Topical maps seem to have propped up not too long ago (say 2022 onwards).
A topical map is a full analysis of ALL topics within a certain category/niche which are then grouped into topics. You can then target the keywords within a certain topic in a single article/page on your site.
These maps help a TON when you are starting a website from scratch. However, they are very time-consuming to put together.
So I’ve tested out this service where they build out topical maps for you.
Let’s break them down below.
Use Vettted to Find a Topical Map Service
Vettted is my SEO marketplace, where you can discover real SEO experts and hire them to help grow your business.Â
Each expert is carefully vetted before they can sell through the platform, so you’re guaranteed to find a freelancer with genuine SEO skills, knowledge, and experience.
As a complete SEO marketplace, Vettted is your source for technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. That includes topical maps, and you’ll find lots of Vettted experts who can create a topical map for your website.
A major advantage of hiring through Vettted is that you’ll know exactly who is delivering your topical map. You’ll be in direct contact with your freelancer throughout the process, while Vettted’s friendly and responsive support team will be on-hand to help whenever needed.
Ready to get started? Find a topical map SEO freelancer on Vettted.
The 5 Best Topical Map SEO Services
Manually creating a topical map is a lot of work. You have to conduct comprehensive keyword research, group hundreds or even thousands of keywords into sensible topic clusters, and carefully plan your website’s hierarchy and internal linking structure.
The alternative is to hire a topical map SEO service to do the job for you. Below, I compare five of the best services you can use to create a topical map for your website.
| Service | Best For | Starting Price | Delivery Time | Money-back Guarantee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TopicalMap.com | Overall Service | $1197 | 14 days | Yes |
| FAT JOE | Lowest Price & Fastest Delivery | $262 | 5 days | Yes |
| LeadSpring | Biggest Discounts | $597 | 14 days | Yes |
| Click Vision | Topical Map + Content Bundles | $399 | 10 days | No |
| EEAT Experts | Flexibility & Optional Extras | $897 | 14 days | No |
1. TopicalMap.com [Best Overall]
TopicalMap.com is a service operated by respected SEO Yoyao. Yoyao has years of experience in SEO, and in creating topical maps specifically, and he has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. The TopicalMap.com homepage features testimonials from many of these clients, including my own recommendation for his service.
The TopicalMap.com service is very easy and straightforward. It begins when you submit your ‘seed keyword’, which is the main topic that your website is about. It’s important that this is neither too broad nor too narrow. For example, ’keyword research’ would be a good seed keyword, rather than ‘SEO’ (too broad) or ‘topical maps’ (too narrow).
Once you’ve submitted your seed keyword, Yoyao and the experts at TopicalMap.com will get to work and provide you with a spreadsheet containing a comprehensive list of topics, keywords, search volumes, CPCs, keyword difficulties, content types, and SEO titles for every keyword they’ve discovered in relation to your chosen topic.
You’ll also receive a topical mind map, which is a visual representation of your topical map. You can click around this mind map to explore topics across up to four levels of website hierarchy.
I used TopicalMap.com to get the topics, site structure, and internal linking strategy for a site I was building on an aged domain and I was impressed by the results. That’s why TopicalMap.com is my overall top pick for the title of best topical map service.
Here’s a screenshot of the spreadsheet I got from them:
Plans:
- Starter: $1197 – Includes full topical map, 4-level mind map, site structure & internal linking guide.
- Authority: $2397 – Everything in starter plus keyword difficulty, topic search intent, content type, and SEO title recommendations.
2. FAT JOE [Lowest Price & Fastest Delivery]
The FAT JOE website describes their topical map service as a ‘content plan (topical map) service’, and the emphasis here is on content planning rather than simply generating a comprehensive map of your chosen topic.
Unlike many other topical map services, FAT JOE’s service includes titles and content briefs as standard. The idea is that the service will leave you ready to hand your content plan and briefs to your writing team or begin writing articles yourself. The pro plan also includes credit to have FAT JOE’s writers create some content for you.
While FAT JOE’s topical map service is relatively inexpensive – and it’s great that content plans are included – it’s worth noting that you may receive fewer topics than you would get from other topical map services. The basic plan includes up to 50 topics, while the pro plan is limited to 100.
This makes FAT JOE’s topical map service suitable for anyone looking for a content plan that covers the majority of their niche, but if you need a complete overview of your niche in order to establish topical authority, you may want to forego the content plans at this stage and choose a more comprehensive topical map service instead.
Plans:
- Basic: $262 – Up to 50 topics with content plans included.
- Pro: $327 – Up to 100 topics, SERP difficulty, suggested word counts, and FAT JOE content writing credit.
3. LeadSpring [Biggest Discount]
Like other topical map services, LeadSpring takes your niche topic and generates a list of articles that you should write to comprehensively cover than niche.
LeadSpring generates topical maps using a wide variety of sources, including competitor websites, Google Trends, People Also Ask, Answer The Public, Ahrefs Questions, and more. The resulting keywords are then clustered into related categories before being delivered to you in the form of your topical map.
Topical maps include categories, pages, target keywords for each page, and search volumes. You can see an example of a LeadSpring topical map here.
Small niches include around 100 to 300 pages, while broad niches may have over 500 pages in their topical map.
LeadSpring only offers one topical map plan and, at the time of writing, there is a discount that gives you a full topical map for $597, down from the usual price of $997.
While this is at the lower end of the scale when it comes to topical map pricing, it’s important to note that LeadSpring’s topical maps lack some features that you get from other services, such as internal linking suggestions, keyword difficulty scores, and visual mind maps.
Plans:
$997$597 – Full topical map in 14 days with a money-back guarantee.
4. Click Vision [Best For Topical Map + Content Bundles]
Like TopicalMap.com, Click Vision’s topical map service includes both a spreadsheet version of your topical map and a visual mind map that displays interlinked topics in a more visually appealing and intuitive form.
Topical maps from Click Vision include categories, keywords, internal linking advice, search volumes, keyword difficulty scores, search intents, SEO titles, and content outlines. You can see an example spreadsheet here.
As well as their topical map service, Click Vision offers on-page SEO services, technical SEO audits, link building packages, and content writing services. You can save 30% off the price of your topical map and content when you order both at the same time as part of a bundle deal.
Plans:
- Basic: $399 – Up to 3 levels of website hierarchy.
- Premium: $1699 – Up to 6 levels of hierarchy, plus interlinking plan, SEO titles, and keyword difficulty analysis.
5. EEAT Experts [Most Flexible Service]
When you order a topical map from EEAT Experts, you receive hundreds of clustered keywords and a map that shows how the various clusters and individual keywords relate to each other. This is delivered in the form of a spreadsheet and a visual mind map.
EEAT Experts’ topical map service is more flexible than most other services. Rather than selecting a fixed plan, you can choose from a range of optional add-ons to customize your topical map to your needs.
These add-ons include SEO and CTR-optimized titles for your articles, post type recommendations, and the option to include keyword difficulty scores and word count suggestions.
EEAT Experts also offers an EEAT site audit service, which can be added alongside your topical map for an additional fee of $247. This audit includes an analysis of every page of your website to check for EEAT (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust) ranking signals and a written report to help you identify and address any EEAT issues.
Plans:
- $897 – Topical map, mind map, and internal linking suggestions.
- Add-ons: $197 each – SEO titles, post type recommendations, keyword difficulty scores, and suggested word counts.
- EEAT audit: $247 – A complete review of your website’s experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust signals.
Why Are Topical Maps Good For SEO?
The main advantage of using a topical map is that it helps to establish your website as a topical authority. A well-structured, carefully planned, properly interlinked, and efficiently organized website not only improves the user experience, it also makes it easier for search engine algorithms to understand a website, recognize the relevance of the content and identify the site as an authority on a topic.
Search engines no longer deliver search results based simply on what keywords appear on a page. Modern SEO is about matching your content to the search intent of users. Topical maps can help you achieve this by organizing your content around themes and topics and helping you create a solid site structure.
Topical maps can also help you to identify content gaps. When you find an aspect of your niche that you haven’t sufficiently covered, you can create content to fill that gap and provide more comprehensive coverage of your topic.
This means you avoid missing out on traffic for keywords that you weren’t previously targeting, and it can help with EEAT signals too, as your website may be considered more credible and authoritative if it completely covers all aspects of your chosen niche.
Why Use a Topical Map Service?
There are several benefits to using a topical map SEO service, rather than manually building your own topical map. In my opinion, the five biggest benefits are:
- Save time: A topical map service will deliver your topical map in two weeks or less, with very little input from you. During that time, you can work on other aspects of your website, rather than spending days or weeks learning how to make topical maps.
- Get expert support: You should hire an experienced, professional SEO to create your topical map. As well as the map itself, this is an opportunity to work closely with an SEO expert and gain insights that could benefit your website.
- Avoid gaps and mistakes: If you build your topical map yourself then it’s likely that you will miss keywords or make mistakes when it comes to planning clusters, hierarchies, and internal links. A topical map service will have the expert knowledge to avoid these gaps and mistakes.
- Gain strategic insights: A topical map is more than just a list of keywords to target. By choosing a service that defines your site structure, interlinking strategy, search intent by article, and other useful insights, you can take a more strategic approach to content creation.
- Ongoing support: You don’t have to lose contact with your topical map service as soon as your map is delivered. Many good topical map services will be happy to offer further support as you build out your site around your topical map.
Of course, you don’t have to use a topical map SEO service. You could build your topical map yourself or develop your website without a topical map. However, while this may save money, it can also waste time and mean you miss valuable opportunities to grow your website.
How to Choose a Topical Map Service
Whether you’re hiring a freelance SEO to build your topical map or working with an agency, there are six key factors that I suggest you consider before placing an order.
- Expertise: How do you know that the service provider is an expert in building topical maps? Do they list other websites they have worked on, show examples of topical maps they’ve built, or otherwise demonstrate their experience and expertise?
- Plans: What plans are available and what do they include? Don’t just choose the cheapest plan, as it may not include all of the features that you need. For example, SEO titles and keyword difficulty scores are often reserved for more premium plans.
- Price: The price of a topical map varies from a few hundred dollars to more than a thousand dollars. When comparing prices, make sure you are comparing like for like and remember that you may need to pay more for a higher quality service.
- Guarantees: Some topical map services offer money-back guarantees if you’re not completely satisfied. As topical maps aren’t cheap, this kind of guarantee can be reassuring and helps to reduce your risk.
- Reputation: Read unbiased testimonials, check reviews, and seek out personal recommendations to find a topical map service that you can trust.
- Communication: I recommend contacting topical map service providers and asking a few questions about their service before you commit to hiring them. The quality of their communication at this stage will give you an idea of the communication standards you can expect as a client.
Final Thoughts
The in-depth and comprehensive nature of a topical map means that it isn’t practical for topical map services to offer free trials, so when searching for the best topical map service, you’re going to have to base your decision on the information available, user testimonials, reviews, and recommendations.
To reduce the risks involved, I recommend doing your research, choosing a service from well-known and respected SEO professionals, asking questions in advance, and checking money-back guarantee policies before you place your order.
Which topical map service is right for you will depend on your needs and budget, but these are my personal top picks:
- Best Overall Service: TopicalMaps.com
- Lowest Price & Fastest Delivery: FAT JOE
- Biggest Discounts: LeadSpring
- Topical Map + Content Bundles: Click Vision
- Most Flexible Service: EEAT Experts
Finally, as well as these five leading topical map services, I’m also confident in the service offered by Vettted, my SEO marketplace.Â
