How to Boost Your SEO With Topic Clusters

How to Boost Your SEO With Topic Pillars

Topic clusters aren’t new for content producers and marketing professionals. Combining related assets in clusters improves user interaction and appeals to search engines, resulting in well-organized website designs.

However, as an SEO specialist, you may use the topic clusters approach many times over.

In this article, you’ll find helpful advice on forming topic clusters for improved SEO, as well as how to track their effectiveness to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

What Is a Topic Cluster and How Does It Work?

A topic cluster is a collection of related assets that focuses on one main topic and includes contextual assistance for each page within the group.

The components of a topic cluster are as follows:

  1. A pillar page focused on a high search traffic term
  2. Each cluster page specializes in a tiny search volume keyword and focuses on a minor topic.
  3. Strategically placed internal links between a pillar page and all cluster pages

HubSpot has taken the concept of topic clusters to a whole new level. Since 2017, this approach has been making waves in the field of content marketing and SEO experts. WordPress introduced something similar to topic clusters about 17 years ago.

More than that, it continues to upgrade for better and more positive results.

While we’ve outlined the fundamental concept of cluster strategy, experts today value the primary importance of linking cluster pages together and one another. This illustration depicts the idea.

The following are some excellent examples of topic clusters to help you grasp the concept:

 The SEO’s Guide to Content Marketing by Moz

• The Ultimate Guide to the Best Productivity Apps by HubSpot

How Can Topic Clusters Assist with SEO?

In a nutshell, topic clusters boost your search rankings, traffic, and conversion. In addition, they improve your keyword research and user experience while also increasing your authority with the audience.

Now we’ll talk about it in more detail:

Better Keyword Organization and Organic Traffic

Search engine optimization specialists can utilize content clusters to target keywords with varying levels of search traffic at once, reflecting user search intent on various levels throughout the customer journey. For example, you’ll pull up a high-volume keyword’s pillar page owing to clever interlinking between pages when your site ranks #1 for long-tail keywords in the cluster.

It’s about creating a semantic connection between pages for Google to help the whole cluster climb in ranks. Your pillar page should ideally begin ranking higher for a short, competitive term, and your cluster pages – for their long-tail terms.

Case in point:

Ninja Outreach used a topic cluster approach for their internal link campaign and saw a 40 percent boost in organic traffic!

Increase UX and Conversion

When utilizing a topic cluster strategy for website content, you begin by researching and organizing target keywords into categories. You know how specific terms function together and relate to one another, allowing you to strategically move the audience from one page to the next in their purchasing journey.

You can use clusters to produce content around a theme that addresses user problems at various buying cycle phases. It keeps them interested and engaged as they move from one page to the next for more information. Finally, when they’re ready to convert, they pick you, which impacts your campaign’s return on investment.

Better E-A-T

When you use keywords in your content, Google can extract concepts from on-page components such as subheadings, paragraphs, and sentences. It also draws meaning from the anchor texts of backlinks on your page.

It aids in the comprehension of your website’s context and content hierarchy:

The more relevant and interrelated pages covering a topic thoroughly, the higher Google is likely to regard you as an authoritative and trustworthy source when ranking high in search results. So it’s all about E-A-T now.

But wait, there’s more:

Google’s most recent statement claims that not only does its algorithm understand the relevance of particular portions of a page, but it can also discern how users explore subjects.

This means it can predict the order of user navigation through a journey. So it appears that those who can organize their material into clusters and link pages to reflect the changes will have an advantage.

How to Create Positive SEO Results with Topic Clusters
We can almost hear you asking:

“That’s all well and good, but what about more down-to-earth topics? How can I develop topic clusters that will appeal to both visitors and search engines?”

Top view of the working place with woman’s hands. A laptop, notepad and a cup of coffee are on the table. SEO flowchart is drawn on the table.

Here goes your guide, step by step:

1. Choosing a Topic for Your Cluster

First, pick a primary area for your cluster. Make sure it’s highly relevant to your company and extremely helpful to your target audience. It should also be broad enough to support the creation of numerous cluster pages on it.

How do you choose a subject for your future content cluster? A few rules here:

  1. Don’t make assumptions: Consider your buyer personas, as well as their problems, needs, and search queries when looking for competitors.
  2. Understand the search intent of their queries: It will aid in the production of material that Google judges to be the most relevant for high rankings.
  3. To generate content, you may use mind maps or spreadsheets to organize your ideas into smaller topics: However, before finalizing it, make sure to evaluate the SEO potential of each.

2. Choosing Keywords

For a topic cluster, you’ll need a core keyword for your pillar page (the one with a high search volume) and numerous supporting keywords for cluster pages (those with lower search traffic, long-tail keywords, or questions).

You may use any SEO tool you choose for this, such as Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, SE Ranking, or whatever else you prefer.

There are many different keyword research tools on the market. One approach is to use both, but you’ll have twice as many keywords to consider with both. So sorting them by search popularity and potential traffic, then pick one for each cluster page.

And do your best to choose subtopics according to their relevance to your SEO and overall marketing goals.

3. Outlining Your Topic Cluster Structure

Now it’s time to outline your pillar and cluster pages.

The pillar page is always the first in line: It’s a broad overview of your primary topic that allows for additional subtopics and backlinking to them for more detailed information. Some experts argue that this page should be lengthy (3,000+ words), while others feel it should be brief. In any case, it will contain interlinks.

Make sure to provide information about each cluster page to your content team, so they know what to include:

Provide a list of keywords (primary and secondary), headings, subheadings, and a word count that is focused on your target audience. A few references to high-ranking competitors are also beneficial.

You may apply the same idea to your social media content strategy or produce in-depth, 10x content to rank on Google’s first page for a particular term.

4. Producing Content

After you’ve done your keyword research and outlining, it’s time to produce content for each page of your topic cluster. Take care of the quality of your content whether you create it yourself or hire a team to do it for you:

To appeal to a broader audience, you must first engage your target readers. For example, to make them want to check and read all pages of your topic cluster, you must entice them. For that:

  • Write naturally and avoid keyword stuffing.
  • Focus on value: Be clear and concise, answer the question stated in the heading and remember the usability and readability of your content asset.
  • Follow the best practices of SEO content writing: use short paragraphs, add visuals and consider the latest research and other references.

A few more rules here:

Do not repeat content on several cluster pages; each should provide something new to readers.

Craft in-depth subtopics, each focusing on a particular keyword.

5. Publishing and Interlinking Cluster Pages

So, your pillar page and cluster pages are now complete. Now you have a few options of how to publish it:

  1. Place a pillar page on your root domain, with clusters as its subdomain.
  2. If you have a blog on your website, you may create pillar pages and split the content into separate pages.

You might also set up a pillar webpage on your root domain and incorporate subtopics into your blog.

Whatever plan you decide on, the most critical element to consider here is interlinking between all the pages of your topic cluster:

Each cluster page should link to your pillar page, and each pillar page should link to all cluster pages. Also, make sure the clusters are linked together.

It will aid Google and users in comprehending your content and the context and hierarchy of each page within your topic cluster.

How to Evaluate Topic Cluster Results for SEO

The difficulty with topic clusters for SEO is that it’s difficult to assess their impact. Instead of displaying the whole cluster’s performance, most metric tools show just one page’s performance.

Another problem is that it’s impossible to isolate the impact of topic clusters on your website metrics from other variables. As a result, updating or improving your website speed can also help you attract more traffic.

However, today’s SEO software allows us to measure everything with sophisticated web analytics.

You must first decide on objectives and measurement methods:

It should come as no surprise that a pillar page aims to rank for a potentially high-volume term rather than a super-high-volume one. In this case, you need to focus on improving the cluster, not on promoting it.

Also, determine if you want to measure the entire cluster or just the pillar page. Remember that your website’s performance here is dependent on its intelligent interlinking and the quality of all linked content.

The best tool for measuring topic clusters’ performance is Google Analytics.

1. Create a new Content Grouping, including all URLs and having a rule for each.

2. To determine what content you should promote next, go to your site’s Content menu and select All Pages from the drop-down list. You may now filter them by groups and observe how they perform as a group.

3. To view the analytics, add the new metrics you want to see in the appropriate spaces.

Also, keep in mind that a pillar page’s performance should be evaluated separately, especially on your root domain.

You may also evaluate the performance of each cluster by assessing your site’s SEO success. You can extend existing clusters with more material if you want to investigate which ones perform best. It eliminates the time it takes to generate new topic clusters. Why not concentrate on enhancing your website for even greater SEO success?

Final Thoughts

Clustering may be a worthwhile investment, mainly if your SEO team already spends time on content development. It’s an excellent tool for raising website traffic, improving ranks, and demonstrating to your target audience that you understand their demands and are willing to assist them.

Search engine algorithms become more intelligent and better understand the semantic relationships between content assets on your website. For example, you make it simpler for crawlers to discover and tag your content as the most relevant one in Google’s top results by classifying them as clusters.

So, are you prepared to give your SEO efforts another boost?