Topic-first SEO means you start with the subjects your customers are deciding on, and only then look at keywords, competitors and pages. The order is the whole method: topic first, keywords second, pages last. This Academy is the how. The why, with the evidence, is in the article Topic-first SEO: what it is, why it works. Read that once. Then come back here and do the steps.
One thing your customer is deciding
I like to think of a topic as 'one thing your customer is deciding'. Which espresso machine to buy. Whether to repair the old one or replace it. Which grinder to pair with it. A topic is never an industry and never a keyword. It is a decision, and a decision has a handful of questions behind it.
In SEO land we sort those questions with one rule. Keywords with the same search results share a page. Questions with different results get their own page. Run every keyword through that rule and the list turns into a tree: a theme, the topics under it, and four to eight pages per topic. That tree is your plan. It is finite, so you can see when a topic is done and move to the next one.
Keyword-first SEO, the kind most of us learned, skips the tree. You export a keyword list, sort it by volume, write a page per keyword and repeat next month. The list never ends, the pages compete with each other, and nothing tells you what to do next. Keywords still matter in topic-first SEO (they are how we check that anyone is asking), but they are inputs. The topic is the plan.
Five keywords, one page. "best espresso machine" (4,400 searches a month), "best home espresso machine" (2,900), "best espresso machine for home" (1,900), "espresso machine reviews" (880) and "top rated espresso machines" (590) return almost the same ten results. To Google they are one question. In keyword-first SEO that is five pages, each thin, each competing with the other four. In topic-first SEO it is one page inside the topic "Choosing a home espresso machine", and 10,670 monthly searches sit behind that one page.
Worked example: the espresso cluster
The six steps
The Academy follows the method in order. Each step is a short section, and every page in it ends with what to do next.
- Start here. Learn how Google ranks pages now and what a ranking is worth to a business. You are in this step.
- Find your topics. List the decisions your customers make, check the demand, read what searchers want, and test each idea before you write.
- Build your topic map. Group the keywords into pages, look at who ranks there and whether you can win, decide what to build first, and link the pages.
- Write pages that get quoted. One question per page, the answer in the first two sentences, something only you know.
- Get seen beyond your site. Google and the AI answers weigh what the rest of the web says about you. Show up where your topic is discussed.
- Measure and maintain. Track the numbers that connect to customers, give it time, and update or delete pages on a schedule.
If you run this alone or for clients, Run it has the weekly routine.
When you need this, and when you don't
You need topic-first SEO if you want customers from search and you publish more than a handful of pages: a shop, a consultancy, a coaching business, a software product, a trade with a service area. The map keeps you from writing the same page five times and tells you when a topic is finished.
You need much less of it if your business lives on a Google Business Profile and five service pages. Then read step 4 for the service pages and step 6 for the checks, and skip the map until you start publishing guides.
Next
- The why, with the evidence and the four moves: Topic-first SEO: what it is, why it works, and how it differs from keyword-first SEO.
- Next page: How Google ranks pages now. The three changes behind the method, each one you can check yourself.
- See what Google shows for any keyword, and whether an article can win there, with the free What Ranks Here tool.
- If you would rather have the map built for you: SitePerfector does steps 2 and 3 from live search results.