Topical Maps for New Sites

Updated October 7, 2026

What Is a Topical Map?

A topical map is a plan of every page a site will publish on a subject, grouped into hubs and connected by internal links. It shows search engines and readers that the site covers a topic thoroughly and coherently, which is what people mean by topical authority.

Why New Sites Need One

• Focus: covering one topic deeply tends to work better than scattering posts across many.
• Fewer wasted pages: clustering first stops you writing several pages for one intent.
• Internal links by design: every page has a parent hub and related pages.
• A publishing order: you know what to write first.

How to Build a Topical Map

1. Define the core topic and the audience it serves.
2. Map the search journey: what people search before, during and after the main decision.
3. Collect keywords for each stage, favoring long-tail terms. See how to find low-competition keywords.
4. Cluster them into pages with keyword clustering.
5. Group pages into hubs, each led by a strong overview page.
6. Plan links: hub to child, child to hub, sibling to sibling, and informational pages to decision pages.
7. Prioritize: start with the weakest results pages and the pages closest to your goal.

Example Structure

The "one step out" topics are adjacent subjects your audience also searches. Add them after the core is covered, and only when they connect back to it.

Use Weak Spots to Order the Map

Once the map exists, check each page's main keyword for weak spots. Publish the pages with the weakest competition first so the site earns early impressions, then work toward harder hub pages. Bulk tools such as LowFruits make this check quick across a whole map; see the LowFruits tutorial.