Cadence #27 - Topical Vectors

Hello! Welcome to another weekly Cadence.

Following on from last week's newsletter which looked at the difference between Semantic Web Technologies and Lexical Semantics (two things often confused together under the umbrella of Semantic SEO), I'm looking at Topical Vectors.

Building "topical authority" isn't something new in SEO. I remember doing it back in 2016 with Cloudflare and building out comprehensive content to showcase EEAT within the topics related to their product offering - but in the past 2/3 years its become more and more popular in the SEO space - because building out topical authority and topic maps works.

It isn't voodoo, it's giving Google what it wants as it all contributes towards its conception of "quality" at page and domain levels. It's also something that can't be gamed. Which is great.

What are Topic Vectors?

Topic vectors are mathematical representations that capture the semantic meaning or thematic essence of a document, query, or piece of content.

These vectors are often generated using machine learning algorithms like word embeddings or neural networks and are positioned in a multi-dimensional space where the distances and angles between them signify semantic relationships.

My guesswork is that...

In search engine optimization, topic vectors can help Google more accurately match queries to relevant content; in natural language understanding, they can assist in interpreting the context and meaning of words or phrases; and in content recommendation systems, they can be used to suggest articles, videos, or other forms of content that are closely related to a user's interests or previous interactions.

Topical authority is attained when a website comprehensively addresses an entire subject, rather than merely concentrating on isolated keywords.

This is why metrics such as Keyword Difficulty fall down. Keyword Difficulty only looks at the average number of backlinks for the sites ranking on page one. Websites with strong topical authority can outrank websites with large backlink profiles with ease.

Google isn't just looking for random keywords; it's all about understanding the broader topic your website is focused on.

Here's the thing—having a bunch of articles or content around the same theme allows you to link them together internally. This not only helps Google understand what you're all about but also makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site. And guess what? This user-friendly approach can naturally attract more backlinks to your site.

In simple terms, if you consistently create content that explores a particular subject and you link those pieces together, you're essentially telling Google, "Hey, I know a lot about this topic, you can trust me."

Building Out Topical Maps

Topical map building isn't a magic science. It starts with keyword research and then incorporates other sources of information.

For a number of years, Google has used images to tie entities (and topics) together. These are apparent in their patents and even announced in a 2012 blog post that they use images to better understand the web.

They do this by annotating images and creating entity vectors from them. I covered this in a talk in 2021, my slide for this can be found below.

In addition to this, for years Google has used "pill boxes" within image search to allow users to filter on topics. These have been scrapable since at least 2017 and we used to use a Python script to scrape these to help clients build out more comprehensive content areas.

Content Hubs (A Topical Cluster Cheat Code)

Content hubs are in theory topical hubs. One of the favorite ones I scoped back in 2016 (which then went live in 2017) has performed admirably over the years, peaking at ~2.8m organic sessions per month - from just a few hundred per month in the first 5/6 months.

A content hub or content cluster is a strategic approach to organizing and linking related content around a central topic or theme. In this framework, you usually have one core piece of content, often called the "pillar" article or page, that provides an in-depth overview of the main topic.

This pillar content serves as the anchor, and it is linked to various smaller, more specific articles, blog posts, videos, or other types of content that explore subtopics or facets of the main theme.

The idea is to create a comprehensive resource that allows users to delve deeply into a subject, and also to facilitate better site navigation.

By interlinking these related pieces, search engines can more easily crawl and understand the relationship between the content, which can improve SEO performance. This clustered approach helps establish topical authority, making it easier for search engines like Google to recognize your website as a trusted, go-to source for information on that specific topic.

You can read more about creating content hubs on my blog.

If you're looking to expand your SEO strategy and improve your channel performance for 2024, please drop me a DM.