Authority Coverage & Silo Link Quality
Read topical authority scores and coverage gaps beside silo-aware link diagnostics: queued fixes, pillar health, and a link quality matrix that tells you whether to add content, tighten anchors, or rewire internals.
Before you start
Authority Coverage summarizes how completely each topic silo is represented on your site—breadth of URLs, reinforcement through internal links, and obvious gaps versus a topic model. Silo Queues (the worklist inside the Silo & Link Quality tab, tab=silo-queues) turns those signals into actionable rows: orphaned clusters, repetitive anchors, thin pillars, and cross-silo noise.
You’ll get reliable numbers when:
- Categories or custom taxonomies reflect real topical silos (not one giant “Blog” bucket).
- Each franchise has one obvious pillar URL—the flagship guide or hub page—and narrower cluster posts beneath it.
- Links live in paragraph content too, not only headers, mega-menus, and footers, so reinforcing edges can be detected.
Authority Coverage screen
SEO Rank Genius → Tools & Analytics → Authority Coverage
The topical authority score is an internal blended index—not a ranking factor leaked from Google. It rewards silos where you’ve published enough depth, clustered URLs around one hub, and wired clusters together with contextual internal links.
Scores vs. pillar pages
Authority Coverage
Topical authority score, completeness, and prioritized gap detection
| Silo / pillar URL | Authority | URLs | Link health | Alerts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress SEO /wordpress-seo-guide/ |
84 | 24 | Strong mesh | 4 micro gaps |
| Local SEO /local-pack-playbook/ |
61 | 11 | Uneven depth | Thin pillar draft |
| Technical audits /site-audit-checklist/ |
47 | 6 | Orphans | Rebuild cluster |
Authority Coverage — KPI row with silo leaderboard, authority meter bars, hub URLs, and health badges.
Silo & Link Quality
SEO Rank Genius → Tools & Analytics → Silo Queues (tab=silo-queues) focuses on graph hygiene: whether clusters point at the declared pillar, how many contextual internal links pages receive, anchor diversity, and cross-silo leakage from widgets or sloppy categories.
Silo queues (what lands in the worklist)
- Orphan clusters — URLs indexed but receiving zero contextual inlinks.
- Anchor monoculture — Repeated exact-match anchors to the pillar; split with partial and natural phrases.
- Weak hub support — Pillar earns few downward links despite many cluster posts.
- Noise backlinks — High share of internals arriving from unrelated silos.
Silo & Link Quality
Queued link-quality tasks prioritized by crawl impact
Silo queues — prioritized worklist rows with severity, silo grouping, anchor/taxonomy tags, and next-step affordances.
Reading the link quality matrix
The link quality matrix contrasts inbound strength with anchor/context quality. Quadrants labelled risk, fix, gem, or star shorthand whether you’re looking at salvageable clusters, polishing winners, rewiring orphans, or pausing noisy URLs.
Link quality matrix · WordPress SEO
Higher inbound contextual links (X) × healthier anchor/context mix (Y)
Inbound contextual depth →
Link quality matrix — four srg-mock-q-* quadrants (gem, star, fix, risk) summarize where to expand, polish, rewrite anchors, or rescue orphans.
Improving scores
Treat the authority index as a lagging indicator. You raise it by (1) publishing missing intents with business value, (2) merging cannibalistic twins, (3) pointing clusters at the correct pillar with varied anchors, and (4) pruning off-theme posts that pollute the silo graph.
Pillar page cards (hub inventory)
Use the pillar summary cards to confirm each hub’s depth, cluster count, and last refresh. If the pillar is shorter than its clusters—or hasn’t been touched in 12 months—expand the hub before producing more satellite posts.
Active pillar inventory
Pillar cards — hub URL, authority score, cluster counts, and quick health tags for editorial triage.
Workflow
Run both tabs whenever you reorganize taxonomy, migrate content, or push a pillar refresh campaign. Sequence matters: fix structure before scaling new drafts.
Normalize taxonomy & cannibal URLs
Rename misfiled posts, consolidate duplicate intents, then re-run Keyword Cannibalization so each silo has one owner per SERP footprint.
Rebuild the pillar ladder
In Authority Coverage, confirm the leaderboard matches your editorial truth. Align Auto-Link Rules and manual introductions so clusters reference the pillar in the first viewport when it reads naturally.
Drain Silo queues from risk → gem
Open tab=silo-queues, tackle risk rows first (orphans, leakage), rewrite anchors called out as fix, then promote near-winners flagged as gem.
Evidence loop with Advisor + Link Reports
Use SEO Advisor impressions to prioritize remaining gaps and Link Reports KPIs (orphans, inbound distribution) as the acceptance checklist before declaring the sprint done.
Troubleshooting
Scores plummet after importing posts
Imports often omit categories or duplicate drafts. Dedupe staging URLs, rerun taxonomy fixes, exclude noindex placeholders, then click Recalculate on Authority Coverage.
Silo queues show phantom orphans
Confirm navigation-only links versus body links—queues weight contextual placements. Cached admin tables can also stale briefly after bulk Auto-Link edits; refresh the tab after saving rules.
Matrix quadrants contradict Link Reports
Reports count every internal edge; matrices down-weight header/footer links. If deltas remain, inspect mega-menu saturation or related-post widgets that ignore taxonomy boundaries.
Everything looks green but rankings stall
Scores measure internal cohesion, not backlinks or Core Web Vitals. Pair Advisor crawl errors, SERP CTR data, and off-site authority audits before rewriting strategy.