Topic clusters: How to increase your SEO

There’s no shortage of tips and recommendations online when it comes to SEO. Your marketing team is working hard to get your content discovered on the first page of the search engine results, but does their understanding of SEO go past the basics - like keywords or meta descriptions?

If not, your business is missing out on a wealth of SEO potential that could level up your marketing strategies.

Enter topic clusters.

What are topic clusters, and how do they boost SEO? 

We owe the term “topic clusters” to HubSpot. In 2017, the company unveiled a new way to focus your content marketing efforts by homing in on topics in your niche where you want to be recognized as an expert.

In a nutshell, here's how HubSpot describes the topic cluster model: “At its very essence, [it] is a way of organizing a site’s content pages using a cleaner and more deliberate site architecture. A single ‘pillar’ page acts as the main hub of content for an overarching topic, and multiple content pages that are related to that same topic link back to the pillar page and to each other.”

It looks something like this:

As the diagram depicts, the topic cluster model is built on a hub-and-spoke framework, and each cluster has three essential components:

• One broadly-focused pillar page
• Multiple in-depth cluster pages
• Strategically-placed internal links

So how do topic clusters improve SEO?

Topic clusters can help you:

• Improve the experience on your website. With a strategically organized website, users can flit between areas of interest within your niche. Well-organized content will motivate them to stay on your website to discover more.
• Streamline your content marketing efforts. We know content marketing is linked to business growth. So using the topic cluster model helps you identify all the content pieces you should have on your blog, especially those around your main keyword or pillar pages.
• Boost traffic organically. One reason topic clusters are an effective approach is that they have the potential to reduce bounce rates because visitors can find related content on your blog. This signals to search engines that people stick around on your site, thus boosting your rankings organically over time.
• Emphasize your breadth of coverage. If, for instance, you have ten related, interlinked pages on your website that completely cover a topic, Google will view you as more of an authority than if you only have one piece of content about the subject. After all, Google values websites that demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T).

Let’s put this knowledge into action and run through the topic cluster process…

Picking a broad keyword topic

What is that topic you want to rank for? The broad keyword should be specific enough that you'll be able to create a comprehensive pillar post on the subject, but it should be general enough to allow room for cluster content to dive deeper. For example, “marketing” is too broad a topic. But “social media marketing” is more specific, while still leaving space to eventually create cluster content on more specific keywords like “Facebook marketing” or “Instagram marketing.”

Creating the topic clusters 

When you’ve identified a broad keyword on which to base your pillar page, you can start planning out cluster content. Don’t forget, these cluster content points must link back to your main broad keyword.

Identifying existing content

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Chances are you've already published blog posts about some of the keywords you plan to target in your pillar and cluster content. 

Before you begin writing, take a content inventory to help you identify where your existing blog posts can fall within your topic clusters, that way your older content won’t need to go to waste. 

Filling in the gaps with new topic cluster content

Having audited your existing content, you’ll be better informed to create missing content from scratch. While your pillar page will cover the broad keyword topic in some depth, your new cluster content should be used to dive deeper into more specific topics.

Creating the pillar page

After you’ve developed and published a significant amount of cluster content, you can begin to build out your pillar page. When linking all of your content together, be sure to include a link to your pillar page in all of your cluster content, and include a link to your cluster content within your pillar page. If you continue to publish related blog posts, you can update your pillar page to include those links as well.

Sure, it takes a little effort to organize your content - but we promise it will be worth it. The topic cluster model is one effective way to boost SEO while streamlining your entire content strategy, so you can rank higher in search results.