Topical authority is hard to measure, so use proxies that reflect real coverage

Traffic alone is noisy. A site can rank on one strong page and still be weak on the rest of the topic. Better proxies are the ones that show breadth, internal connection, and intent match across the cluster.

Look at these signals:
• How many related queries you rank for, not just one head term
• Whether hub pages and supporting pages link to each other naturally
• How often Google chooses different pages from your cluster for different intents
• Whether new articles start getting impressions without heavy link building

Also check content shape: do you cover definitions, comparisons, problems, and use cases, or do you keep repeating the same angle? If most pages are thin variations, that is not topical authority; it is keyword recycling.

A useful test: pick one topic and map every page by intent. If you cannot explain why each page exists and which other page it supports, the cluster is incomplete. Strong topical authority usually looks boring from the outside: organized, non-overlapping, and easy for both users and crawlers to follow.

Use these proxies together, not alone. One metric can lie; a cluster of signals usually tells the truth.