How Many Blog Posts Do You Need For Topical Authority

Whilst It’s hard to definitively answer how many blog posts you’ll need to achieve authority for your topic, less competitive niches may require as little as 20 – 30 well thought out posts, whilst highly competitive niches may require over 100 detailed posts covering the topic fully. The exact amount of blog posts you’ll need depends primarily on the topical authority your competitors have developed, as well as their off-page SEO such as backlinks they have acquired.

If you’ve been diving into SEO recently, you’ve probably stumbled across the term topical authority. It’s one of those phrases that gets tossed around a lot — usually alongside buzzwords like E-E-A-T and content clusters — but when you try to pin down what it really means for your content strategy, things get murky. You might even find yourself staring at a spreadsheet of ideas wondering, Do I need 10 posts? 50? An entire library?

The truth is, topical authority isn’t about hitting some magic number of articles. It’s about building the most complete, well-structured, and useful resource on a subject in your niche. That means covering all the key angles, organising your content so it makes sense to humans and search engines alike, and doing it in a way that keeps readers coming back.

But here’s where it gets tricky — you do need enough posts to cover the ground thoroughly, and figuring out what “enough” means for your niche isn’t always obvious. Publish too little and you’ll leave big gaps competitors can exploit. Publish too much without a plan and you’ll waste time, risk cannibalising your own rankings, and make maintenance a nightmare.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through exactly how to work out the right number of posts for your topic — step by step. We’ll break down how to reverse-engineer your competitors’ coverage, spot content gaps, factor in backlinks, and even adjust your target on the fly as you publish and see what’s working. By the end, you won’t just be guessing — you’ll have a clear content roadmap based on real-world benchmarks, not wishful thinking.

Overview – What We Mean by “Enough Blog Posts”

Topical authority is essentially Google’s way of saying: “This site clearly knows a lot about this subject.”
It’s not just about having content — it’s about having comprehensive, well-organised, internally linked, high-quality content that covers a topic in depth.

Think of it like writing the definitive guidebook on a subject:

• A single chapter (blog post) won’t convince anyone you’re the expert.
• A dozen scattered chapters without a clear order will confuse your readers (and Google).
• But a full set of well-structured chapters that cover all the major angles? Now you’re talking authority.

The number of posts you need depends on:

1. The scope of your topic (narrow niche vs. broad topic)
2. The competition (how much ground they’ve covered and the depth they’ve gone into)
3. Search intent coverage (are you hitting informational, navigational, and transactional angles?)
4. Supporting content (FAQs, case studies, tools, how-tos, comparisons)

Why the Number of Blog Posts Matters for Topical Authority — and Why It’s Hard to Pin Down

The number of posts you publish is important because it determines how much of your topic you can actually cover. If you publish too few, you simply won’t have enough depth or breadth to convince Google that you’re the authority. But publishing too many without a clear plan can be just as bad. You could end up creating overlapping content that competes with itself, writing articles no one is searching for, or spreading yourself too thin to maintain quality.

The real challenge is finding the sweet spot where you’ve covered your topic fully but efficiently. That sweet spot will be different for everyone. A narrow niche like “indoor bonsai care” might only require 25–50 well-crafted posts to fully cover every relevant angle, whereas a broader niche like “personal finance” could need hundreds of posts just to scratch the surface. The difference comes down to factors like the scope of your topic, the volume and variety of keywords in your niche, how competitive your space is, and the average depth of content already ranking.

How To Work Out How Many Pages You’ll Need to Outrank Competition

If you want to become the go-to site in your niche, you can’t just write until you “feel” like you’ve covered enough. You need to know exactly what you’re up against. The easiest way to do that is to reverse-engineer your competitors’ content strategies so you can set a clear, data-driven target.

The idea is simple: find out how much content the top-ranking sites in your niche have published on your topic, then figure out how to not only match their coverage but surpass it in quality, depth, and organisation.

Step 1 – Identify Your Real Competitors

Not every site in your niche is a competitor in the topical authority race. You’re only interested in the ones dominating the search results for the keywords you actually want to rank for. You are essentially trying to capture your competitor’s topical authority, rather than their domain authority. If you are unsure on the difference, take a look at our post explaining the difference between topical and domain authority.

Here’s how to do it:

1. List your core keywords – These are your most important topics. For a gardening site, it might be “best low-light plants,” “how to propagate pothos,” “indoor plant pests,” and “self-watering planters.”
2. Search for each keyword in Google – Note which sites appear in the top 5 positions consistently.
3. Ignore irrelevant sites – If a huge site ranks for one of your keywords but is otherwise unrelated (e.g., a news site with one gardening article), you don’t need to count them.

Example:
If your niche is “home coffee brewing,” you might find that sites like Home Grounds, Perfect Daily Grind, and BeanScene Magazine keep popping up in the top spots. Those are your true competitors — not necessarily the biggest coffee sites, but the ones ranking for your target search terms.

Step 2 – Count Their Relevant Content

This is where you get the hard numbers. Head to each competitor’s blog or resources section and isolate only the content that sits within your chosen topic area.

Why? Because a site may have hundreds of posts, but only a fraction might be directly relevant to the niche you’re targeting.

Example:

• Home Grounds might have 200 total blog posts, but 80 of those are about home brewing methods, coffee beans, grinders, and brewing accessories — the rest might be café business tips, which you can ignore.
• Perfect Daily Grind could have 300 posts, but perhaps only 60 focus on the home brewing angle.

You’re looking for that “topic-specific” number because that’s what you’re competing against.

Pro Tip: To help you count up topically relevant posts quicker, use internal link analysis tools such as our free internal link visualizer tool to quickly identify relevant topical clusters. You can also use your competitor’s site structure, such as their post categories. If those category pages aren’t in their site, they might be accessible via their sitemap.

Step 3 – Assess Depth as Well as Quantity

Raw numbers aren’t enough. You also need to look at how your competitors are covering topics:

• Are they publishing short 500-word summaries or 2,000+ word in-depth guides?
• Do they include original images, data, or diagrams?
• Are they using strong internal linking between related posts?

Comparison:
Imagine two competitors:

• Competitor A has 50 posts, each 3,000 words long, full of tutorials, visuals, and detailed comparisons.
• Competitor B has 120 posts, but most are under 800 words with little depth.

If you publish content more like Competitor A’s style, you might only need 60–70 posts to compete, rather than 120.

Here you can also drill down and look at the headers of the posts. Compare the topical coverage at the header level, as well as the whole post level. This way you’ll be able to correct for the varying post lengths and counts. If competitor A covers 240 unique headers and competitor B covers only 120, this may be a good indication of competitor A’s superior topical coverage.

Step 4 – Look for Gaps and Missed Opportunities

One of the biggest advantages of competitor research is spotting areas where they’ve fallen short. These might be:

• Subtopics they haven’t covered at all.
• Outdated content that hasn’t been updated in years.
• Weak coverage of emerging trends or recent changes in your niche.

Example:
In the “indoor gardening” niche, you might find competitors have little or no coverage on newer plant trends like variegated monstera care, or they don’t have seasonal guides tailored to winter care for tropical plants. By adding these missing pieces to your own site, you instantly expand beyond their scope.

Pro Tip: Search for questions people have in your niche on social media such as Reddit and Quora. Those sites can be full of topically relevant queries that your competitors may not be covering. This is especially useful in large fields like gaming, where certain games may not have garnered the attention of large influencers and mainstream gaming media, but may present huge topical authority opportunities.

Step 5 – Analyse Their Backlink Profile

Content volume and quality aren’t the only factors that keep competitors in the top spots — backlinks play a huge role too. You can create the most comprehensive content library in your niche, but if your competitors have strong backlinks pointing to their key posts, you’ll need to compete on that front as well.

Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to see:

• How many backlinks their pillar pages have. Are their top-ranking posts supported by dozens or hundreds of links from other sites?
• Where those links are coming from. Are they from high-authority publications, niche blogs, or directories?
• Which content types earn them the most links. Are they attracting backlinks to how-to guides, data studies, or listicles?

Example:
If Home Grounds has a “Complete Guide to French Press Coffee” with 120 referring domains, and you plan to create a competing post, you now know you’ll need both a better guide and an active link-building strategy to close the gap.

Backlink analysis also helps spot opportunities. If a competitor has many posts with high traffic but very few backlinks, that’s a sign you could overtake them with stronger link acquisition.

Likewise, you could try to make up for your lack of backlinks with stronger topical authority and topic coverage, which can work in many non YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) niches. This is one of many reasons why topical authority is very important.

Step 6 – Build Your Content Target

Once you’ve gathered the data, you can set a realistic goal for how many posts you’ll need.

If the top three competitors average 65 relevant posts, starting with 15 posts isn’t going to get you far. You’ll need to:

• Match their volume – Aim for 60–70 posts covering the same core subtopics.
• Exceed their quality – Add more depth, better visuals, updated statistics, and stronger internal linking.
• Expand their coverage – Include additional posts that address the gaps you found.

Worked Example – Outranking in the “Budget Travel” Niche

1. Identify competitors – Nomadic Matt, The Broke Backpacker, and Budget Traveller.
2. Count relevant posts:
   • Nomadic Matt: 150 total travel posts, 80 are budget-specific.
   • The Broke Backpacker: 120 total posts, 90 are budget-specific.
   • Budget Traveller: 70 total posts, all budget-focused.
3. Calculate the average – (80 + 90 + 70) ÷ 3 = ~80 posts.
4. Set your target – 80 to match, 90–100 to outperform.
5. Plan quality improvements – Your 90–100 posts will be more detailed, better linked, and include topics competitors have missed, like ultra-budget transport tips or city-specific street food guides.

By the end of this process, you’re not guessing — you have a clear content roadmap based on real-world benchmarks.

How to Continuously Measure Your Topical Authority as You Publish Content

Working out how many blog posts you’ll need to achieve topical authority isn’t a one-time calculation — it’s an evolving estimate. As you publish and see how Google responds, you’ll get a clearer, more accurate picture of how much more work is required. The truth is, your original post count target might be too high or too low depending on how quickly you gain traction. Measuring your topical authority continuously ensures you’re adjusting in real time rather than blindly sticking to a static plan.

Track Keyword Coverage Across Your Topic Map

The first step is to revisit your original topic universe or content cluster map regularly and check how much ground you’ve covered — and how much remains. As you write, tick off each subtopic you’ve published content for, then look for related keywords that are starting to appear in your rankings naturally.

Example:
If your site is about indoor gardening and you’ve published 25 posts, you might start noticing you rank for terms like “how to save a dying pothos” even if you never wrote a post with that exact title. That’s a sign your topical authority is starting to grow, and it can help you adjust your plan — you might not need as many additional pothos-related posts as you originally thought because Google is already connecting your content to those queries.

Monitor Keyword Rankings for Breadth and Depth

Don’t just look at traffic. Track rankings for a broad set of target keywords, including:

• Primary keywords – The high-volume, competitive phrases you identified at the start.
• Secondary keywords – Mid-volume, more specific phrases.
• Long-tail queries – The niche, highly relevant searches that often signal authority.

Over time, you should see growth not only in the number of keywords you rank for, but also in how many clusters of related keywords you’re capturing. If your keyword spread starts to mirror or exceed that of your competitors, you’re closing in on their topical authority level.

Compare Your Growth to Competitors

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Serpstat let you directly compare your keyword footprint to competing sites. This is especially useful if you already analysed their content early on. You can see if you’re catching up in terms of:

• Total number of keywords ranked in your niche.
• Distribution across topic clusters (are you strong in the same areas, or only in one or two clusters?).
• Share of voice for key searches — essentially, what percentage of the rankings pie you own.

Example:
If in month one your competitor ranks for 3,000 keywords in your niche and you rank for 200, but by month six you’ve grown to 1,500 and they’re at 3,200, you’re gaining ground — and you might need fewer posts than you originally thought to reach parity.

Pro Tip: Impressions growth for new keywords can often be an early indicator of your growing topical authority.

Measure Internal Link Network Strength

One of the strongest signals for topical authority is how well-connected your related content is. As you publish, track your internal linking so that every cluster post points back to its pillar and vice versa. You can use tools like Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to visualise your internal link network.

If you see certain posts sitting “isolated” without enough connections, that’s a sign you’re leaving topical authority potential on the table, even if you’re producing plenty of content.

Keep an Eye on Link Acquisition to Core Content

Remember the backlink step from your competitor analysis? As you publish more, track which of your posts are earning links naturally. If your most important pillar pages aren’t attracting any backlinks, you may need to focus outreach efforts there.

You can also compare your backlink profile growth to competitors over time. If you’re gaining links faster, you may reach competitive authority sooner than your original post count target suggested.

Adjust Your Post Count Based on Early Results

Continuous measurement means your post target is flexible.

• If your early content gains rankings quickly and earns backlinks naturally, you might need fewer posts than you initially estimated.
• If rankings are slow to build or you’re struggling to break into competitive keyword spaces, you might need to expand your target and create additional posts to strengthen weaker clusters.

Example:
If you planned for 80 posts but after publishing 40 you’re already ranking for 70% of your target keywords, you may be able to hit authority with 60 high-quality posts. Conversely, if at 60 posts you’ve only hit 40% coverage, you’ll know to increase your output in specific areas.

Why This Matters

Topical authority isn’t a straight-line process. The better you measure your progress while you’re building it, the less likely you are to overshoot or undershoot your post count. This saves you time, avoids wasted effort, and ensures you’re making decisions based on data rather than assumptions.

Think of it like adjusting your route while hiking. You might plan for a 10-mile hike, but if you find a shortcut, you take it — and if a path is blocked, you reroute. Measuring your topical authority as you go is the same idea: it’s about getting to your goal efficiently, not just ticking off an arbitrary distance.

Conclusion

Topical authority isn’t about hitting a magic post count — it’s about building the most complete, high-quality resource on your topic. The right number for you depends on your niche, your competitors, and how thoroughly you cover every angle.

Set a smart target based on real data, track your progress, and adjust as you go. Focus less on the number itself and more on creating content that’s well-structured, interconnected, and genuinely useful. Do that, and you won’t just have more posts — you’ll have a site that Google and your audience see as the go-to source in your space.