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What Is Topical Authority?

Learn about topical authority and how it can increase your search engine ranking while improving your credibility and authority in Google.

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Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

Topical authority is a subsection of SEO (search engine optimization) and content marketing. It refers to a website’s trustworthiness, expertise, and credibility in its given topic or content niche

Google uses a variety of ranking factors, such as topical authority to decide which websites should rank higher than others for targeted searches about that particular topic.

Rather than just focusing on keyword research, topical authority is built over time by covering the specific topic in a way that’s thorough and consistent. This tells search engines that these pages are a reliable source of information on the topic. 

Google values expertise, depth, relevance, and websites that establish themselves as experts within a given niche — that’s where building topical authority comes in. 

In This Article:

  • Why does topical authority matter in SEO?
  • How does topical authority work in SEO?
  • How to build topical authority: a step-by-step guide.

Why Does Topical Authority Matter for SEO?

Historically, if you wanted to rank well in Google, you’d write a few articles, focusing heavily on keywords. While keywords are still important (see our short-tail and long-tail keyword guides), the depth and relevance of the content are far more important. Google itself has shifted from keyword-based ranking (which caused issues like keyword stuffing) to more contextually relevant search. 

Today, exact keyword matches aren’t as important, especially if you don’t have the expertise and depth on the topic to keep visitors engaged and involved. 

The good news is that topical authority has a ripple effect on your search engine ranking. As a website gains topical authority, it

  • Ranks higher in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
  • Is more likely to appear in Google’s featured snippets and in the People Also Ask sections.
  • Improves the site’s visibility and brand awareness which increases its organic traffic.
  • Builds trust and credibility over time with users.

How Topical Authority Works in SEO

Now that you better understand what topical authority is, how exactly does it work when it comes to SEO?  

Here are signs that a website is approaching topical authority properly:

In-depth topic coverage

Google likes comprehensive content. That means going beyond publishing general topics based on broad seed keywords.

It’s worth noting that in-depth coverage on a given topic in and of itself won’t instantly grant you topical authority. So, it’s best practice to start by building topic clusters that you can use to interconnect your content. 

Using digital marketing as an example, your clusters might include things like

  • SEO (On-page, off-page, technical, mobile)
  • Content marketing (Blogging, video creation, infographic design)
  • Social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn)
  • Paid ads (Google and Facebook ads) 
  • Email marketing (Setting up automation, lead nurturing, increasing open and click-through rates)

Keep in mind that these are clusters, not the actual topics themselves. 

Topic Clusters and Pillar Content

To create a topic cluster, you’ll need to start with pillar content (also called cornerstone content). This is a broad, detailed guide that covers a given topic in great detail. From there, your cluster content is designed to act like supportive scaffolding, helping to link back to and bolster the pillar page. 

To illustrate, your pillar post could be “The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2025”, with supporting cluster topics that include:

  • On-Page SEO Best Practices
  • The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO
  • How to Build High-Quality Backlinks in 2025

Your cluster pages could go on to cover things like video SEO, SEO for local businesses, and so on. This makes it easier for you to internally link your pages while increasing the likelihood that Google will find and crawl all of your pages. Writing clusters around each major pillar lets you leverage depth by going into detail on sub-topics.

Following Google’s E-E-A-T Framework

Google’s own E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), for creating people-first content is at the heart of topical authority. 

To build up your authority in your given topic area, you’ll want to

  • Showcase your expertise: Do your research and publish high-quality content that’s based on demonstrable facts. 
  • Become an authority: Authoritativeness doesn’t happen overnight. Over time, you should work to get backlinks from trusted websites to position yourself as a thought leader in your chosen topic. 
  • Share your expertise: Offer case studies, testimonials, and author bios. 
  • Build trust: Just like authority, trust isn’t built from one day to the next. Back up your statements with citations and studies. 

Publish Consistently and Frequently

Developing trust and authority means posting consistently and frequently. Expand on existing topics or cover new trends, data, or discoveries. Then, review older content to refresh it and keep it relevant. You want your website to be known as one that’s continually worth reading. 

Setting Up Internal Links

Create a detailed internal linking strategy for your pillar pages and the “spokes” of your wheel (your cluster topics). Don’t just say “click here,” with your links, be descriptive. For instance, an article about SEO for beginners might have a link to “What is Link Building?” or “How Does Google’s Algorithm Work?” 

Backlinks and External Signals

High-quality, relevant backlinks from authority sites in your niche can help your site rise in the rankings. There are several methods to getting quality backlinks, including guest blogging, being mentioned or cited through research or publications and getting involved in digital PR. All of these external signals and rich backlinks communicate to Google that your site is worth paying attention to. 

How to Build Topical Authority Step-by-Step

Now that you know what topical authority is, how do you actually go about building it? Follow these steps: 

  1. Choose your core topic: Specialize in a topic first, rather than a more general approach. Over time, by following this strategy, you’ll become the name to know in your niche. 
  2. Research relevant keywords: Discover relevant keywords and topics to write about using keyword research tools
  3. Create pillar content and topic clusters: Use Originality.ai’s Content Optimizer to research your competition and improve content across pillar pages and topic clusters. 
  4. Optimize your website for E-E-A-T: Share your experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness through high-quality content and research. 
  5. Publish and update consistently: Take the time to update old articles and publish new content on a consistent and routine schedule.
  6. Link your pages internally: Interlink your pillar pages with your topic clusters and continue to branch out.
  7. Earn high-quality backlinks: Engage in guest posting, digital PR, and content collaborations with complementary sites in your space.
  8. Monitor your site’s performance and make adjustments if needed: Stay informed and track your ranking over time using Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Make adjustments and shift your strategies as needed to improve search engine rankings

Final Thoughts on Topical Authority

Topical authority is all about writing consistently while going into detail on topics where your expertise and experience can shine. 

As you continue to publish relevant content regularly and spread the word, other sites will notice and pick up on your research, establishing your website as a thought leader in its space.

Discover a best-in-class suite of tools to complement your content marketing strategy with the Originality.ai AI Checker, Content Optimizer, Plagiarism Checker, and Grammar Checker.

Then, learn more about content marketing in our top resources:

Sherice Jacob

Sherice Jacob is a seasoned copywriter and content professional fluent in English, Spanish, and Catalan, with over 25 years of experience crafting high-converting copy. Passionate about AI, she enjoys exploring the new innovations and possibilities it brings to the world of content creation.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

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After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

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Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

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