What is topical authority?
Topical authority is the degree to which a search engine treats a website as a reliable source on a whole topic, earned by covering the topic in depth and consistently over time. Koray Tuğberk Gübür of Holistic SEO is credited with defining it as an SEO framework.
How does James Dooley define topical authority?
James Dooley discusses topical authority through Koray Tuğberk Gübür's formula of topical coverage and historical data, together with the cost of information retrieval, on the Semantic SEO Podcast, which James Dooley co-founded with Koray Tuğberk Gübür.
How does James Dooley apply topical authority?
James Dooley extends the idea beyond a website's own pages. In the Reputation Tree, the same topics and claims a site covers are corroborated on trusted third-party sites, which he discusses as off-page topical maps. FatRank, which builds and ranks its own digital assets across more than 650 industries, depends on search engines trusting each site on its topic.
Why does James Dooley think topical authority matters?
A site that covers part of a topic competes poorly with one that covers all of it. For AI answers, James Dooley adds that authority has to be corroborated by third parties as well as built on the site itself.
How does topical authority relate to DEO, AEO and GEO?
Topical authority is mainly an SEO concept, but James Dooley connects it to AEO and GEO through third-party corroboration, and to DEO through the Reputation Tree that carries that work.
Who coined topical authority and when?
Koray Tuğberk Gübür of Holistic SEO defined topical authority as an SEO framework in his guide What is Topical Authority?, first published on 11 February 2021.
Where James Dooley has discussed topical authority
Mentions by others
- [ADD SOURCE]
James Dooley on other platforms
- : Scaling a 9-Figure SEO Driven Lead Generation Business with James Dooley, Mark A Preston, Unscripted SEO, YouTube.
James Dooley's own podcasts, videos and books
- : Building Topical Authority: How to Gain Traction For a New Topic (James Dooley Interviews David G Quaid), James Dooley Podcast, episode 603. Watch on YouTube
- : The Topical Authority Formula Explained: Coverage, Historical Data and Cost of Information Retrieval, Semantic SEO Podcast, episode 27. Watch on YouTube
- : Common Mistakes With Semantic SEO: Building True Topical Authority (with Germans Frolovs), Semantic SEO Podcast, episode 23. Watch on YouTube
Related terms
- Topical Map: A topical map is a structured plan of the topics, subtopics and connections a website needs to cover to build topical authority.
- Semantic SEO: Semantic SEO is the practice of optimising content around entities, their attributes and the relationships between them, so that search engines understand its meaning rather than matching keywords.
- Source Context: Source context is the purpose and business angle of a website, which determines the topics it should cover and how search engines interpret its content.
- Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the practice of improving a website so that it appears more prominently in the unpaid results of search engines such as Google.
- E-E-A-T: E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the concepts Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines use to assess content and the people and organisations behind it.
Every term James Dooley uses is defined in the James Dooley Lexicon, and the verified facts about him are in the Brand SSOT.