Why Being a "Know-It-All" is Great Marketing 🧠

Hello Reader,

In the early days of the internet, getting your website found was a bit like the Wild West. If you stuffed enough keywords into a page, you could rank for just about anything (even things your website had nothing to do with!). Then things settled down and it became relatively straightforward: we could map a keyword to a page as part of an SEO strategy and connect those keywords together.

But searching for information on the internet has grown up, and today, it doesn't just care about what your page says—it cares about who you are in the context of your niche.

This brings us to one of the most important concepts in modern marketing: Topical Authority.

What is Topical Authority?

This phrase sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple (yay!)

At its core, topical authority is a measure of your website's (this is often called an “entity” which just means people/places/things) perceived expertise on a specific subject. Instead of looking at individual keywords, search engines and other bots look at the depth and breadth and interconnectedness of your content.

Think of it this way:

• If you write one great article about "how to bake sourdough," you have a good page.
• If you have many resources and articles covering sourdough starters, flour types, oven temperatures, hydration levels, and troubleshooting, you have topical authority. Even more so if you offer products or services related to that topic.

(This example is inspired by King Arthur Baking’s real topical authority on this subject.)

The Goal: You want search engines to view your site as the "go-to" library for your specific niche. Not the dictionary for keywords.

Stop chasing keywords. Start owning the topic. If you feel like your search traffic is plateauing or disappearing into Google’s AI Overviews, you aren’t alone. The “traditional” way of doing SEO no longer works in an era of LLMs and the search methodology known as semantic search (aka the intent and meaning behind the search). Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and AI models like Perplexity and ChatGPT don't just want the answers—they want The Authority. Which equals opportunity for you. Register Today!

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Why It Matters

1. Trust Over Keywords: Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines prioritize sites that prove they know their stuff.
2. The "Halo Effect": When you have high authority in a topic, it becomes significantly easier to rank for newarticles or pages or even content snippets (eg an answer in an faq) within that same topic. For example, whenever I post about Squarespace SEO, my new posts or pages land on page one of Google.
3. Future-Proofing: While algorithm updates come and go, Google’s commitment to surfacing expert content is a constant. Topical authority builds a moat around your rankings.

The Chatbot Factor

The large language model (LLM) software marketed as AI also relies on this library of knowledge as well

Data indicates that topical authority heavily influences citations in these models. So, we don’t just surface in Google or other search engines thanks to topical authority, when we achieve this, we also surface as recommended in those chatbot and AI overviews as well.

It’s all connected!

Topical Clusters ≠ Topical Authority

If you've been in my world for awhile, you've probably heard me talk about topic clusters, the practice of creating tightly connected clusters of content, typically on your blog, to help build visibility online. This is NOT the same as topical authority, though it's a component of the entire topical authority layer cake, so to speak.

You don't need to be an expert on everything. You just need to be the undisputed expert on your thing. Stop chasing high-volume keywords and start building a comprehensive map of your niche. The rankings—and clients—will follow.

I’ll teach how in my new workshop, Post-Keyword SEO: Content Strategy for the Modern Algorithm on February 19. (Yes, the replay will be available!) Sign up here. ​

Onward & upward,

Sarah