Gaining authority as an online brand is crucial if you want your rankings to keep rising.
The more authoritative your website, the stronger your voice becomes in a competitive marketplace.
The question is, what type of authority is the most valuable in a modern SEO world?
From domain authority to domain rating to the rise of topical authority, which factors impact your search ranking the most in 2025?
With this in mind, join us as we put domain authority and topical authority on a level playing field and battle it out to discover which one truly matters more in today’s search landscape.
What is Domain Authority (DA)?
Domain authority has played a key role in shaping search rankings for a long time. Known as the tried-and-tested metric used to indicate your level of authority in the search landscape, most marketers default to DA/DR to reveal their website’s overall strength and potential for ranking.
While domain authority scores are not a direct Google ranking factor, they give brands insight into how helpful Google considers their content to be in a search result.
Ranging from a score of 0 to a score of 100, the higher your domain authority, the higher up in SERPs your website is likely to appear.
What Affects Domain Authority?
So, how do we raise our domain authority? There are a bunch of different factors that come together to determine your DA score.
- Domain Age: The reason you’re used to seeing longstanding brands hitting the top of SERPs is that domains build up more trust signals over time. The older your site, the higher your DA will be.
- Backlink Profile: Domain authority checkers take the most data from your website’s backlink profile. The key here is quality over quantity. If you secure links on high-authority sites, you’re more likely to be considered as a powerful source.
- Social Mentions: Your brand doesn’t necessarily have to be featured in a leading publication to gain authority. If you’re being talked about on multiple platforms, this sends social signals to DA tools that you’re a popular domain.
- Technical SEO: The SEO basics, such as a fast-loading homepage, mobile friendliness and simple navigation, all contribute to a powerful DA score. The more effort you pour into your on-page SEO, the better your search rankings will be.
What is Topical Authority?
As an SEO marketer, you’ll be familiar with domain authority, but have you dipped your toes into the topical authority pool?
As a rising ranking factor within the SEO industry, topical authority is a metric that establishes a website as a recognised expert in a specific subject or field.
Topical authority is obtained through the creation of cluster content. This is the publishing of multiple pieces of content that dive into depth on a singular, searchable, ‘pillar topic’.
With over 88% of SEOs now considering TA a significant on-page ranking factor, the battle to establish expertise in Google’s eyes has commenced.
Topical authority is not a direct ranking factor, but aligns directly with Google’s emphasis on expertise, trustworthiness, and relevance in its ranking algorithms, especially with the rise of AI-driven search and content.
What Affects Topical Authority?
Topical authority focuses on content. In order to establish credibility, TA tools go beyond surface-level fluff and check that you know your stuff.
- Content Quality: Brands that prioritize posting frequent, high-quality content are often favored as topical leaders.
- Content Engagement: If your content has multiple shares, comments and positive dwell time, this signals value and suggests to Google that your content is helpful.
- Internal Linking: If you want Google’s crawlers to connect the dots, internal linking your content is the key to gaining topical authority.
How Google Measures Authority
As a marketer, it can be easy to become fixated on authority as a single score, but that does not help achieve overall improvements.
Google uses complex algorithms to decide how your website ranks in search engine results pages, and improving a single metric is unlikely to see you suddenly jump up the rankings.
Authority metrics alone reflect deeper Google algorithms that are used to determine the quality of a website.
Having a comprehensive understanding of exactly what Google is measuring will help you get the most out of your SEO strategy and understand exactly where authority fits in.
EEAT
The EEAT framework stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, and is one of Google’s main ways to establish the value of content.
Experience relates to the author and/or website the content has been written by. Depending on the knowledge that they have on a topic, and any unique information or case studies they can provide, will establish how relevant the content is deemed to be
Expertise is established by the level of knowledge the content offers. If the content is full of statistics, personal experiences, quotes, and cited resources, it shows an in-depth understanding of the topic that can provide real value to the reader.
Authoritativeness is where topical and domain authority come into the framework. This component focuses on the quality of the website on which the content has been published. It takes factors such as consistent publishing, third-party coverage, and user comments into consideration to decide whether the site is considered credible.
Trustworthiness refers to the reliability and safety of the site. Google is looking to see that the information provided is factually correct, who has created the content, whether the web page is secure, and that contact information is present.
If we tie this framework back to topical authority and domain authority, there is a clear divide that highlights the importance of both.
Topical authority closely aligns with the expertise and experience sections as it focuses on showing a clear understanding of a topic and providing exclusive insights that offer value to your audience. Publishing content that has been carefully written to inform users stands out to Google miles above keyword-stuffed copy that has been published solely with the intent of ranking.
On the other hand, domain authority relates to authoritativeness and trustworthiness as the website itself is more relevant. These parts require a reputable website, a trusted author, and a strong backlink profile to display that it is a well-established site. The more a website relates to the content that has been published, the more Google will consider it to be a strong contender.
Core Web Vitals
In addition to the content that is added to your site, the backend of your website also plays a crucial role in Google’s ranking algorithms.
Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that Google use to measure user experience. The main focus of these metrics is to identify page load times, interactivity, and visual layouts. Together, these will ensure that a user can quickly and easily navigate a website to find what they are looking for.
The first metric, Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), measures how quickly the content of a web page loads. The time taken to generate the largest element of the page, whether it be an image or a chunk of text, is used as the page’s benchmark.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is the second metric and it is used to measure the speed of interactions. When a user clicks on a CTA button, navigation menu, or any other interactive element on the page, the time in which the site to respond establishes how responsive the user experience is considered to be.
The final metric, Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), measures visual stability. As the page is loading, any elements should remain in the same position to avoid inconsistencies and sudden movements.
Core Web Vitals is particularly relevant when it comes to topical authority. Google is always paying close attention to how users interact with a site, and if it finds that poor page performance is leading to a high bounce rate and slow page load times, it will impact the authority of the site.
The aim is to create a high-performing website that is regularly updated with fresh and unique content. This builds topical authority and helps position your site as an expert in the industry – a huge advantage when it comes to page rankings.
Why Topical Authority is More Important Now
Google’s recent ‘Helpful Content’ updates have highlighted topical expertise as critical for user satisfaction.
The era of search is moving away from scrolling through a list of top results. Google now offers its users AI-generated overviews and featured snippets that provide a direct response to their questions, often eliminating the need to search through the SERPs for information.
This renders the age-old battle to get your site to the top of search results rather invaluable in this instance.
Instead of focusing on domain authority and ranking, SEOs are now battling to gain topical authority to be recognised as an expert and featured by the search engine in an AI-powered overview.
Topical authority enables specific pages to rank for queries within their subject matter, even if the domain’s overall DA is moderate.
Can Topical Authority and Domain Authority Work Together?
For a powerful SEO profile, you must work on improving your domain authority and your topical authority.
Brands that prioritise both metrics often find themselves ranking highly in a search result, as well as being featured in Google’s AI overview.
For example high quality, relevant backlinks from niche sites can enhance your website’s topical authority as well as build up your DA score.
Let’s have a closer look at how you can build both in 2025.
How to Build Both: Step-by-Step Guide
To achieve SEO success, you shouldn’t choose one ranking metric over another; you should build both simultaneously.
If you focus on building up your backlink acquisition, perfecting your technical SEO and developing content clusters, you instantly feed Google’s ranking algorithm with exactly what it wants: A trusted, helpful domain with plenty of content to draw query results from.
Here’s your step-by-step game plan to get you started:
Step 1: Work on Your Domain Authority First
In order to start building topical authority, you must first establish your domain as a key player in its search market. DA is earned through gaining credibility signals such as powerful backlinks, accessible UX design and brand visibility.
During this stage, focus on:
- Building up your backlink profile
- Investing in cheap web hosting that delivers reliable performance can help your website load faster and improve the overall UX
- Creating link-worthy content assets, such as fresh research and linkable infographics
- Building brand awareness across multiple platforms
The key here is not to rush this stage of the process. Investing in spammy links and neglecting your website accessibility to immediately tank your DA progress.
Step 2: Start Prioritising Your Content Strategy
Once your website is gaining more traction, it’s time to establish your brand as an expert in its field.
Start by creating a topical map. This process consists of identifying 2-3 core themes that your brand can cover confidently on its blog.
Once you’ve done this, you can create content clusters. Imagine your core theme as a solar system, where your main topic is the sun and all the related articles are planets orbiting around it.
If you create a pillar page that broadly covers a topic, you can then shoot off in lots of different directions with supporting articles that naturally link back to the core theme.
The magic here happens when you start strategically linking your articles together. Ensure that each supporting article links back to the pillar, for a chance to create one big integrated content network.
Step 3: Combine Your Efforts for Maximum Impact
Finally, it’s time to see the payoff of all of your hard work. If you’ve mastered your on-page SEO and your cluster content creation, your DA and TA should essentially work together to raise your overall ranking.
For example, a higher DA boosts the performance of your topical content, while topical authority attracts more organic backlinks from quality domains.
This SEO loop is the key to strengthening your domain long-term.
Key Takeaways for Topical and Domain Authority
As the SEO world evolves, so do the strategies we use to achieve the highest rankings. In a modern search landscape, Google is prioritising user experience above all else.
In order to compete and raise your DA and TA, your domain must be accessible, credible and contain helpful content that can be instantly used as a top-ranking source in a competitive search result.
