With Topical Map - get ready to breathe life into your Content by discovering new ideas and angles you may not have considered before!
What is a Topical Map?
It's our newest addition to Keyword Research, ingeniously designed to expand your Content Strategy and build topical authority by analyzing your competitors' ranking content. It generates article ideas for pillar and support pages with keywords you haven't covered yet.
Topical Map provides you with semantically related terms. This means it doesn't just focus on explicit keyword matches but goes deeper to understand the context and relevance of the words in relation to your Content, allowing you to create a more robust and coherent content architecture.
Consider this your go-to tool for:
Have a clearer view of what your target audience is actually looking for.
Find new ideas to expand your content strategy and answer all searchers' questions.
Improving on linking Content for better architecture.
See how others navigate the Topical Map landscape and discover who you're up against in your niche.
Build topical authority
How does it work?
Topical Map is a feature under Topic Explorer. To create a new Topical Map query, go to Topic Explorer > Explore new topics > Topical Map.
Layout structure and figures overview
If it's your first time using Topical Map, you may have many questions about indicators, all the new information, and the level of insight it provides. We have prepared a quick overview to help you navigate our tool better.
Topics
Topical Map organizes all the data for better linking and architecture. So, as a starting point, you have a group of Topics generated based on the keyword(s). The order of Topics is set as follows:
KD: It's the average difficulty of all the articles on that topic. They are expressed on a scale from 0 to 100.
SV: Search volume for all the keywords in that group.
Covg.: Number of articles completed / Total number of article ideas available in that specific topic.
Delete and Restore a Topic: You can delete a topic by clicking on the three-dotted menu and selecting 'Archive Topic.'
To Restore, scroll to the bottom of the Topic list and locate Archived. Next, you want to click the three-dotted menu and hit "Restore Topic."
Article ideas are suggestions on what to write about, including keywords you are not covering yet. However, remember these are only suggestions; you're not required to complete them all. The best approach is to evaluate the suggested ideas by topical coverage and authority score.
Show titles: You can enable this toggle to get title ideas. Titles are selected from one of the high-ranking pages that best fit the keyword with the highest search volume.
Titles are merely ideas and are not carried over to Content Editors created within Topical Map. Instead, we pick the primary keyword from that particular cluster as the title.
Inside Topical Map
When working on any of the article ideas, you can choose up to 10 keywords. Feel free to pick the ones that best work for you, content checking and unchecking the boxes considering Search Volume and Avg KD. Keep in mind that the main keyword is not optional.
Make sure to review your keyword selection, as you won't be able to make changes once you create the Content Editor.
Tip: You can consult the competitor's article ranking for the keywords in the cluster by clicking the icons right next to Avg. Difficulty.
Creating a Content Editor from Topical Maps
You can create traditional Content Editors from Topical Map, which costs 1 CE credit. You can also create AI articles from our Topical map! All you need to do is click the 'Write for 1 AI credit' option. You can do this in the article idea section or on the selected page.
💡 You can also create bulk Content Editors or AI articles, as shown below! Once you've selected your article ideas, click 'Create CE Articles' or 'Create AI Articles' and Vouila!
Should you change your mind and wish to cancel the generation of the AI article, we offer a 5-second window to do so.
Want to learn more about how to use Surfer AI? Here is an article just for you!
Most common errors
We understand general errors could mean many things. That's why we have introduced more detailed errors for failed queries, the messages of which are usually pretty self-explanatory. We have quite a list, as our team has worked on being as specific as possible, so in this article, we'll only mention the most common ones.
Analysis Type | Error message | Possible cause |
Competitors | We're unable to retrieve data for the competitors' domains you provided. This might be due to errors in the domain names, insufficient traffic, or no shared keywords. Please verify the domains or try adding different competitors. | - there were typos in competitors' names - competitors are too small / too new, and we don't have data for them - competitors are in a very rare niche, and we do not have their keywords in our database |
GSC | Your website seems quite new or doesn't have enough content for a detailed analysis. Try using a single keyword for your query or adding more content to your site. | The website is probably too small and ranks for a few keywords. It could possibly rank for some rare keywords we don't have in our database. |
Keyword GSC | We couldn't find enough relevant information for your keyword. This sometimes happens with very unique terms. Try using a more common keyword. | The provided keyword is weak, and either very few other domains rank for it or belong to a niche. |
If you have questions about other messages or possible courses of action to take, please contact our Support team.
FAQ
Do I necessarily need GSC to use Topical Map?
It's best to enable it to get full functionality with GSC analysis, but you can also use Keyword with Topical Map without GSC.
Do I have to complete all the articles suggested?
No, you want to pick what you think is best for your Content, considering factors such as Search Volume, Average keyword difficulty, and competitor's score.
How can I see the title ideas for the articles?
You can hide and show title ideas by activating the "Show titles" toggle in the filter section next to competitors.
Why did I not get results for my domain?
Since we have introduced more detailed error messages, the answers are clearer as to the reason. Most times, it could be related to using niche keywords, which limits our reach in finding relevant information. Please remember detailed errors are only visible inside Keyword Research and not on the Home view.
What locations and languages are supported?
United States, Poland, Austria, Canada - EN, United Kingdom, Venezuela, Australia, Uruguay, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, France, Czechia, Hungary, New Zealand, Switzerland - DE, Mexico, Finland, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, Italy, India - EN, Sweden.
Why does the title of the article differ from that of the Content Editor and that of the suggested article?
Article titles are just suggestions that you can later edit. So, when creating a new article, you should expect the primary keyword from the cluster to be the title.
I'm not seeing my domain, but GSC is enabled.
Make sure you are connected to the account using the verified domain. You can also consult your Google Search Console to double-check if the domain is registered.