Domain Authority vs. Topical Authority

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In SEO, we have two concepts of authority. Domain Authority is a number assigned to a website to indicate how authoritative the domain is. It is achieved by acquiring high-quality backlinks.

On the other hand, we have Topical Authority. This defines not just the overall authority of a website but its expertise in a specific topic. Simply put, you gain Topical Authority by writing extensively about a subject on your own site and contributing to other sites, demonstrating that you are a true expert in the field.

Let’s dive a little bit more into detail why this differentiation matters more than ever with the current state of search. 

What is Topical Authority?

The concept of Topical Authority is quite simple. It means that you have earned the trust of users and search engines by proving that you truly know your topic.

For example, if you have a website that talks about bikes all the time, covers every imaginable topic related to them, and many other sites link to you because of your high-quality information, search engines will recognize you as an expert. Over time, you’ll build your authority in the biking niche.

This all connects to E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust—a concept that Google introduced in its Quality Rater Guidelines back in 2014.

What is Domain Authority?

If we go back to the very beginning of Google, we already had this concept—it was called PageRank. It played a key role in Google’s success because they were the first to measure a website’s importance based on links.

Fast-forward to today, and we call this Domain Authority. It is usually a number from 0 to 100 (while PageRank used to be from 0 to 10) and indicates how authoritative your website is.

The higher the number, the stronger your domain authority. Government websites usually have very high domain authority, as do sites like Amazon and Wikipedia.

To increase your Domain Authority, you need to get more backlinks. And the more authoritative the website linking to yours, the bigger the impact on your Domain Authority.

Why search engines change from Domain Authority to Topical Authority?

Think of it this way: Search engines no longer just look at individual pages on your website—they look at the entire site. This was already important for Domain Authority, which gave your site a score. But now, your site is also assigned a theme or category.

The reason for this shift in recent years is clear: it’s about the user. As searchers, we prefer to land on a niche site that we can trust to truly understand a topic and answer all our questions. We don’t want to end up on a huge site that writes about everything and nothing at the same time—no matter how many backlinks it has.

There was also a lot of spam in the past with backlink building, and high Domain Authority alone doesn’t mean much today.

As I already mentioned, E-E-A-T and the Helpful Content Update have pushed Google to rethink rankings. How can they tell if an author really knows a topic? By writing a lot about it, not just publishing a single article.

The impact of the latest Google Updates on this shift

In recent years, many Google updates have reflected this shift in thinking. I see it with many clients who lose traffic on certain pages because they try to cover too many topics instead of focusing on their expertise.

In 2024, Google introduced the “Site Reputation Abuse Policy” to stop websites from using their high Domain Authority to publish unrelated content. Some websites were ranking for topics completely outside their niche just because they had high authority, not because they were true experts.

One of the biggest cases was Forbes. In 2023, Forbes lost all its traffic to the Forbes Advisor Platform, a site that took advantage of Forbes’ high authority to rank affiliate articles and make money. Google took manual action against it, completely removing it from search results.

The HubSpot Traffic Loss Case

Another widely discussed case is HubSpot’s traffic drop. They lost significant traffic on their blog due to Google’s updates in 2024, but the biggest decline happened between December 2024 and January 2025.

An analysis by Aleyda Solis showed that the blog posts losing the most traffic were popular in search but outside HubSpot’s core expertise—for example, “The 100+ Most Famous Quotes of All Time” or “How to Type the Shrug Emoji ¯_(ツ)_/¯ in 2 Seconds Flat”.

This case clearly shows that Google is now focusing more on whether a website has true authority on a specific topic, rather than just relying on high Domain Authority to rank for anything.

This is also the first big case where there was no manual action involved, and we can see how Google might measure Topical Authority, something we can also find in the Google Leak from 2024 (see article about this).

What does that mean for your website?

Before you panic because there’s yet another new term and value important for search engine optimization, not everything is bad about this change.

I actually find it the opposite, as this gives you the chance to compete against all those big platforms that cover every topic. And it gives you a clear focus for your content.

Instead of spreading yourself too thin, you should thoroughly explore one topic. The deeper you go, the better. Show that you know your niche well and understand what you’re talking about.

Instead of expensive backlink building, which is somewhat in a gray area anyway, you can now focus entirely on showing your expertise.

What about Blogging-Bullshit – shouldn’t I optimize my services first?

If you’re asking this question, you’ve probably been around here for a while and are familiar with my philosophy. And yes, as always, I recommend not pursuing an elaborate blog SEO strategy if you haven’t gotten your money pages right first.

So, number one is always optimizing your service pages. But sometimes, you reach a point where these are optimized and still not performing as well as you wish.

And that’s exactly what the Topical Authority strategy is for. We want to give your entire website more authority on your topic. The great thing about this strategy is that all pages related to the topic benefit, including your service pages. And that’s exactly why I’m a huge fan of this strategy.

Domain Authority is dead, long live Topical Authority

I really think that Topical Authrotiy is the way to go, and that Domain Authority in general will stop to exist in the near future. Because a high Domain Authority simply is not enough anymore to get good rankings. 

If you want to read more about this, you should check out my “Guide on Topical Authority”. Where I actually share everything I talked about so far on the topic, from guest post, podcast episodes and even speaking gigs. 


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