By Laia Cardona, on 11 January 2023
When we talk about clusters in marketing and content creation, we are referring to creating topic clusters, which help improve your SEO positioning and strategy. In this article, we will take a look at what these topic clusters are, how to create them, and why you should.
What Is a Topic Cluster?
Having a well organized website with good content is very important, since Google takes this into account when it comes to SEO positioning. Why? Because an organized website will make it easier for the algorithm to crawl and analyze all the content hosted there. It is precisely here in the architecture of your website that a topic cluster can help you.
Before getting into what a content topic cluster is, it is important that you know what a pillar page is, since these are the bases of topic clusters.
A pillar page is a web page that gives an overview of a topic or a general keyword. You can then create “clusters” of other articles that deal with subtopics of that general keyword.
For example, imagine you have a website about digital marketing and you want to rank for the keyword "content marketing".
First, you will have to write a pillar page about "content marketing" and you will have to divide the content into sections like H2s, H3s, etc.
Then, based on the H2s, you should write related articles. For instance, "content marketing within inbound marketing", "content marketing vs. branded content", "content marketing: 10 examples" or "how to make a content strategy step by step". This way you will create a topic cluster related to content marketing.
It is important that all the articles that are part of the topic cluster are linked to their respective pillar page. It is also essential that the url of the topic cluster starts with the same structure as the pillar page. Thus, if the url of the "content marketing" article is "http://www.nameofbusiness.com/content-marketing", the url of one of the articles in the cluster must be "http://www.nameofbusiness.com/content-marketing/how-to-make-a-content strategy-step-by-step".
How to Make a Topic Cluster Step by Step
Now that you know what topic clusters are and how important they are for the SEO positioning, let’s look at how to create them in three simple steps.
First create your pillar pages: each of your pillar pages should contain all the topics that you will cover in more depth in the topic clusters. Thus, in your article on "traveling in Africa" you should talk about Morocco, Tanzania, South Africa, etc. in a summarized way. It is in the clusters that you should expand on each of them.
Next, create your topic clusters: once you have the main page, it is time to develop the subtopics on individual pages. Of course, as you grow, it will be necessary to expand your pillar pages to include new clusters as they emerge.
Link the pages together: as mentioned, all the clusters you create should be linked to their respective keyword in your pillar page and vice versa. This will help a lot to boost your SEO positioning and increase traffic to your site.
Why Create a Topic Cluster?
The objectives of creating a topic cluster are twofold. Internally, clustering is carried out so that your content is well organized. This way, it is much easier to locate content you are looking for and to know what topics you have already talked about and which ones are still in the pipeline.
Externally, clustering is a key way to boost SEO, because you do not need to invest a great deal of time and money in it. Clusters are also created to provide easy navigation for users. This in turn enhances the user experience.
Advantages of Positioning a Topic Cluster
- Improve your SEO positioning: search engines will be able to crawl the pages of your site faster.
- Enhance the user experience: if a user feels comfortable on your website and is able to move through it with agility, they are more likely to perform a valuable action, such as a purchase. They are also more likely to stay longer on your site longer, which is something that also helps your SEO positioning since your bounce rate will be reduced.
- Create more valuable content: you will be able to create content with more specific information that is able to help users and answer their pain points.
- Eliminate the danger of content cannibalization: content cannibalization occurs when more than one page on your website is trying to rank for the same keyword. With topic clusters it will be easier to know which keywords you have already used so you will be less likely to repeat them.
