How to Build a Strong Topical Map With ChatGPT
When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), an essential part of the content creation process is topical mapping.
A topical map is a hierarchical collection of blog post topics within your niche. It allows you to organize and plan your content to cover everything necessary to establish strong topical authority.
This is typically organized into a spreadsheet for easy management or into a mind map so you can visualize your content structure, as seen below.
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Why a Topical Map Is Important
Google is continually evolving as a semantic search engine. This means it can understand the meaning of your content both as individual posts and at a site-wide level.
By building a strong collection of posts around a particular topic, both users and search engines recognize your expertise and trustworthiness on the subject.
A topical map is your foundation for this. It helps you improve your rankings and become a strong authority within your niche.
No longer can you simply target a long list of random long-tail keywords. While these types of keywords are still very important, you also need to cover your subject matter at a higher level (and in a strategic way).
With the help of ChatGPT, you can easily organize a strong map of your subject matter.
In this post, you’ll learn how to:
- use a series of ChatGPT prompts to build your topical map
- add your topical map to a spreadsheet
- continue building out your topical map
- properly execute your topical map as a strategy
Let’s get started!
Preparing Your List of Posts
If you have already posts on your site, you’ll need to get a list of all your blog post titles. We’re going to use this in the topical map.
If you don’t have a website with content yet, you can skip this step.
Gathering a list of all your post titles can be time-consuming (if you have a lot of posts on your site).
The easiest way I’ve done this is by launching a draft page in WordPress and using a block to display a feed of all my blog posts. I change the block settings hide the images, categories, and other meta information.
I’m using the Gutenberg editor with Kadence Blocks to output my list which I can easily copy and paste, as seen below.
If you’re not able to do this easily with your tech setup, just manually copy and paste the titles from your blog feed into a spreadsheet.
ChatGPT Prompts
Now, it’s time to launch ChatGPT and generate your topical map.
First, let’s get ChatGPT thinking about how to create a good topical map.
Starting Prompt
Enter this prompt. Be sure to add your niche where indicated. For example, “dog grooming.”
Imagine you have a website and want to establish it as an authority on the topic of [YOUR NICHE]. To achieve this, you decide to create a topical map. Your goal is to structure your content in a way that is easily understood by both users and search engines. Write a step-by-step guide on how to create a topical map for your website. Explain the importance of topical relevance and how it can improve your site’s visibility in search engine results. Provide insights on identifying topics and sub-topics, conducting research, and planning your content. Discuss strategies for building a logical site architecture, including internal linking, breadcrumbs, URL structure, and schema markup. Offer tips and best practices for implementing a topical map effectively. Feel free to use examples or case studies to illustrate your point.
Our next response will generate the topical map.
There are two different versions below depending on whether you have existing content or not. Only enter the prompt that applies to you.
Option 1: If You Have Existing Posts
Now, create a very actionable, semantically optimized SEO topical map for the niche of [YOUR NICHE]. I want you to use this list of articles in the topical map, but you’ll need to fill in the gaps with new topics in addition to categorizing these existing posts I have written. The goal is to fill in the gaps so we are covering the topic effectively and fully. Your response can be very long, if necessary to achieve the goal. It should be a 3-level hierarchy. Here’s the list of existing articles:
[PASTE YOUR LIST OF POST TITLES HERE]
Option 2: If You Don’t Have Posts Yet
Now, create a very actionable, semantically optimized SEO topical map for the niche of [YOUR NICHE]. The map should cover the topic effectively and fully. It can be long, if necessary. It should be a 3-level hierarchy.
Now that you have your responses, let’s organize it into a spreadsheet.
Organizing Into a Spreadsheet
After using the prompts, you’ll get a long response. It should be broken into a hierarchical structure with three levels, as seen below.
If your response doesn’t include three distinct levels, regenerate the response.
Then, copy the data into a spreadsheet following this column structure with appropriate spacing so you can clearly see the hierarchy.
As you can see in this structure, your Level 1 topics are a parent to your Level 2 topics, which are a parent to your Level 3 topics.
I’ll talk more about what this means for your content strategy later on.
Expanding and Improving
As we all know, ChatGPT isn’t perfect.
It’s possible that it missed some of your existing posts or left out some important topics.
Regardless of how great the response is, you’ll want to expand the topics within the map (especially the long-tail Level 3 topics) using your own expert knowledge and keyword research.
Additionally, ChatGPT likely did not turn your Level 1 and 2 topics into blog post titles. You’ll need to do this as well.
See my example topical map if this sounds confusing to you.
Executing Your Strategic Map
Now that you have the topical map created… congrats! It’s time to execute it.
Understanding the Map
First, it’s important that you understand that your Level 1 and 2 columns are not simply “categories” of your Level 3 posts.
Your Level 1 and 2 columns should be turned into blog posts themsleves. These posts serve as comprehensive articles about the subject matter and the Level 3 topics underneath them.
For example, let’s look at this example cluster that I’ve generated:
- Level 1: Fundamentals of SEO: A Definitive Guide
- Level 2: How to Perform On-Page Optimization
- Level 3: 10 Quick Tips for On-Page SEO Optimization
- Level 3: The Art of Writing SEO-Friendly Headlines
- Level 3: Creating SEO-Friendly URLs: Best Practices
- Level 2: How to Perform On-Page Optimization
Imagine you’re going to write the Level 2 post, “How to Perform On-Page Optimization.”
This will be a long. comprehensive post covering everything related to on-page SEO. It will include the topics mentioned in your Level 3 posts: URLs, headlines, quick tips, and other relevant information.
However, in “How to Perform On-Page Optimization,” you won’t go into immense detail about headlines.
Yes, you’ll have a small section about headlines because it’s important, but if you go into immense detail about it and every other aspect of on-page SEO in a single post, your post would be so lengthy that it would be difficult to navigate and consume.
Instead, in the small section about headlines, you’ll create an internal link to your Level 3 post that dives deeper into headlines. This allows people who are very interested in learning about headlines to access a comprehensive source of information on that topic alone.
Where to Start Creating Content
Now that you have your map created, it’s time to start writing. Don’t just start picking random topics in the map. You should produce your content in “clusters.”
Clusters are sections of your topical map that have a parent-child relationship. I’ve highlighted some examples below.
Boxed in blue is a Level 1 and 2 cluster about “On-Page SEO.” Boxed in red is a Level 2 and 3 cluster under the topic of “Meta Tags.”
In general, I recommend starting with a Level 1 cluster, like the one boxed in blue. Write the Level 1 post, then continue with the Level 2 posts contained within that cluster.
This is a helpful approach because you may uncover additional Level 2 topics to add to your topical map while writing the Level 1 post.
Once you’ve completed your Level 1 and Level 2 posts within that cluster, start working on the “sub-clusters” under your Level 2 posts, like the cluster boxed in red.
To determine which clusters to prioritize, ask yourself these questions:
- Which topics are likely to perform well based on the data I have about my existing content?
- Which clusters contain the most low-competition keywords?
- Which clusters are most relevant to my niche?
Now, it’s time to start writing!
Internal Linking Structure
I want to emphasize the importance of internal links and how it ties everything together.
Naturally your parent posts will discuss the topics contained in it’s child posts. For example, your Level 1 posts should contain contextual links to your Level 2 posts.
Following my example above with the parent post of “How to Perform On-Page Optimization,” this post will contain a section explaining how to use headings properly.
In my section about headings, which may only be 100 words long, I’ll link to my comprehensive post about headings. This allows my readers to learn more about headings if they wish to.
Setting these links properly are important to help your users find what they’re looking for. It also makes it easier for Google to crawl and build an understanding of how your website ties together as a whole.
Additionally, if you build backlinks to one of your parent posts, those benefits will be partially passed down to the child posts. This means the clusters in your topical map can see improved ranking as whole even if you only drive backlinks to a single parent post.
Summary
I’ve found this technique for topical mapping extremely useful. Before implementing this, I felt that I was randomly choosing keywords. I also focused too much on low-competition keywords.
ChatGPT can sometimes be tricky to work with, so there’s always a chance that you’ll need to modify these prompts based on your niche. If you find ways to make improvements to these prompts, please let me know in the comments below or reach out to me directly.
Jonathan is a WordPress expert with 10+ years of experience building and managing websites. He owns WPCharger, a service business that specializes in managing WordPress websites for small and midsize businesses.
