In this article, we are looking at top pages for topic authority, looking to answer the question, “Which pages have the most topic authority?”
Let’s set up a view for this in the Pages Inventory.
Use these data points
- URL
- Top Valued Topic
- Average Topic Authority
- Page Authority
- Organic Traffic Estimate
- Potential Traffic
- Topic Volume
The first two pieces of data (URL and Top Valued Topic) help to recognize what the page is about.
Average Topic Authority averages the topical authority of all the ranking topics for that page. Topic authority is a measurement of how well your site performs for a specific topic.
Page Authority is a combined measurement of traffic and ranking. Pages with high Page Authority are those that get a great deal of traffic and rank for many topics.
Organic Traffic Estimate is an estimate of the amount of traffic this page currently receives. Potential Traffic is an estimate of the page’s traffic potential. Topic Volume measures the amount of monthly searches for all the topics for which the page ranks. Organic Traffic Estimate, Potential Traffic, and Topic Volume are interchangeable, depending on which you prefer to measure.
Sort by
- Topic Authority descending (highest to lowest)
Using this view
This view is primarily used when you want to understand which subjects you’re covering the most completely. Sorting by Topic Authority from highest to lowest quickly identifies those with the highest Topic Authority on average.
Comparing Topic Authority with Page Authority
Remember, Page Authority is a combination of traffic and rankings, measuring how much the page contributes to your site. Topic Authority is a measurement of how well your site performs for a specific topic.
So you can have a page that has a high Average Topical Authority because it ranks well for lots of terms. But those terms may bring in a negligible amount of traffic, resulting in a low Page Authority relative to the other pages on your site.
Finding pages that are lacking authority
This view provides an opportunity to double check:
- Are my important pages appearing on this list as having a High Average Topic Authority?
- What pages would I expect to be here but aren’t?
Improving Topic Authority
Chances are, you’re using this report to either improve or protect your existing topic authority. With this view, we’re looking at the Average Topic Authority for each page. The way to improve the average is to improve the topic authority of individual topics for which a page ranks. You do that by optimizing content, which involves either updating the existing page, creating new content, or both.
Read Content Optimization: Should I Update an Existing Page, Create New Content or Both?
Customizing this view
Here are a few ideas for customizing this view:
- Apply a filter based on Average Topic Authority to shorten the list and make it easier to work with.
- Apply a filter on the URL to focus on a specific part of your site. For example, if your blog is on a subdomain or a folder and the URLs contain the term “blog” you can filter for all URLs containing the term “blog”.
- Sort on Average Topic Authority from lowest to highest to quickly find pages where you could improve the content or create additional pages.
Read Working With Filters to learn how to create filters.