Why Topical Authority Matters For Mid-DR SaaS Brands

I've seen it a million times; some clients come to us at Codeless and book that first strategy meeting, and they may have a few key pillar posts that are well-written, relatively well-optimized, and valuable, but they just aren’t ranking and they aren’t driving meaningful conversions.

This happens even with brands that have established sites and mid- or high-level Domain Ratings (DR) that have worked hard at building strong content libraries for months or years.

There are a number of factors that go into why well-written content may not be ranking for these mid-to-high DR sites— and it’s often not just about putting the right keywords in the right places.

Topical authority is often a common concern, especially when internal linking structures aren’t leveraged to your capability.

This was something that we flagged as a major concern holding a new client back. In this post, I’m going to walk you through our strategy to help a mid-DR SaaS brand improve its SERP with updated and optimized content to boost topical authority.

First: What is topical authority?

Topical authority is a website’s credibility and expertise in any given subject. The more you publish high-value content on a certain topic, the more credibility your website gains.

Why topical authority was crucial for this client

Topical authority is not necessarily the starting point for all content strategies, but it was easily the best decision for this particular client.

When the team and I were conducting the in-depth audit for our first strategy session with the client, we took a granular look at one of their pillar keywords.

This particular keyword was a general topic that they’ll eventually want to dominate entirely in the SERPs with a variety of different long-tail and topically-related keywords.

And the post itself was ranking alright— just under top 10— and was well-written and optimized. In theory, it should have been ranking higher, so we took a look into the H2 topics and the content linked to by those H2 topics.

We found that a great deal of the supporting content was not as strong as the pillar post. Much of the content needed to be optimized for additional keywords and search-friendliness, and it needed additional content to improve the value overall.

Here’s an example…

This client is a SaaS and tech brand that provides growth and communications features for mobile apps.

There was one important blog post that we took an in-depth look at to get an idea of why they were struggling to rank and whether or not there was a content gap.

The pillar topic in question was “app engagement.”

That’s a large topic for this brand, and eventually since it’s the core focus of the business, that client will want to dominate every SERP for every keyword related to payroll management. They’ll want to be able to be the go-to source for anything related app engagement, with posts and keywords like “how to improve app engagement” or “app engagement software” skyrocketing to the top of the SERPs… but right now that wasn’t happening.

Their existing pillar post wasn’t out-of-date and was relatively well-optimized in and of itself, but it still wasn’t ranking well for such an important piece— ranking in position 17. To us, that signaled that topical authority and potentially weak supporting content were causing content gaps.

The app engagement pillar post had H2s featuring certain keywords. Within those H2 sections, there were links out to resources that prioritized those individual keywords, which included:

• Sending in-app messaging

• User feedback

• User onboarding

​
It was under-optimized and needed additional valuable content to stand out in an otherwise tough market.

Our plan of attack

For this particular client, there are a few other areas we’ve identified where we can help them long-term, but the most significant priority is to refresh and re-optimize existing content first.

There are a few reasons for this:

• The existing content includes high-value mid-funnel and bottom-funnel keywords that are worth improving in their own right.

• Leveraging an existing network of content can be a quick way to make substantial changes quickly.

• This content can directly support the high-value primary pillar topic, which is a space the client wants to dominate long-term.

What we expect to happen by improving topical authority

By updating supportive content with mid-funnel and bottom-funnel keywords with additional valuable content and optimization tactics, we expect a few “quick-ish” wins.

We’ll improve the potential ranking of the content being updated (and its search visibility overall), and we’re also strengthening the topical authority for the site and its core pillar posts.

Knowing what to prioritize is critical, and it’s why a detailed SEO and content audit is the first step in our process here at Codeless. Some clients benefit from creating “libraries” of glossary-styled content; others should prioritize new technical, product-centered content, and some still should start by refreshing existing posts before expanding into the new.

Everything depends on the type of business, their existing SEO performance, the audience they want to reach, and their business objectives. And that’s where we can help.

-Brad