Refocus on topical authority – with Pieter Serraris

Re-gain focus. Don't look blindly at the shining objects that Chatchy PT is, but use it as a key channel, maybe, but make sure that your audience is still number one and writing for your audience, creating content for your audience on the right places where your audience is. That's for me the key takeaway and then all the rest will follow the visibility in Chatchy PT will follow. I'm sure about that and that's for me as the main driver of success in 2026. Hi, I'm Peter Sardaris from OM Collective and this is Ezio 2026. Peter, what's your number one Azure Tip for 2026? Well, I would like to advise my colleagues, don't let AI take away your focus on Ezio on your bigger strategy. So keep focus on topics on topical authority. That's my main tip. Okay, so we'll unpack that. So don't let AI take focus away from your overarching SEO strategy and then obviously you mentioned topical authority there as well. So we'll get into why that is key as well, but in terms of your overall SEO strategy, are you saying that AI shouldn't be part of your overall SEO strategy. Yeah, I see that with this with a lot of asios with a lot of companies where everything seems to evolve about AI with getting ranked in Chatchy PT with getting a spot in AI overviews. This seems to be the main focus point for a lot of companies, whereas I see things happening like brands suddenly starting to add FAQs on mass in big numbers. Yeah, for FAQs that aren't even relevant. So a way to broad, I saw a client of mine who who suddenly started ranking on the word bread number one, whereas they just there are a B2B, bread ingredient supplier. So just adding all of these FAQs that shouldn't be your main focus. You should you should still remember what your what your audience is what your strategy is for as you as it was for a lot of companies before Chatchy PT suddenly came up. I saw a lot of more better maturity in a in SEO world. People started to think about EAT topical authority. These were if you looked at LinkedIn two years ago, people were talking about these topics. Now it's only Chatchy PT and how to rank in them. And obviously it is important, but you shouldn't want to rank just for the sake of ranking in these tools. You still have to remember what topics are important for your company for your interaction with your audience. And I think that's well, that if I could give one tip to my to my fellow SEOs, I would definitely advise them to do. Yeah, take that step back and obviously make use of of of all you can to to rank in Chatchy PT if it's relevant for if it's an interaction point with you and your audience definitely go there, but not just for the sake of of of a vanity metric, which I think a lot of SEOs are sort of losing themselves. Yes, yeah, I mean what you're saying resonates with me because it sounds like Chatchy PT is a tactic and it's not part of your overarching aim in terms of how to connect with your audience and how to connect with your audience is content and the user journey that you take someone down. But the tactic can be layered upon that, but only after you know what what the content is going to be and how that's going to resonate with your with your target audience obviously as well. So you mentioned topical authority a few times there as well. How does a brand become a topical authority in 2026? Well, I think first of all get to know which topics are important for your company. I don't think every company can become a topical authority on no matter what topic you have to know for which topics for which talking points your brand stands out. What's what makes you unique and once you determine this sort of the let's say the crossroads between what can be successful for your company as a topic to to be an authority for, but also to see what resonates with your clients and what's going to be a good example. So you can see the dates with your clients and sort of on the crossroads there find the topics that are important for you as a brand and then start talking about it and and show your expertise. Think about the the EAT build knowledge there to your own research on these topics share what you can share. Talk a little bit more about the process of establishing what your con your topical authority should be because it's it's easy just to say, OK, this is what we want to be a topical authority on. But first of all, you need to make sure that it's not too broad, not too narrow. You need to make sure that it's something that's likely to resonate with your target audience. And you need to make sure that it's like something that you could actually establish yourselves as an authority and because perhaps there's too much competition and it's going to be too challenging to be the brand associated with being the topical authority on that topic. And so do you have any additional thoughts on how to select that topic so that you've got a chance to rank for it and you have a chance to drive some traffic because of it. Yeah, exactly. It's it's it's not an easy process. It's not something you can just say, yeah, let's go there. But how we do it with our clients is yeah, we book an entire day with them sit together with as many people relevant people, of course, around the table talking about marketing, but also sales also other decision makers, maybe even support teams sit together and and start with a big list of topics. And then let's have everybody's opinion on these topics and narrow them down and in the end you will go to a topic where you in a company as a company can really stand out because what you mentioned is exactly that it's you have to stand out. You have to have something to say about it. It can't be too broad. It you really need to find that angle for your company to talk about. But once you have it, it's really powerful. And yeah, it's it's a challenge. It's for us as an as an agency, for instance, it's the same challenge. We also have to find our angle to not only talk about AI search, for instance, because it's way too broad. And what about the level competition out there? Do you benchmark other competitors out there to see what they're rating as a topical authority and what about keyword volume available for that topical authority? Is that key as well? I think looking at the competition is obviously key as well. I think there are you can you can start being a topical authority as a smaller company, but you have to find your niche then you have to find your angle again. You can't try to win and win the mall. Whereas if you're a bigger if your market leader already you can go to the broader topics, etc. But yeah, looking at the competition obviously is something you have to do because why should someone I should shoot a potential client choose you instead of the competitor that should be part of your story when we talking about keyword volumes. I don't think it's always that that interesting. Obviously we still have to think about keyword volumes, etc. But I think we have to look at it more from a topical point of view how much search volume there is for a specific topic. And then again, it's the same story. If within your angle within your niche, there's not that much search volume, but it's super relevant search volume. Go for it. Whereas you can think about again, these these broad generic terms or topics that are very very wide and everybody talks about them. It doesn't always bring you that much value as a company to really focus on that. So for me, relevance, topical relevance is much more important than keyword volume or something like that. But if there's zero apparent keyword volume and you've got clients saying to you, we still want to go for that. We believe that's the right topic to focus our content marketing efforts on. How would you react to that? If they really think it's it's a topic, let's talk about it. We can still try to find a strategy, but I always warn my clients when they talk only about keyword volume. Obviously when there's zero to be found in the keyword planner, it becomes more difficult. But even then, I think for smaller companies thinking about it, it's not because it says zero that is zero. So if you look at what Google sees as an entity, for instance, being found somewhere within that entity is super important. And it can even mean talking about questions that have officially zero volume in Google keyword plan or something like that. So I still try to have this focus on relevance more than just the volume. It's the same now with AI. Yeah, you can think about what has volume, which questions might be relevant prompts for a client. But if you just go in certain questions that are that are not relevant for the topic that where you stand out, what does it matter that you are being mentioned in an AI overview for questions that are not relevant for you. So yeah, I think the focus on the topic should always be key in your strategy. And once you've selected your topical authority, the topic that you want to continue to write about and beyond. present and be known for as a brand, how do you establish what content to write? How much content write, what style of content write, what type of content write? I think you have to look at your audience there first, see what kind of content they consume the most. Yeah, look at what works best. Obviously, don't try to put your entire audience in one section. You know, there's there's difference between them. I always try to talk with my client and ask them what their client, what's their audience consumes the most, what has worked best in the past, which channels they use. If it's a clientele, that's really active on LinkedIn. You have to think about making content that's good for LinkedIn. Share your content there immediately. Don't just make a small t-zron LinkedIn linking to your website. Be prepared to share your content off your website, not only stay there. Don't start creating video just because you read somewhere that video is the next best thing. Again, if you think your audience is up for it, it's interested in seeing a video summary of the content you created. Do it. Yeah, this should all be carefully planned in a content and media planning. Also, yeah, look at what worked in the past. Rework it for new channels, for new media. This kind of thing that's also very powerful. We've noticed. And you talked about what channel to use. Obviously, once you establish on the content that your audience requires, then you can consider channels like, I guess, chat GPT. Would you consider chat GPT to be a channel? Yeah, for me, that's a channel indeed. It's just one of many channels. If you see the traffic coming in from chat GPT, you would think it's a very lousy channel. It's not interesting at all. Is that how you measure success in chat GPT? Is it about traffic or is it about some people consuming your content on their platform? Well, I don't think just looking at traffic because I do believe there are ways of tracking visibility in chat GPT already, where you can see that you're being mentioned as a brand very often, which makes it just as interesting as being mentioned in Reddit, for instance, for me. So all of these channels, they can be interesting if your audience is there again. Also, yeah, the example of Reddit is a very good one, I think, because this is now the next best thing, next big thing, because we know chat GPT uses Reddit as a source. Google gives it a lot of attention also, but for instance, where I come from, I'm Belgium, Reddit as a platform is not that big. It's not used that often. So, do we have to go there as a company? Yeah. Only if your client is there, only if it's part of their customer journey, then I would consider using Reddit. So you really have to think about this customer journey and the customer journey can be different for every topic. So if you have a number of topics where you want to be an authority in, it really helps to focus on different customer journeys that your clients might have. So then that's again, a confirmation for me why this focus on topics to refocus really on these topics makes it so important because it can help you stay clear of content that's not relevant, but it also helps you determine which channels are most important, content should go on which channel. If you want to be visible in chat GPT, you can't imagine the entire customer journey happening in chat GPT yet. Maybe it will come someday, but for the moment, it's not that it's it's earlier in the customer journey that people do their research more and more in chat GPT, but yeah, don't imagine everything happening there. So you still have your website, you still have your LinkedIn, you still have other websites where it's relevant to be there. The same with with backlinking, if you look at your majestic account and you see where are there, where we came I found missing backlinks. Yeah, only look at the ones that are relevant for your topic again, don't just go adding backlinks wildly, only look at again, get the focus on these topics that are important for you, on the strategy that's important for you and then yeah, it will it will have so much more effect than just adding blindly to your yeah. It was the key takeaway from the tip you shared today. Yeah, regain focus, don't don't look blindly at the shining objects that chat GPT is, but use it as a as a key channel maybe, but make sure that your audience is still number one and then writing for your audience, creating content for your audience on the right places where your audience is that's for me the key takeaway and then all the rest will follow the visibility in chat GPT will follow. I'm sure about that and that's for me is the main driver of success in 2026. What you're surprised is SEO lead at OM Collective. Find out more over at oemcollective.com. What you're thinking about is that we're being part of SEO in 2026. Thanks for having me. I've been your host David Bain. Get your copy of SEO in 2026, the book over at SEO in 2026.com. [BLANK_AUDIO]