Semantic SEO Podcast

James Dooley: Most important information to start a topical map. Today I'm joined with Pavel Klimakov and we're going to be going through what information, Pavel, you would need to get started with regards to a topical map. So fire away, the dance floor is yours.

Pavel Klimakov: The most important thing for me to know is the actual main services or maybe subservices or subtopics that the client is monetizing or providing. So, as long as I know precisely, let's say the product, type of product, service, ideally if they know a kind of, let's say, model or a profile of the customer, this allows me to start to generate a kind of, how to say, like a vortex or a kind of like slow spiral so I can slightly expand these concepts and figure out what do these type of people search for, what are other similar types of people that might be searching in addition to this and how does all of this tie together from the point where they just learn about something as a concept that can exist, right? Maybe it can be a product that is not so widely known, maybe it's something that just got invented that maybe improves your eyesight and that's a new pill or something like that. People don't know the name of the pill or the type of it but they will be searching like why do I see worse, why do my eyes hurt, you know, for some reason or what are the different methods how I can improve the eyesight. So I'll work these things out piece by piece but the fundamental starting point is just understanding the product or the service, basically the monetizable element and ideally a little bit more about the audience.

James Dooley: Do you know what I love about that, right? We ordered 17 different topical maps from different companies, right? Some of them were just cheap little five gigs and stuff like that but we wanted to see what are these people doing for a topical map and do you know what? Majority of them came back saying that they needed the central entity, the source context, the central search intent, the core section and the outer section. No, I'm not being funny. Some of our members of staff didn't have a clue what the main central entity was. They didn't have a clue what they meant by the core section and the outer section and I feel that that should be a semantic SEO expert's role into here's free products that we sell or services that we sell that make us the most money. Rank us for these keywords and we'll make a load of money. You go and do what you do with topical authority and like I've seen one of your videos and I loved it where it was playing a game and it had this dot and it was like what lines can you connect off from there and I found that the most simplistic way of explaining topical authority because you can't go too wide. If there's no nodes and edges, if there's no edge, if there's no line to connect it back to that, you're going too wide and it was like people talk now about the site radius score and topic dilution and I'm like if you start from the central part of where you make the most money and the services that you do and just keep expanding from there, it's by far the best way to get every single one of these that seem to sell topical maps. I'm not saying from the semantic content, it's not for people like you lot, I'm talking about from these other people that are selling it left, right and centre. We was like what are they selling for $200 because it takes a long time to put it together and I'm like they can't be selling a good quality topical map and it was like we need this, this, this, this, this and I'm presuming what they're doing is getting what they call the five concepts of a topical map and then probably just loading it into AI and letting AI rip and let it go with it yet the most important element is exactly what you just said there, the services and the most important bit in my opinion is where do you make your money? The monetisation method, that's kind of surely the core kind of element of where you start out from.

Pavel Klimakov: Sure, so the five elements you mentioned like the central search intent, the central entity and then core outer sections these things are what I would say, so they come obviously from the inventor of the topical map from Coray Tugger Cougar I think I never confirmed this with him but I believe these things are in place to create a kind of let's say guidelines or a kind of safety mechanism for people who are studying this concept so they don't go everywhere so they don't go randomly all over the place, it's a kind of, how to say it, like these velvet ropes in the cinema so you don't go, or like in an airport, so you don't go off track It just helps you to stay approximately aligned with basically what's needed to be done and not accidentally fall into some other thing A much more important part when it comes to topical maps is the actual, let's say, Google's prioritisation or Google's alignment of different topics because the way people search for things is crazily chaotic, it is just genuine all over the place and somehow in all of this, in this chaos we need to find some kind of order so this is where, let's say, indexes or a kind of alignment or a grouping of these queries into something that makes sense conceptually or it is very similar to each other in a conceptual way That's a key element to all of this Once you have this, let's say, additional layer or you see that first people search about, you know, they just have a question then they start to search for specific symptoms then they start to compare this symptom against the other symptom then they're looking for treatments, then they're looking for risks of these treatments you realize that all of this represents a funnel, a person who is in a life scenario like imagine a guy who wants to marry his girl his whole process, like thinking process, which ring, where, how, how to propose, on which trip we should go where do people go, like what does my girl prefer there will be a whole funnel there, there will be like a life journey, a life scenario and basically the weird thing about humans in general and about all these algorithms is that once any of us, humans, get into a similar situation, we basically act nearly identically which is why these patterns are possible to identify and create even though we would behave, let's say, we would be searching slightly differently the overall general pattern is quite clear so the main plan, the main goal with the topical map is to realize what the company is selling and who are the people that might want that or might need that then we figure out the pattern, the behavior of these people, this life journey where will they start searching, where they just might be aware, very very distantly where they might need this service and how they'll gradually get closer and closer in a funnel, you realize the buying temperature of this audience gets hotter and hotter and hotter as they get closer to the actual service page so that's the main principle and also you can realize that this is why there is the outer section and the core section the cold audience, the hot audience once it gets hotter, there is more call to action, there is more attempts to basically make the sale

James Dooley: Yeah for sure, I've got a few quick fire questions for you so with regards to the information needed to start a topical map would you ever want your client to send you any images? Now just hear me out on this initially you might say, no that's not needed in a topical map it's just for you to visualize what the product or the service is do you ever ask anyone for images as some information so you can understand it a little bit more or do you not bother with that?

Pavel Klimakov: I don't ask but if that happens, that helps and that has happened a few times and then what about videos, is that anything else or is that similar to images?

James Dooley: If they send it, it helps so you can see and understand what it is that they do or is that not really a bit of information that's needed to start a topical map?

Pavel Klimakov: It might be but here the main part is in a scenario when I'm not really familiar with the niche or the industry and I actually need to learn first what they do so if they'll tell me some kind of words that I've never heard of I'd like to see it the more visual it is, the easier it is for me to learn and connect the dots what that thing actually is so if I'm already familiar with the service there's not that much need for education for myself but if it is something completely brand new for myself then of course everything visual can help and in many cases, let's say I just get on a call with one of their representatives or main managers and they'll walk me through, this is how it works, this is what we have let's say this is actual physical product that we have, this is how it works once I get all of these things then it's easier to get this funnel started and then with regards to information needed to start a topical map and what about competitors? Do you ever ask for a couple of competitors, five competitors the more competitors that they can send through, the better?

James Dooley: To be honest I don't necessarily focus on that but it's more like if they have pain points that they don't like this competitor and they really want to beat them then of course send them over, let's see what they do because we'll find at least some vulnerabilities in there and that will allow us to overtake that guy after a certain point and then what about ideal customer personas or the ICP of the client so they've got the monetisation strategy but the ideal customer persona but after that do you ever ask who they work for? So I'll give you an example, we've got a playground surfacing company and we do work for construction companies but the construction company might work for a school or a park so it might be a council that's doing it for a construction company and we do the playground surfacing how much detail do you want on the customer persona?

Pavel Klimakov: Would that help or not really? In general the more I can understand and see the overall main moving pieces of types of people that are interconnected with this service the more it helps because in certain cases it's all about identifying that life scenario that any person or a group of people can be in and what are these things they're going through so if it turns out that there's two entirely different sets of moving pieces that are a part of this whole process of course I would need to know more but then ultimately what's the main target? Usually what's the main goal of a site? Is it they're trying to monetise to different audiences and appeal to different audiences? Is it one that is primary and the other one is a kind of side effect? This is really the main key if there are many it might even make sense to design a better funnel or maybe even create a separate site that would serve that other audience precisely for those needs so in general it's more like we understand that you have this thing you monetise we'll find you the right people that want to know about you that are ready to work with you and if it turns out that you have more other things that go down the funnel that's kind of more opportunities for you to monetise these things so the more I can know the better it will be

James Dooley: Yeah and then one last question which is the opposite to an ideal customer persona is almost like doing the antonyms where you basically then go in who is this not for? And understanding who it's not for and trying to go into detail on that just to make certain that let's say they're a premium brand and they don't want to be going using anything to do with cheap or anything like that but understanding who it's not for is that a good bit of information to start a topical mark?

Pavel Klimakov: Let's say it is good to know for me as the overall level of awareness but it is not really that much of a practical point of information that will help me move things forward unfortunately in some cases we will have to talk about things like cheap, free and etc even if the company wants to be premium and avoid any of those things and this is just due to the preferences and nature of Google this comes back a little bit to the concept of coverage that we discussed in another episode but you can realise that the stronger the coverage the better it is for us so even if we want to not attract some audiences we still need to serve them at least informationally for the part where Google will evaluate and basically judge how well we are serving this bubble of the audience

James Dooley: What I absolutely love about the semantic SEO community Pavel, including yourself is the fact of covering doing that topical coverage and then doing the claim frame and proof concept so still covering cheap but then making it aware that the visitor that is reaching that might have to pay twice if they go with the cheaper option and why yours is the better option so you are still interconnecting it back to your main monetisation that we are the best we are a premium service don't go cheap if you want to go cheap you buy twice and it still interconnects back and I love the interconnections of that anyone who is listening I use the word antonyms I learned this from Pavel himself there are a lot of different nymns synonyms, acronyms hyponyms, hypernyms and all these other lexical terms that they all use some of them I have never even heard of before it becomes very important nowadays especially the way you are prompting AI to get certain things back the way I used to try to prompt AI I was trying to get a desired outcome and wasn't able to get it make sure you check out the link in the description which goes through all the different nymns within the lexicals but we hope you like this episode and Pavel it has been an absolute pleasure

Pavel Klimakov: Thank you James