How to boost your content with topic clusters

How to build topic clusters for SEO

Have you played “Connections” today? 

If so and you’re like me, there is nothing more satisfying than the thrill of solving this popular New York Times game. There’s a reason why it's #2 of the New York Times’ most popular games. 

But why? Because Connections plays into our basic human nature: categorizing concepts to make sense of our world. Even when this game is absolutely frustrating, human nature strives for us to find some link between the few words provided by this game. 

You can apply this same concept of categorization from Connections to your SEO strategy, specifically to topic clusters. Just as you connect words in Connections to uncover their main theme, creating topic clusters allows you to 1) link related content and 2) help your users discover valuable information without leaving your site.

But what exactly are topic clusters? We will introduce you to this savvy SEO topic, and also show you how you can create your own topic clusters to improve your SEO today!

What are topic clusters?

A topic cluster is a group of interconnected pages that focuses on a similar topic. Topic clusters have 3 main components:

1. A pillar page - a page focused on your main topic 
2. Supporting pages or cluster content - pages that support the main topic of your pillar page as subtopics 
3. Internal linking - how supporting pages link back to the pillar content, creating a web of related content all sourced from the pillar page

Let’s go through an example of a topic cluster. Say you run the website for Universal Orlando Resort, and a user is planning a vacation there this summer. 

1. Universal Orlando Resort’s main website page, the pillar page, covers everything you need to know about the resort and its amenities.
2. Universal Orlando Resort has created dozens of subtopics related to the resort, such as things to do, hotels and packages, and tickets and passes. These subtopics act as supporting pages.
3. These supporting pages link back to the pillar page WITHIN the pillar page.

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By using a topic cluster, your user can now make their whole itinerary for their vacation just from Universal’s website. But why do topic clusters matter for SEO? 

Why topic clusters matter for SEO

Topic clusters matter to SEO because they help you organize content around certain topics. This organization results in a content hierarchy that helps improve how your information is presented to users.

One of the core elements of SEO and how Google ranks your website is E-A-T. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. 

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By covering a topic efficiently through your pillar page and supporting pages, topic clusters can help users navigate your website and find related information. This helps encourage longer visits to your website and places you as an authority on whatever topic you write about. 

As you establish your E-A-T, search engines recognize this and are more likely to rank your site. This is where backlinking comes to be incredibly important to your website’s SEO. Backlinks to your pillar page alert search engines that your pillar page has authority on whatever topic you choose to write about, and thus influence its ranking to be higher for search queries on that subject.

Search engines have advanced in such a way to be capable of understanding your user’s intent and relationships between different topics and concepts. Because search engines can easily scan topic clusters and quickly identify relationships between the pillar page and its linked pages, it’s important to have your interlinks established. 

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By creating high-quality content that interconnects with one another, topic clusters can help you improve your impressions and overall, your SEO efforts. Now that you know a little more about this SEO tool, how can you integrate topic clusters into your content strategy? Let’s dive into this question below. 

How topic clusters fit into your content strategy

Besides the improvements to your website’s SEO listed above, topic clusters have even more to give to your website:

• Greater efficiency in content planning and production
• Denser, richer coverage of topics
• Organized and engaging content

Greater efficiency in content planning and production

Even though topic clusters are not a complicated way to structure your content, they can definitely help with your content planning and production process. 

First, start your new cluster with a pillar page that focuses on the bulk of your topic. Then, you can branch out your cluster by making supporting pages. 

Once your pillar page is complete, you’ll never be stuck wondering where you should go next; your content pages will emerge naturally from areas you recognize your audience may want/need more information on.

Denser, richer coverage of topics

With your content now organized, you will be able to cover so much more than a random one-off blog post would on the subject. The topic will become a clear web of information, with each strand of content leading to another. 

Topic clusters won’t be the only SEO method you’ll want to incorporate into your website, they are to be used in conjunction with other SEO best practices. 

Topic clusters are one part of your overall site architecture, an aspect of your website that isn’t as obvious as the keywords you use or the content you post, but it is incredibly important to pay attention to and optimize as much as possible.

Organized and engaging content 

Overall, topic clusters make content that works with and for your audience. 

Instead of your audience having to navigate through your content like a maze, topic clusters bring everything together in one place. This way, your users won’t get lost trying to find your blog posts.

Now that your content is cohesive, it will in turn become more engaging as users will be more inclined to stay on your website and be satisfied by their experience. 

How to build a topic cluster

Now it's time to get to work and start building! Listed below are the steps to how to make your topic cluster:

1. Choose your topic
2. Do your keyword research
3. Create your supporting pages
4. Create a pillar page
5. Link your pages

1. Choose your topic

To begin your topic cluster journey, you need to start at the foundation: what do you want your topic to be?

Let’s get those gears turning by asking yourself these questions:

• How can my website be broken out by topic?
• What does my target audience want to know?
• What will capture my audience’s interest?
• Which topics will help my audience understand the purpose of my business better?

Now that you’ve started brainstorming and have an idea of your topic, dive deeper by asking yourself:

• Does it make sense to have a group of posts centered around this topic?
• Can I build more content from this topic?
• Can this subject be broken down into smaller pieces?
• Are there closely related topics that could be used for more content?
• Are there concepts in this subject that must be explained before other concepts may be discussed?

Once you’ve answered these questions, it’s time to do some research.

2. Keyword research 

Now it’s time to use your keywords. Keywords are essential in identifying the best topic cluster ideas and creating SEO-friendly content.

To help get you started, we have a database of 6 billion keywords for you to choose from. Our keyword tool is easy to navigate, saving you both time and stress. 

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And the best part: you can also save as many keywords as you please. Once you find attractive keywords that align with your content, it's time to start creating your pillar page!

3. Create your supporting pages 

Looking back on your keyword research, you can now begin developing sub-topics for your pillar page. 

Once you have your subtopics, you can begin your support pages! For these pages, you want to create a separate page for each subtopic that is 1) focused and 2) detailed. 

It’s important to note that cannibalization among your pages can occur if multiple pages are targeting keywords that have the same search intent AND are too similar to one another. If your pages start competing among themselves, they will begin to eat away at each other’s rank. 

Remember, these supporting pages will back up your pillar page, so you have to make sure they are strong enough to do so. Make sure to map your content out carefully to avoid this situation 

4. Create your pillar page

Now that you have your supporting pages, let’s start building your pillar page. 

Looking at the content you have just created, you should create an in-depth piece of content that covers your main topic. This content could be anything, from a comprehensive guide to a longer article. As long as it provides valuable, authoritative information, you now have a structure for your pillar page.

Otherwise, if you have a website ready to go, take a look at the complete list of pieces on your website. You can start grouping related posts that you have already made while keeping your main topic in mind. 

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These posts that you have grouped will then become the content in your topic cluster that surrounds your pillar page. The pillar page will be based on the high-level subject matter you identified the original posts to have in common. 

Think of this as when you were writing an essay in school. Yes, making a thesis, or your main topic, might not have been super fun. But once you bring together your evidence or posts, you can create a pillar page that flows logically and completely. That’s an A+ essay right there!

Now that you have your pillar page, it’s time to branch out and link everything together!

5. Link your pages 

Lastly, it’s time to link everything together! You have to link each of your supporting pages back to your pillar page and vice versa. This way, you create a web of interconnected content that all leads back to one another. 

To accomplish a clear flow between your pages, you have to create anchors for your interlinks. When adding links, your anchor text should be descriptive, but clear. You should avoid hyperlinking text that is simply bland, such as:

• Click here
• Read more
• Check out this article

Instead, use contextual anchor text that hints at the content on the cluster page. Like for a boat, strong anchors are crucial to your strategy as they give context to your pages and can contribute to working towards a higher rank.

How to measure your topic cluster’s performance

Now that you have your topic cluster, you want to make sure it is working efficiently. By monitoring your topic cluster’s performance, you can:

• Expand high-performing clusters with more content
• Review low-performing clusters to improve 
• Adapt your strategy based on data

This way, your topic clusters can help you not only establish yourself as an authority but also pay off in the long term. But how do you measure your topic cluster’s performance? We recommend two amazing AND free tools that will help you see how your content is doing:

• Google Search Console 
• Google Analytics

Google Search Console 

Google Search Console (or GSC) is a free software from Google that allows you to maintain and monitor your site's presence in Google Search results.

Google Search Console can show you data for your entire site, but you can narrow it down to your pages and topic clusters as well. With Google Search Console, you can:

• Track clicks and impressions by page
• Identify high-performing keywords for your topic clusters

Let’s go through each of these below: 

Track clicks and impressions

By creating a Google Search Console account, you will have access to GSC’s Performance report. To access this report, you just have to go to “Performance.” This report will show you:

• Clicks: how many people click on your website
• Impressions: how many times your website appears in search results:

You can see the top pages for your website, and filter by page to compare your topic clusters.

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Once you analyze this data, you can easily begin honing on content that generates higher click and impression rates.

Identify high-performing keywords and topic clusters

With Google Search Console, you can see what keywords and topic clusters are high-performing and refine your content strategy based on your results. 

To find your keywords, just click “Queries” and navigate to the list that shows you what keywords your page ranks for. This way, you can implement high-ranking keywords into your topic clusters. 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool that tracks metrics such as conversions, traffic, and much more. 

Broadly speaking, Google Analytics allows you to take a quick peek inside your website visitors to see what they’re doing on the site, how long they’re doing, and how long they stay and go on different pages.

But when narrowed to focus on topic clusters, Google Analytics can help you:

• Track sessions
• Understand bounce rates
• Track conversions

Let’s walk through both of these: 

Track sessions

With Google Analytics, you can track sessions, or when and how long users visit your site. Through a variety of session metrics (Session, Engaged sessions, and also Engaged sessions per user) you can use Google Analytics to understand which topic clusters are more popular than others. 

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To find your session report, go to the Google Analytics website and click “Reports”, then “Acquisition”, and then “Traffic Acquisition” to view your session data.

Understand bounce rates

A bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who visit a website but leave after only viewing one page. Google Analytics keeps track of bounce rates to help you identify whether you have a high or low bounce rate.

A high bounce rate means that users are not finding your content useful and are dropping from your website. However, a low bounce rate shows that your content is doing its job right and keeping users intrigued.  By understanding your bounce rate, you can identify areas for improvement and what works for your topic clusters. 

To add bounce rate as a metric in Google Analytics, simply navigate to “Behavior”, then “Site Content” and then “Landing Pages report.”

Measure conversions

With Google Analytics “Conversions” tracking, you can track the number of conversions you’ve received to identify what topic clusters are getting you new customers. Once you know what content is converting, you can amp up your strategy based on your high-converting topic clusters.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics are both great tools to help you improve your topic clusters. But to new users, they can be no doubt overwhelming.

If you find yourself struggling to understand these new data metrics, don’t worry! We can help you:

• Learn how to understand this new data
• AND utilize this data to its fullest potential

With our years of experience with Google Search Console and Google Analytics, we can help you implement these data results into your content strategy to improve not only your topic clusters but also your ROI in the long term. 

Download our free SEO guide today!

Topic clusters are a simple but effective way to organize content on your website, improve your access to users, and drive up your organic growth in SEO. 

And topic clusters are just one of many tools that can help you improve your SEO. If you feel that you want to dive deeper into how SEO can help you and your website, Centori can help you out today.

With years of experience in helping over a hundred companies improve their SEO, we can help you get ahead of your competitors with strategies that are made to win. Download our free guide to our SEO Strategy to start winning today!