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Congrats, you’ve built topical authority for your website — now, how do you prove it’s working?
Content marketers can spend months using this SEO strategy to build a website’s holistic trustworthiness, expertise, and credibility in a given content niche, but without the right metrics, it’s impossible to know if you’re on the right path to topical authority.
In this article, we’ll discuss three key metric areas to track topical authority and how, like all content marketing analytics, they help marketers adjust and optimize content strategy.
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Building topical authority on a strategic topic helps a website to establish the expertise, depth and relevance needed to address its audience’s search intent.
When done well, it also signals to Google that a website should rank higher than others on that topic.
Overall, topical authority can result in higher rankings across topic clusters, increased organic traffic and visibility, and stronger user trust and engagement.
But without measurement, a content marketer (and their stakeholders) won’t know whether the strategy is working.
Tracking key metrics related to topical authority can help a brand:
While there is no distinct single metric for topical authority, there are three key areas to monitor for signals about your strategy’s effectiveness:
The most straightforward of topical authority indicators is the change in search traffic since you implemented your strategy, and how much attention you are capturing in the niche compared to your competitors.
Topic share measures what percentage of niche traffic your content captures compared to competitors.
According to Search Engine Journal, you can use keyword research tools to find all relevant keywords for your main topic, then see how much traffic you are receiving related to that keyword cluster (you can also look at it in comparison to the cluster’s potential for traffic volume).
Track how your total topical content performs as a group rather than individual pages. Monitor the combined traffic growth for all topical pages and use Google Analytics to monitor this metric.
If your content appears in featured snippets, knowledge panels, People Also Ask, or AI Overviews, it’s a signal that your topical authority strategy is working, because it is being picked up by Google. Monitor this over time using tools or manual tracking.
How users engage with your content provides insight into how relevant and trustworthy they view your site to be. In other words, how well your content answers their questions and solves the issues they are searching for.
People spend more time reading content from sources they trust. Monitor the time spent on the page, session length, and clicks to related articles, which signal engagement and authority to search engines.
Strong internal linking between related topical pages creates a web of engagement opportunities for users that can strengthen your authority signals. Use Google Analytics to check which internal links are performing well and optimize accordingly.
Use Google Analytics to track what percentage of your topic-related traffic comes from returning visitors versus new visitors. When users return, it's a sign that they trust you and view you as an authority.
Signals from outside of your own website metrics show you how often others, including AI systems, are recognizing your expertise in the area and referring users to your content.
Focus on earning links from websites within your topic area rather than just general, high-authority sites. Use backlink analysis tools to track the relevance and quality of the sites linking to your content over time.
AI-powered searches are increasingly common, and they often cite authoritative sources. Look for your content in Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT responses, or other AI-generated answers, and track it over time.
When people search for your brand name combined with topic-related keywords, it’s a strong sign that your brand is associated with expertise in that area. Track these searches with Google Search Console or Google Trends to monitor changes over time.
When starting out, focus on two or three key metrics, rather than trying to track every possible detail at once. Look for trends over time, not daily fluctuations, and make small, trackable adjustments based on what you learn.
As with any SEO-related content strategy, topical authority isn’t a stand-alone or a quick fix. It is part of a comprehensive, interconnected content marketing plan that builds credibility, trust, and authentic connection over time.
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Then, learn more about topical authority in our top guides:
