How to Increase Website Authority: 10 Steps
How to increase website authority in 10 steps: what the score really measures, the link and content work that moves it, and how long each stage takes.
Read article →How it works
- Enter your site or section URL and the topic you want to own — for example a service, product category or subject area.
- The tool crawls that URL and follows its internal links, collecting the page titles and headings that describe what each page is actually about.
- It builds a picture of your current coverage, grouping those pages into the subtopics they address within your target topic.
- It compares that picture against the real subtopics searchers and AI engines expect a strong resource on the topic to cover.
- It returns your covered subtopics alongside the missing gaps, so you know exactly which pages to add to complete the cluster.
What it maps
- Covered subtopics — the parts of your topic your existing pages already address, drawn from their titles and headings.
- Content gaps — the searched subtopics missing from your site that keep the cluster incomplete.
- Internal link coverage — how your pages connect, revealing which subtopics are linked into the cluster and which sit orphaned.
- Titles and headings — the on-page signals engines read to decide what each page is about and how deeply you cover it.
- Cluster depth — whether your coverage is broad and shallow or genuinely thorough across the subtopics that matter.
- Priority gaps — the missing subtopics worth building first to move the needle on topical authority fastest.
Why it matters
Google and AI engines increasingly rank sites, not single pages, on how thoroughly they cover a subject. A site that answers every related question becomes the trusted source and earns rankings — and citations — across the whole topic. If your coverage has holes, searchers leave to find the missing answer elsewhere and engines learn that a competitor is the fuller resource. Mapping your coverage against what people actually search for turns topical authority from a vague goal into a concrete checklist of pages to build.
How to improve your topical authority
Start with the priority gaps the map surfaces and build a dedicated page for each missing subtopic, using the exact question language searchers use in titles and headings. Link every new page into the cluster and back to your main topic page so the connections are clear to crawlers. Deepen thin pages that only skim a subtopic, and prune or merge overlapping ones. Re-run the map after publishing to confirm the gap has closed and your coverage of the topic keeps widening.
Frequently asked questions
What is topical authority?
Topical authority is how thoroughly and credibly your site covers a subject as a whole, rather than how one page ranks. When you answer the full range of related subtopics and questions, search and AI engines treat you as a trusted source and reward you across the topic instead of a single keyword.
How is this different from keyword research?
Keyword research finds individual terms to target, while the Topical Authority Map looks at coverage across a whole topic. It compares the subtopics your site already addresses against the ones searchers expect, so you see structural gaps in your cluster — not just isolated keywords to chase.
What is a topic cluster?
A topic cluster is a group of related pages covering the subtopics of one subject, linked together and to a central pillar page. Clusters signal depth to search engines and help both readers and crawlers move between related answers, which is what the map helps you build out completely.