Topical authority is immensely important when you want to a) build your personal brand and b) improve your website's SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and organic traffic. But what is it exactly? And how can you build thopical authority for yourself and your therapy/coaching business? The good news is that there is a process to it. Let's have a look!
What is topical authority for therapists and coaches?
This term is fairly self-explanatory. It's all about building your authority on a given topic so that you become an authoritative source of knowledge in this topic. So, if you are a therapist specializing in helping clients experiencing anxiety, you can build topical authority on the topic of anxiety.
If you are a coach specializing in career coaching, you can build topical authority on career transition or career planning.
What's important is to focus your topical authority efforts on one specific topic and build authoritative content around it. Therapy or coaching are both too broad, you need to dig deeper and be more specific.
Why?
Two reasons:
The more general your topic is, the more difficult it will be to build topical authority, primarily because there are thousands of other pieces of content on the same topic. Being more focused and granular will allow you to stand out from the competition.
Building topical authority on even one narrowed-down topic takes a lot of time and effort. Building two different "authorities" at once will require years and years of ongoing work. I don't think that's what you want to do.
Start small, build topical authority in one area, then move on to the next one.
What do I need topical authority for?
Excellent question! There are two birds to kill with one stone that has topical authority written all over it:
Your personal brand (even if you're just looking for the first clients)
Topical authority builds your personal brand (and recognizability)
When you are an authority on a given topic, usually, you don't have to worry about finding clients. They are looking for you, and they want to work specifically with you because they trust you and know you can help them.
Psst... Yes, that's also a great way to charge more for your services.
Topical authority helps with SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Nowadays, Google is all about high-quality, helpful content that's designed to help specific audiences with specific problems (that's why you need relevant topics in your posts and articles). If you can provide your specific audience with tailor-made advice and knowledge, you're on the right track to build topical authority and, as a result, improve your visibility in search engine rankings for the related keywords and key phrases.
Is it worth it? No doubt about it!
How to build topical authority: 4 steps
You don't need to guess how or where to start. There is a repetitive process to building topical authority (TA). And here it is outlined for you!
Step 1: Decide what you want to be an authority on
The first step takes place in your head on a piece of paper. You need to decide what you want to build authority on. To find the answer, ask yourself a couple of auxiliary questions:
What kind of service (yes, ONE service) I want to provide to my clients?
What I'm most experienced at?
Where can I deliver the most value and offer the most insight?
Where I want my private practice/coaching business to go?
What makes me stand out from the competition (what's my USP)?
Those answers should direct you to the big answer on what your topical authority should be.
Let's say it's career transition. We will use this example in the following steps to show you how to proceed.
Step 2: Create categories within your topical authority and focus on them one by one
Start with one content category related to your main theme. For career transition, these categories can be as follows:
Job search strategies
Resume and cover letter preparation
Skill development
Candidate branding, etc.
Each of these categories can consist of many different topics, right? And they are all semantically and thematically interconnected, right?
That's what topical authority is about!
And this is actually very important. Keep in mind that all texts in your topical authority sphere should revolve around the same topic (or closely related ones) and that they all need to make sense from the reader's perspective!
To give you an example, an article titled "Should I change my job or my pet?" may be semantically related to your main theme, but it doesn't make much sense, so don't waste your time writing it. :)
Now, let's have a look at how this could work on a chart:
It's just a simple example, but it shows what you want to achieve. In general, you have one main theme around which you want to build your topical authority and several sub-themes that consist of several articles (these are so-called topic or content clusters). You can also plan some stand-alone articles, such as an interview with a client who went through a career transition successfully.
You want to cover as much of the entire topic as possible, even if it requires creating 30, 50, or more posts and articles.
Step 3: Run keyword research
If you want to include the SEO aspect in your work, you need to conduct keyword research to find out what keywords are popular in your niche as well as what people ask about (so that you can answer those questions from the expert standpoint).
Here, we want to show you two great tools (both are free).
Google search suggestions
You can simply start by typing your main theme or one of the sub-themes in the Google search engine. You will get a free list of related queries. Include them in your texts!
A quick search query, and we have a list of four nice ideas for future articles for one of the sub-themes:
AnswerThePublic
ATP is extremely helpful when it comes to finding topic and article ideas. You get one search for free per day, so don't waste it :) All you need to do is input your key phrase (let's say career transition) and select the market you're interested in. ATP will take care of the rest and provide you with a list of at least 10 (oftentimes over 100) ideas that you can use.
AnswerThePublic will also tell you the popularity of a given phrase. For instance, a search volume of 170 means that in Canada (that's the country we selected for this test), around 170 people per month search for career transition. So, there you go, that's 170 potential clients that you can get in front of with your high-quality content!
Step 4: Start writing your content pieces!
Building topical authority is a long-term game, so the sooner you start writing, the better. Create a list of articles that's easy to understand, and just start writing one by one.
Of course, here, we enter a whole new area of writing SEO-optimized content. We will discuss this in detail in the coming blog posts, as well as other SEO topics, such as backlink profiles, external links and link building, domain authority, and more. These topics are all interconnected, and you need to be aware of them if you want to improve your website's SEO.
Here, we have just a short list of the three most important things to consider:
Keyword research and clustering: Identify main and related keywords to cover a given topic with SEO in mind. Group topics into clusters to structure your content effectively.
Content depth and structure: Build in-depth content coverage of subtopics using headings (H2, H3) to improve both readability and SEO (keep in mind to address a specific search term in every article).
Internal links: Internal links to related articles within your site to create topic clusters and improve navigation for both users and search engine algorithms. This way, you can address user intent more accurately and build a positive user experience around your blog.
Take a look at this example of the "job search" sub-theme and the list of seven articles that could go with it:
All those posts should be internally linked to one another. This way, Google bots will understand that these texts are part of one common theme. Additionally, with such an approach, you can see, how easy it becomes to create 50 and more articles to build topical authority, right? And that's what you want to do.
Topical authority and content creation: Best practices
Lastly, let's talk about several best practices that will help you get ahead with your content:
Run a competitor research
Analyze the websites of your competitors (especially those who publish long-form content and seem to target the same relevant keywords). Do they build their topical authority? If so, what texts do they have on their websites? Can you spot some content gaps (areas that are important but your competitors haven't covered in their texts)? How can you create content that's better and more attractive?
Use different angles
Writing about different aspects of the same topic will help you create more texts with minimal effort. Here are the ideas you can use to create your topical authority posts:
Trends
Mistakes
Best practices
Ideas
How-to's
Case studies/success stories
Dos and dont's
Process, etc.
That said, you can create a few articles around those angles:
Job search trends, job search ideas, job search best practices, etc.
Make your articles different
What if you have several articles that are very, VERY similar, but you still want to write several different texts? Well, you need to differentiate them, simple as that. You can do so by:
Adding different photos and graphics to those texts
Rewriting and paraphrasing the content
Looking for different sources
Using different examples
Linking to different websites/subpages
Adding something unique that won't work with other texts
Remember: Google and your readers don't like copy-paste. So, don't tell them to read the same stuff over and over again. Keep in mind that high-quality content is one of the most important ranking factors on Google! Do whatever you can to maintain the highest possible content quality.
Use AI wisely
Yes, you can use ChatGPT (or any other AI tool) to streamline your work and produce more articles in a shorter time. However, keep a few things in mind:
ChatGPT is known for plagiarizing content; never copy-paste what it generated for you, unless you told them to rewrite what you've already created yourself.
Use ChatGPT as a support, not your replacement. You still need to maintain control over what content you're producing and what for.
Always make sure you agree with what it generated for you. These need to be your texts!
Don't lose your personal, human touch. Marketers frequently like to use AI-generated content, but not one person is willing to read it. Ensure these are still your texts and they are still valuable and filled with real-life expertise!
Be patient
Building topical authority is a long-term game. It can take over a year, depending on the popularity and competitiveness of your theme. Be patient and focus on creating top-notch content.
Distribute and repurpose your content
A comprehensive blog post can easily become a few social media posts, a YouTube video, and a newsletter. You put a lot of work into creating content, so make sure it's distributed in many different places.
Of course, you need to adjust it to different communication channels, but that's still way less work compared to writing new content from scratch. After all, you've spent some time crafting relevant content for your audience, right? Why not use it in other places as well? The best content strategies use content repurposing, and so should you! :)
Wrapping up
Topical authority is fantastic when it comes to building your personal brand and improving your website's SEO strategy (as well as content marketing strategy). If you are a therapist or a coach, we definitely recommend you start working on your topical authority as quickly as possible. The benefits will not come overnight, but they will come. And then, you will be glad that you started a few months or years back.
If you need help with your website's SEO, feel free to schedule a consultation with us. We're happy to help with our knowledge and experience :)
Frequently asked questions
Why do I need topical authority?
Topical relevance allows you to build your personal brand as a coach or a therapist (you become a reliable source of knowledge and advice), improve the user experience of the potential clients visiting your website, and improve your website's search engine rankings.
Where should I publish those posts and articles?
Typically, the best place is the blog/resources section on your website.
How long will it take to build topical authority? How many articles do I need to create?
Depending on your main theme and its competitiveness, from several months to several years. Yes, building topical authority (as well as the entire content creation) is a long-term game, and you need to be aware of that. When it comes to the number of articles, you can expect anywhere between 30 and 500.
Where should I promote these posts?
Use your blog content to supercharge your:
Social media posts (especially Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram)
Newsletters
YouTube videos
And your activity on social media groups (especially on Facebook)
How can I show my level of expertise?
You can do so by creating posts and articles that respond to specific search intent and are in line with search algorithms. The most authoritative websites and content creators build whole content libraries revolving around a specific topic. You should do the same thing. This will allow you to increase your website's organic growth.