These personalized recommendations can extend to offline communications, such as print letters or postcards.

You can see how making a recommendation based on an individual’s behavior personalizing it, and automating it all can be transformative.

Examples of multi-channel marketing automation tools:

• Braze
• Ortto

3 Ways to Fail at Topical Authority

Let’s consider ways to fail at topical authority. These points will remind you of what to avoid.

1. Rely on Rules and Formulas

When creating content around topics, talent and creativity matter more than rule-based processes.

Gaming the system is over.

Put another way, principles trump rules.

2. Use AI to Generate Content Around Topics

Some businesses use LLMs to generate vast amounts of content on a topic, hoping to quickly build authority.

But this equates volume with quality.

Besides, LLMs “read” other articles and spit back what’s already been written on the topic.

Google's Quality Rater's Guidelines specifically warn against using AI to generate large amounts of content to rank.

And we already know that we need to incorporate new information to ensure we offer the most information gain. When you use AI, EEAT is treated as an afterthought.

The result is a lack of originality, insight, and the value required to succeed in post-HCU search results.

Surveys suggest that 72% of us prefer to read content written by humans, and humans are getting better at picking out the telltale signs of AI-generated text.

Causal.app is an example of a site built entirely on AI-generated content.

Its organic traffic fell from a high of 800,000 visits per month to less than 3,000:

After its founders posted about its strategy to use AI content, Google is thought to have hit the site with a manual penalty.

While some sites are getting away with bulk content generation, using it extensively is definitely a risk.

3. Over-Rely on Content Scoring

Over-reliance on content AI tools is a problem that some writers slip into.

Often, clients demand a particular “passing score” from tools that read your text and make automated recommendations.

These tools can offer useful guidance. But used to extremes, they can lead writers to:

• Keyword stuff
• Focus on a “grade” to determine ranking potential
• Copy other articles too closely
• Forget about information gain

So while AI SEO tools can be valuable when they play a supporting role, writers and clients need to know their limits.

They definitely automate tedious workflows, and that creates more time for original research.

But as with many things, these tools need to be used in moderation, and with a close eye on EEAT.

Bonus: Free Topic Cluster Analysis Tool

When you've started to build topical authority, reviewing the topic clusters you rank for can help you to determine whether your strategy is working.

You can review your existing topic clusters using our free topic cluster analysis tool.

It pulls information from Google Search Console and organizes terms into topical groups for you:

This helps you to understand your topical authority as it stands today. And you can use this information to find gaps in your strategy.

Make a copy of our free topic cluster analysis template in Google Drive. Full instructions for the tool are included in the Google Sheet.

Start Building Your Authority Today

True topical authority in 2025 emerges from deep expertise, strategic architecture, and genuine user value.

The most successful content creators aren't producing more content; they're communicating high-value expertise and experience.

They create authority signals that resonate with search engines and readers.

Becoming the go-to resource in your field means going deep, beyond surface-level. Do this and you’ll build lasting assets that outperform, long after the latest SEO trend passes.

The race for topical authority will be won by those who commit to excellence now.