Topical Authority Mapping. Entity-grounded topic maps that show Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini that you are the deepest, cleanest, most credentialed answer in your category. Not a content calendar. A category dominance system.
When ChatGPT, Claude, or Google's AI Overview decides who's the authority on a topic, they read the whole graph. Not the one ranking page. Not the highest word count. The whole graph. Cluster depth, entity grounding, internal link topology, schema, refresh velocity. Sites that look like a topic. Not sites that mention one.
That is what we build. For every client. Every engagement.
3 to 7 pillars per client, every pillar with 6 to 15 cluster posts mapped to a real revenue-driving service, every cluster tagged with intent, format, primary entity, and canonical query. The artifact lives in the client vault. Updated quarterly. Refreshed monthly.
Every named author, every business, every product, every law, every place, every certification mapped to a Schema.org entity with sameAs density to Wikidata, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, state bars, USDA cert, and the rest. Validated against Google's Cloud Natural Language API per page, not per site.
Hub-and-spoke at the cluster level. Loose siloing at the pillar level. 70/30 in-silo to cross-silo bridge ratio. Canonical descriptive anchors per target page. Three-click max depth from homepage. Internal linking that compounds, not the 2014 anchor-stuffing pattern that's now suppressed.
Every pillar passes a four-gate test. Revenue alignment. Search demand. Author capacity. First-hand experience inventory. We do not build pillars on hope.
A 14-day Phase 0 mapping sprint, then a 12-week build wave, then a forever cadence. Same process every client. AI-first analysis. Human-led strategy. Audited at every gate.
Day 1 to 2. Single sentence that captures your topical center of mass. Then we inventory every entity you are or want to be associated with. Authors, products, laws, certifications, partners, places. Each one becomes a Schema.org node with sameAs density to Wikidata, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, state bars, USDA cert.
Day 3 to 5. We pull your top 3 organic competitors, top 1 to 2 AI-cited competitors, and run the seven-report extraction. Ahrefs Top Pages, Site Structure, Best by Links, Content Gap. SEMrush Topic Research, Domain Overview. Plus a deep crawl. We map their pillars. We find their three exploitable weaknesses.
Day 6 to 8. Demand-side keyword data (Ahrefs + SEMrush). Site-side query mining (16 months of Google Search Console). AI prompt panel data (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini). Cross-referenced against the entity inventory. Clustered by SERP overlap, not by keyword variant. The output is the cluster list under each pillar.
Day 9 to 13. We assemble the map. Pillars approved by the four-gate test. Clusters tagged with intent, format, entity, canonical query. Build sequence locked. Internal link architecture diagrammed (loose siloing, canonical anchors, click-depth verified). You sign it. We start shipping.
Week 3 onward. Pillar page first. Then 4 to 12 cluster posts per month per tier, briefed to information-gain standard, schema-validated, Yoast and RankMath green, Surfer Content Score 70+, Cloud NL salience verified. Day 90 refresh decision per piece. Quarterly remap. Topic Share measured monthly.
You give us one real expert who can review or sign their name to the work. We bring the map, the briefs, the AI assist, the schema, the link architecture, the publish, the refresh, the report. No 100-page PDFs. No agency-speak meetings. Real numbers. Plain English.
No vibes. Ten principles, each grounded in a Google patent, an algorithm leak attribute, a peer-reviewed study, or a verified core-update analysis from Glenn Gabe, Lily Ray, Mike King, or Cyrus Shepard.
The May 2024 Google API leak confirmed siteAuthority, siteFocusScore, and siteRadius are real. Pages that drift from the site's topical center drag the focus score down. We measure and protect the center.
Pillars, clusters, entities, intent. The keyword list is an output of the map, not the input. Volume without revenue alignment produces vanity traffic.
Google Patent US 11,580,125 B2. Pages that contribute new information beyond what the SERP already says rank above pages that paraphrase. We engineer for it on every piece.
Cyrus Shepard's 2024 study reversed the old playbook. Over-varied anchors correlated with HCU losers. We use canonical descriptive anchors per target with surrounding-sentence variation. Loose siloing, 70/30 in-silo to cross-silo.
Every page binds to a real Schema.org entity with sameAs density to Wikidata, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and authoritative external profiles. We validate entity salience via Google Cloud Natural Language API before publish.
One pillar with 12 cluster posts beats four pillars with 3 thin posts each. After the December 2025 core update, the volume era is over. The depth era pays.
Every page hits Yoast green or RankMath 90 plus, and Surfer Content Score 70 plus (pillars 80 plus). Those are gates. The cluster, the entity layer, and the information gain elements are where the work actually wins.
Same cluster depth that ranks in Google gets cited in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Topical-authority sites earn 31 to 35 percent citation share in Perplexity and ChatGPT versus 24 percent for sites without cluster depth. (Profound research, 2025.)
Content updated within 30 days earns 3.2x more AI citations than content older than 6 months. The 90-day refresh treadmill is built into the engagement, not optional.
Kevin Indig's method. We pull every keyword in your topic with monthly volume 10 plus, run Ahrefs Traffic Share by Domains, report your percentage share against named competitors. Monthly. Visible. Honest.
If your last "topical authority" deliverable was a keyword list and a content calendar, you got billed for surface compliance and called it strategy. This is what real topical authority work looks like.
| Deliverable | Most "topical authority" agencies | Timpson Marketing |
|---|---|---|
| The Topic Map | Spreadsheet of 100 keywords grouped into "topics." | Living document. 3 to 7 four-gate-tested pillars. 6 to 15 clusters per pillar. Entity-tagged. Intent-tagged. Build-sequenced. |
| Competitor research | "Look at the top 3 results." | 7-report extraction per competitor. Pillar trees. Internal link patterns. Entity depth. Three exploitable weaknesses named per competitor. |
| Keyword research | Ahrefs export sorted by volume. | Demand-side + GSC mining (16 months) + AI prompt panel + entity-tagged + SERP-overlap clustered. |
| Internal linking | Auto-link plugin with money-keyword anchors. | Hand-architected loose siloing. Canonical anchors per target (Shepard 2024 pattern). 3 to 8 in-body links per piece. Click depth audited quarterly. |
| Schema | Default Yoast / RankMath template, never customized. | Hand-rolled JSON-LD graph. Article + Person + Organization + isPartOf + about + sameAs density. Validated per page. |
| Entity grounding | Not done. | Per page, validated against Google Cloud Natural Language API. Primary entity ranks #1, salience >= 0.5. We rewrite if not. |
| Content production | AI-spun blog posts under "Editorial Team." | AI-assisted, credentialed-human-authored, real-photo, first-hand-experience required, information gain engineered, pre-publish gate enforced. |
| Measurement | Rank tracker screenshots. | Topic Share (Indig method) measured monthly per pillar. Plus organic sessions, conversions, AI citation rate, DR, primary keyword rank average. |
| Refresh | Whenever you ask. | Day 90 refresh decision per piece. 6-month deep refresh on YMYL. Annual full Topic Map redo. |
| AI search visibility | Bolt-on or "future roadmap." | Same cluster depth that ranks in Google. Cited in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini as a side effect, measured monthly via prompt panel. |
Topical authority is what compounds. Below is what compounding looks like across 12 plus years of building it for real businesses.
One representative client. Real numbers. Anonymized to respect engagement confidentiality. The pattern is what travels.
Before: 4 thin practice-area pages, no cluster posts, no author bylines, schema set to default Yoast. After: 5-pillar Topic Map, 60 plus cluster posts shipped over 9 months, every page authored by a named bar-numbered attorney, full schema graph, hand-architected loose-siloed internal link topology. Topic Share moved from 3% to 24% on the primary motor-vehicle pillar against the top 3 named competitors.
"The traffic increase is one thing. The quality of leads we're getting now is what matters. Our case volume has doubled."— Managing Partner, National Personal Injury Firm
Topical Authority Mapping is the engine inside our GEO retainers. Foundation builds the map and the entity layer. Authority builds the map and ships the cluster waves. Dominance does both at scale, with custom data studies and direct Joseph engagement.
For founders who need the map and the entity layer locked, with a steady cluster cadence and AI visibility baseline.
The full engine. Map plus build plus authority work plus cross-engine prompt panel. The retainer that pays for itself.
Category-leader posture. All six pillars run at full velocity, custom AI/GEO research, direct weekly Joseph engagement.
All tiers include the free 14-day topical authority audit before commitment. 12-month minimum engagements. Bundles available with Local Dominance and Paid Ads.
I built Topical Authority Mapping because I was tired of watching agencies sell content calendars and call it strategy. The agencies winning post-2024 are the ones building maps. Not the ones writing more posts. Not the ones with the prettiest dashboards.
This is the methodology I use across every Timpson Marketing client. Legal, farm-direct, local services, B2B. Same six-pillar operating system. Same entity-grounded topic mapping. Same loose-siloed internal-link architecture. Refined over 12 years and 1,000 plus engagements. Not a service I outsource. A service I run.
"Topical authority is the only content investment that gets stronger over time. Individual pages can be hit by an update. A correctly built topic cluster recovers within one update cycle. A site with five mature topic clusters is effectively algorithm-resistant."
JOSEPH TIMPSON · ST. GEORGE, UT
No. Keyword research is one of nine inputs. The Topic Map is an entity-grounded, intent-tagged, four-gate-tested architecture document. The keyword list is an output, not the input. We start with the domain definition and the entity inventory, layer in competitor reverse-engineering, fold in demand-side keyword data, GSC mining, and AI prompt panel data, then assemble the pillars and clusters. The map governs every page we build for the next 12 months. A keyword list governs nothing.
A content audit is a one-time inventory. A content-cluster service is the 2017 HubSpot model with one pillar and a few satellite posts. Topical Authority Mapping is a living operating system. Three to seven pillars per client. Six to fifteen clusters per pillar. Entity layer. Schema graph. Internal-link topology. Refresh treadmill. Topic Share measured monthly. It is a category dominance system, not a content artifact.
Same cluster depth that ranks in Google gets cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Gemini. Topical-authority sites earn 31 to 35 percent citation share in Perplexity and ChatGPT versus 24 percent for sites without cluster depth. Sites with H2 / H3 / bullet structure plus breadcrumbs are 40 percent more likely to be AI-cited. Content updated within 30 days gets 3.2x more AI citations. We engineer for all four. We measure it monthly in the prompt panel. We do not guarantee any specific citation, because no honest agency can.
First measurable Topic Share movement at 90 days. Compounding curve begins around 6 months. Pillar-level dominance achievable around 12 months on most verticals. Faster on niche markets with weak incumbents. Slower on hyper-competitive verticals with mature competitors and entrenched authors. The free 14-day audit tells you exactly which trajectory your domain is on before you commit budget.
One credentialed real human who can author or substantively review the work. For legal, that means a licensed attorney with a bar number. For farm direct-to-consumer, the actual farmer. For local services, a licensed tradesperson. For B2B and ecommerce, a named subject-matter expert on your team. Plus access to your existing site, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, Ahrefs or SEMrush if you have a seat, and your CRM for conversion attribution. We bring everything else.
AI assists. AI does not author. We use Claude and GPT for outlining, drafting to a specified outline, FAQ generation, schema markup, and stress-testing. A credentialed named human edits for accuracy, voice, and first-hand experience, signs the byline, and is accountable for every claim. AI-spun rewrites of competitor content are exactly what the December 2025 Google core update suppressed. We do not ship them.
No, and any agency that does is making promises they cannot keep. What we guarantee is honest work, transparent reporting, documented methodology, weekly Friday updates, monthly Topic Share measurement against named competitors, and a strategy we will change if it is not moving the needle. We measure in traffic, leads, revenue, and Topic Share, because rankings without those are vanity metrics.
Yes. Every artifact we build for you is yours. The Topic Map, the entity inventory, the competitor synthesis, the content briefs, the schema graph specification, the internal-link architecture document. We deliver to your client vault and you keep it whether you stay with us for one month or ten years. We do not hold deliverables hostage.
Yes. We are based in St. George, Utah, and we work with clients across the country. Topical Authority Mapping is geographic-agnostic. Only local SEO components adapt to geography. We have built topic maps for legal firms in 7 states, farm-direct operations in 4 states, local services in dozens of cities, and B2B in three verticals.
Free 14-day topical authority audit. 10-minute intake call. Two-week deep analysis. Then a video walkthrough of exactly what we found, where the topic-share gaps are, what the addressable lift is worth in real revenue terms, and which pillar we would build first. No pressure. No commitment. If we are a fit, we proceed. If not, you keep the audit and the strategy document.