The Most Important Information to Start a Topical Map with Pavel Klimakov

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: Um, the most important thing for me to know is the actual main services or maybe sub-services or subtopics that the client is monetising 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 that, as a concept, can exist, right? Maybe it can be a product that is not so widely known. Maybe it's something that just got invented that, you know, 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 monetisable elements, 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 Fiverr gigs and stuff like that, but we wanted to see what, what are these people doing for a topical map? And 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. Now, 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 three products what 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 seen one of your videos and I loved it where it was playing a game and it had just a 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, like, these 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 topical dilution. And I'm like, if you start from the central part of where you make the most money in the services that you do and just keep expanding from there, it's by far the best way.

Pavel Klimakov: Yeah. Every single one of these that seem to sell topical maps... I'm not saying from the semantic... It's not for people like you lot. I'm on about from these other people that are selling it left, right and centre. We was like, "What are these selling for $200?" Like, 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 just doing is getting the five, 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 elements is exactly what you just did 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.

James Dooley: Sure. So the five elements you mentioned, like the central search intent, the central entity and then core, outer sections, um, these things are what I would say...

Pavel Klimakov: So they come obviously from the inventor of the topical map, from Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR. I think, I've never confirmed this with him, but I believe these things are in place to create a kind of, let's say, guidelines or 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, you know, velvet ropes in the cinema so you don't go, or like in an airport, so you don't go, you know, off-track. It just helps you to stay approximately, like, 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, it's crazily chaotic. It is just genuinely all over the place. And somehow in all of this, we need... 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 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 realise 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, 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 a, 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 realise 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 behaviour 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 funnel words, you realise 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 realise 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's more attempts to basically make the sale.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I've got a few, uh, 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. And initially you might say, "No, that's not needed in a topical map." It's just for you to visualise what the products 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, uh, if there is, if that happens, that helps. And that has happened a few times.

James Dooley: And then what about, um, videos? Is that anything else or not? Is that similar to images? If they send it, it helps so you can see and understand what it is that they do, or not really? Is that not really a bit of information that's needed to start a topical map?

Pavel Klimakov: It, it might be. But here the main part is in a scenario when I'm not really even familiar with the nature of 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 would like to, like, see it. The more visual it is, the easier it is for me to learn and kind of 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, um, let's say, I'd just get on a call with one of their, let's say, representative or representatives or main managers and they'll kind of walk me through, like, "This is how it works. This is what we have. Let's say this is, like, actual physical product that we have. Sort of, this is how it works." Once I get all of these things, then it's easier to kind of get this funnel started.

James Dooley: And then with regards to information needed to start a topical map, then what about competitors? Do you ever ask for, like, a couple of competitors, five competitors? Is it more, the more competitors that they can send through, the better?

Pavel Klimakov: To be honest, I don't necessarily focus on that. But it's more like, um, if they have a kind of 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.

James Dooley: And then what about ideal customer persona? So 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? Would that help or not, really?

Pavel Klimakov: Um, in general, the more I can... The more I can understand and see the overall, let's say, like, main moving pieces of types of people that are interconnected with the 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 is 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, um, what's the main target usually? What's the main goal of a site? Is it they're trying to monetise to different audience 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. Um, if there are many, it might even make sense to kind of 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 you, if it turns out that you have more other things that go down the funnel, that's, uh, 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, um, which is the opposite to an ideal customer persona. It's like almost like doing the antonyms, where you're basically then going, "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 map?

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, um, 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. Um, and this is just due to the sort of preferences and nature of Google. Um, this comes back a little bit to the concept of coverage that we discussed in another episode. But you can realise that, um, 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 Prove concept. So still covering cheap, but then kind of making it aware that the visitor that's reaching that might have to pay twice if they go with the cheaper option and why yours is the better option. So you're still interconnecting it back to your main monetisation that we are the best. We're 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's listening, with regards to... I use the word antonyms. Now, I learned this from Pavel himself. Um, there's a lot of other different names. Obviously synonyms, acronyms, but there's other, like, hyponyms, hypernyms and all these other lexical terms that they all use. Some of them I've never even heard of before. Um, it becomes very, very important nowadays, especially the way you're prompting AI to get certain things back. The way I used to try to prompt AI, I was explain... I was trying to get a desired outcome and wasn't being able to get it. Make certain you check out the link in the description, which goes through all the different nyms within the lexical relations. But we hope you like this episode. And Pavel, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Pavel Klimakov: Thank you, James.