Everything You Need To Know To Create Topic Clusters For SEO

It is natural that as businesses and brands expand, their website’s content grows, too. However, more often than not, we see many not being able to sustain and adapt to their growth, allowing their website structure and organisation to suffer, resulting in the need to engage digital marketing agencies in Singapore for professional help.

Many website owners generate content with a lack of proper content organisation strategies or cohesive internal linking, confusing search engines and users alike. This disorganised approach dampens the user experience, making it more complicated for search engines to crawl and index the page, resulting in the page being ranked wrongly or poorly.

However, you can avoid such a mistake simply by implementing into your content strategy a topic cluster structure. In this post, we will dive into everything you need to know about creating SEO topic clusters.

Why do you need to have a good content organisation?

One aspect of how Google assesses your content is through their connections with one another. When websites display a strong content structure between the different pages, particularly those with similar topics, they are recognised as authoritative sources.

Using topic clusters is an effective way to interlink, structure, and organise your website to boost content authoritativeness, which is a critical aspect of E-E-A-T.

What are SEO topic clusters?

Topic clusters are great methods to provide structure and organisation to your content, offering valuable information to your users. They involve creating a central main content page, also known as a pillar page, and connecting various related sub-contents to it through strategic internal linking.

By doing so, you get a more organised website with higher search engine visibility and a smoother user experience. Topic clusters help you to develop a network of interconnected content that displays your authority and expertise, which leads to developing user trust.

Topic clusters vs. conventional keyword-based strategies

By prioritising user experience and search intent, implementing topic cluster strategies helps to redirect the focus from specific keywords to more detailed topics. Hence, rather than simply focusing on specific targeted keywords, topic clusters enable the generation of content surrounding a core topic.

Using such an approach allows Google to understand the content better, boosting the relevancy of the content beyond just keywords and providing comprehensive, quality content that satisfies search queries and intents.

With that being said, we would like to emphasise that it is not one strategy over the other. Topic clusters should not replace keyword-based strategies. Keywords are still a crucial SEO strategy. However, it can be boosted using topic clusters.

How do you create a topic cluster?

A topic cluster is made up of three vital components: Pillar content, cluster content, and internal linking strategies.

1. Pillar content

The pillar content should cover a general theme or topic, providing a detailed overview of the subject.

Using digital marketing as an example, pillar content might cover a detailed guide covering every aspect of digital marketing, such as email marketing, paid media, SEO, content marketing, and social media.

2. Cluster content

The cluster content dives deeper into specific topics mentioned in the pillar content and links back to the pillar content.

Continuing from the previous example, cluster content could cover more in-depth details of each aspect of digital marketing, such as best email marketing practices, effective paid media strategies, types of SEO services, and growing social media healthily.

3. Internal linking

A common misconception about link-building is that internal links are not as important. In fact, it is the opposite. Internal linking is one of the most crucial aspects of a topic cluster strategy. Doing so will allow Google to discover and crawl through your website in a more effective manner. Additionally, it signifies that your website offers comprehensive coverage of a specific topic, boosting search visibility and ranking.

Creating a strong topic cluster foundation

As mentioned earlier, keyword-based strategies and topic cluster strategies must work hand in hand. Hence, creating a strong topic cluster foundation, conducting detailed keyword research and identifying the pillar content, ensuring that they align with search intent and business goals.

Once you have determined your pillar content, implementing keyword-based strategies helps to ensure that the content is SEO-friendly. So basically, topic clusters help search engines understand the flow of your web content, and keywords help search engines understand the main focus of your content.

Conclusion

Topic clusters help boost your SEO by boosting your website’s authority and search ranking, thus attracting specific organic traffic. By organising your content strategy around key topics and generating quality sub-topics, your website is able to reach specific search intents better.