<b>Q: How do I measure whether my topical authority is actually growing?</b>

<b>Q: How do I measure whether my topical authority is actually growing?</b>

Short answer: track the <i>spread</i> of your rankings within a topic over time, not just a few head keywords. Growing authority shows up as more queries in the topic returning your pages, often ranking at once.

A single keyword going up could be luck. A whole cluster of related terms drifting up together is the real signal.

In practice, watch these:
— Number of unique queries in the topic that get impressions (Search Console, filter by the topic's URL folder).
— Average position across the whole cluster's queries, not one page.
— Long-tail wins: when oddly specific questions in your topic start ranking, the engine trusts your coverage.
— Crawl frequency on the cluster, more frequent crawls signal rising importance.

Set a baseline now and recheck quarterly; authority moves slowly, so monthly noise will mislead you.

Question on measurement? Send it in.