The article discusses a Reddit conversation regarding the concept of topical authority in SEO. The initial post in the discussion was made by someone whose boss questioned their understanding of the term. The user sought clarification and examples of topical authority, as they were unable to find relevant material on the subject through YouTube videos.
Another Reddit user, GrumpySEOguy, responded to the post by dismissing the concept of topical authority as a new, fancy term used by SEO ‘gurus’ to attract attention. He argued that topical authority is essentially the same as relevance and authority and that sites that rank higher for a search query are considered authoritative for that query.
Notably, John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, publicly affirmed GrumpySEOguy’s deconstruction of topical authority and advised not to worry about it. The article also discusses a trend of renaming existing SEO concepts and tactics to appear as new techniques, pointing out the instances of 10x and Skyscraper content building tactics.
The article goes on to explain that topical authority is derived from concepts related to authoritativeness used at Google, and that it revolves around the idea of creating and linking content focused on a topic to be seen as authoritative for that topic. However, it is argued that this added aspect of linking related articles together to gain topical authority does not have a basis in reality.
The author suggests that the concept of topical authority is essentially a label placed on existing best practices and common sense strategies, rather than a novel content strategy. It is emphasized that good content is authoritative because it is relevant to user queries, and that Google does not assign an “authority” score to content. In conclusion, the article dismisses topical authority as a revolutionary tactic, asserting that it is simply a marketing label for common sense practices.
Overall, the article presents a critical analysis of the concept of topical authority in SEO, drawing attention to the underlying common sense principles and the trend of rebranding existing strategies as new concepts within the industry.
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