Building Your Website’s Topical Authority with Kevin Indig

• Prioritize topical authority: deep, complete content clusters outperform scattershot posts in AI search and SGE results.

• Reinforce clusters with intelligent internal linking; anchor text and contextual passages strengthen entity signals that Google’s embedding models trust.

• Earn authoritative backlinks and brand mentions—traffic-driving links remain a top ranking multiplier despite algorithm turbulence.

• Prune low-value or off-topic pages; fresh, engaged content signals topical relevance to LLMs and agents.

• Shift KPIs from raw traffic to high-intent engagement; peak clicks passed, AI assistants own awareness stage.

Kevin Indig is one of the first SEOs whose content really helped shape my early thinking. We certainly took some key aspects from his keyword strategies for our work at Siege Media. If you’re not subscribed to Kevin’s Growth Memo newsletter, I highly recommend checking it out.

In this episode, we discuss one of his recent episodes, where he explains measuring topical authority, as I believe it has implications beyond SEO.

This kind of thinking is essential to ensure that SEO, PR, and brand work in harmony. It’s about thinking beyond links and how things connect for end users.

As Kevin said, “A link that brings traffic is a good link.”

If you’re trying to understand how to rank in AI, and the role links, brand, and other factors play into it, give this a watch/listen.

Enjoy!

Resources Mentioned

Here are a few links to resources or studies that we mention in the podcast.

• https://www.kevin-indig.com/
• https://www.growth-memo.com/
• https://www.growth-memo.com/p/how-to-measure-topical-authority
• Ross Hudgen’s conversation with HubSpot’s Kieran Flanagan

⏰ Timestamps

00:00 – Intro

01:58 – Defining Topical Authority

04:57 – Topical Authority in the Age of AI

07:35 – The Role of Backlinks and Mentions

10:37 – Content Strategies for Topical Authority

13:27 – Four Levers of Topical Authority

21:17 – Engagement and User Behavior

29:03 – Future of Topical Authority and AI

33:28 – Conclusion and Farewell

Subscribe to the Podcast

Visit Spotify or Apple Podcasts to subscribe to our weekly podcast.

Don’t forget to like and subscribe!

Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

More Posts by Vince Nero
Website: https://www.buzzstream.com