This document discusses how to audit the topical authority of competitors by analyzing how they cover topics related to their industry or niche. It recommends clustering keywords by topic, then exporting rankings to see how well competitors cover different topics. The document provides a template for conducting a topical authority audit and analyzing a competitor's coverage of various topics to identify opportunities to improve one's own content coverage.

1. Competitor topical
authority audits: the
how and the why
Krystian Szastok
RobotZebra
@robotzebraagency
Slideshare.net/RobotZebraAgency

2. What is topical authority?
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3. What is topical authority?
How Google sees your content
within a niche or broad idea set,
rather than a singular idea or term
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4. Proving your expertise
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5. Entities
Attributes
Sub-topics
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6. Not just
matching keywords
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7. Google’s Focus:
Natural Language Understanding
Processing
Algorithmic Authorship
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8. Three things to take away
from this talk
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9. 1. ‘It’s not
going away’
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10. 1. ‘It’s not
going away’
2. ‘Google is
rewarding it’
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11. 1. ‘It’s not
going away’
2. ‘Google is
rewarding it’
3. ‘You can get
a free template’ @robotzebraagency

12. Helpful Content Update
Google is doubling down on
topical authority
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13. So what do we
need to do differently?
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16. 1. Supplement your
keyword research with
missing topics
Some tools can do this
automatically
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17. 2. Cluster keywords into
topics
Some tools can do this
automatically, too
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18. 3. Import them into
a ranking tracker
Add a common tag for each keyword topic
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19. 4. Repeat these steps for
all topics
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20. 5. Export rankings with
topic-based tags
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21. 6. Audit Competitors
Reuse your tagged keywords on
your closest competitors
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22. Topical Authority Scores
Topic Competitor Acre Recruitment Other
Recruitment 15.00% 10.00% 75.00%
Sustainability 10.00% 5.00% 75.00%
Finance 0.00% 5.00% 95.00%
Corporate
Responsibility
5.00% 0.00% 95.00%
Community 5.00% 5.00% 90.00%
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25. 1.Make a pillar post
Targets your topic with the
broadest keywords
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26. 2. Use an export of topic-
specific keywords
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27. Which specific keywords are:
● Performing well
(leave them as is)
● Ranking, but not highly
(optimise)
● Not ranking (new content)
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28. 3. Improve existing cluster
pages
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29. 4. Write new cluster pages
Aim at topical keywords
you’re not already ranking for
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30. 5. Link them up
Pillar Example:
Cluster Example:
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31. Ideal Content Clustering
Structure
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32. Optional Extras
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33. Optional Extra 1: Content Map

34. Optional Extra 2: Restructure
URLs
Folder > subfolder from the pillar
to the cluster pages
● Some CMSs won’t support this
● Usually not worth changing the
URL for a high-performing page

35. Three things to take away
from this talk
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36. DOWNLOAD OUR
TOPICAL
AUTHORITY AUDIT
TEMPLATE
https://robotzebra.agency/topical-authority
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