If you want to nail building topic authority with your audience and in your corner of the internet, you need to start creating content clusters. Here’s how…
What are topic clusters?
Topic clusters are a way to organise your content thematically. You have one ‘pillar’ page that’s the hub and is a wide-lens view of the topic. From there, you have a content cluster of pages that are all connected to that topic and zoom in on different specifics.
By linking to the pillar page and interlinking between your pieces of cluster content, you demonstrate your authority on the topic to search engines and your audience.
Think of each topic cluster like a wheel. Your pillar content is the central hub of the wheel – your main, overarching topic. Your cluster content pieces are the spokes attached to the hub, extending outwards.
Let’s break it down:
- Pillar Content: This is your main, comprehensive piece on a broad topic that covers all the key aspects. For example, if you run a digital marketing agency, your pillar content might be ‘The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing’. It’s long, authoritative, and gives a complete overview of the topic.
- Cluster Content: Each piece of cluster content goes deeper into specific areas of the main topic. Sticking with the digital marketing example, cluster topics could be ‘How to Build a Social Media Strategy,’ ‘SEO Best Practices for Beginners,’ and ‘The Benefits of Pay-Per-Click Advertising.’ These are more detailed, focused articles that link back to your pillar content, and in return, your pillar links out to them.
The internal linking between your pillar and cluster content strengthens your website’s SEO by signalling to search engines that you’ve built a well-organised, authoritative collection of information around a single subject.
Plus, it creates a smoother experience for your readers, allowing them to explore your content deeply and logically.
What’s the difference between a topic cluster and a content burst?
Topic clusters and content bursts use the same hub-and-spoke formula, just for different purposes. Topic clusters form main, evergreen content that’s designed to build your standing over the long term. You’ll create a topic cluster for each of your main areas of expertise and add new ones to adapt to business growth.
Whereas a content burst is focused on generating search traffic to one lead magnet. It’s a set of strategic content that’s created around that topic, is interlinked, and points readers to that lead magnet. This burst of content helps you get organic traffic that boosts lead generation and sales.
Using content bursts as part of your lead generation strategy means publishing a lot of content on the topic of your lead magnet in a limited timeframe. Topic clusters have a longer-term approach, where you can continue to add cluster content to your pillars ad infinitum.
How topic clusters boost SEO and traffic so you get more leads
“We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search, rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings.” These are Google’s own words.
The increased use of topic clusters is a response to Google’s 2022 update to the quality rater guidelines, often known as E-E-A-T. This stands for Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. The 2022 algorithm update added ‘experience’ to the existing other three.
Here’s how using topic clusters helps to boost SEO, with these guidelines in mind.
Internal linking
All of your topic cluster content needs to link to each other. Your pillar page links to the whole cluster, all the cluster content links to the pillar page, and every cluster piece links to each other where it’s appropriate. So site crawlers find it increasingly easy to see you as a topic authority and point traffic your way.
Your connective is the pillar page’s keyword. Use it within the titles, meta descriptions, image alt texts and any other key SEO text to highlight the link to the pillar page. This doesn’t mean keyword stuffing!
It must be human-first, quality writing. But it’s likely that including your main topic’s keyword will feel natural, as you build out your cluster content.
All these interlinks keep visitors on your website because they can find everything they want to know there, decreasing your bounce rate and increasing SEO.
Improved search ranking
Your SEO strategy goal = To improve your search engine rankings
Search engines’ goal = Show their users the most helpful answers to their questions
You can align these 2 goals by using topic clusters. With topic clusters as part of your content strategy, you capture your audience at different stages of their search – and customer journey.
- Pillar content is there to deliver the broad brush strokes, at the start of their search journey with higher-level keywords
- Cluster content delves in deeper and gives all the fine details of the topic, capturing those searching for longer-tail keywords
The combination of organised structure and in-depth content makes search engines very happy! And makes it easy for them to send you further up SEO rankings.
Authority and trust
Using the topic cluster method of content creation helps you become an authority to search engines and your audience. You have a full, detailed overview of the topic as your pillar page. Each piece of content in your cluster gives your audience a deeper understanding of individual specifics that relate.
As a unit of content, this delivers comprehensive coverage of the topic in its entirety. You become the ‘go-to’ expert for your audience and search engines.
Building effective topic clusters for your lead gen goals
Topic clusters are a great idea, aren’t they? Not just for pleasing search engines and being the topic expert – they’re a structure you can use to create content.
Here are 4 top tips to lay strong foundations for your topic clusters:
1. Choose the right pillar content
You need to identify the main topics that will become your pillar content. These are broad subject areas within your industry, that your perfect customers are interested in, and align with your business’s aims.
As Hubspot’s Leslie Ye explains: “When considering whether something should be called a pillar page or not, ask yourself this: Would this page answer every question the reader who searched X keyword had, AND is it broad enough to be an umbrella for 20-30 posts?
“A good sniff test here is — if you’re trying to get the page you’re working on to rank for a long-tail keyword, it’s not a pillar page. If the page you’re working on explores a very narrow topic in great depth, it’s not a pillar page. If the page you’re working on touches on many aspects of a broad topic, it’s probably a pillar page.”
2. Research keywords for your cluster content
Dive into keyword research to extricate some interesting subtopics that are popular searches for your cluster content. Deploy whatever keyword research tools you have to find and prioritise your list.
By focusing on keywords with different levels of search intent, you’ll be there with just the right content for your customers at every step on their path to purchase. Combine this data with your research into your ideal customers’ pain points, needs, aspirations and common questions. Then you’ll create content clusters that deliver the smoothest journey to the checkout that your customers have ever experienced!
3. Organising your content strategy
You need to embed the topic cluster method into your overall content strategy. Make sure your content teams understand the thinking behind it, so everyone maximises its effectiveness – whatever type of content they’re producing.
Have a clear plan for topic cluster content creation, possibly including a checklist of things to tick off before publishing.
Make sure you include a mechanism to measure the success of your topic clusters – and when that analysis is going to happen. Usually, the main focus is on organic rankings for your keywords, alongside all your other lead generation metrics. That way you can adapt and optimise your topic cluster strategy.
4. Content refreshing
It’s extremely important to include ‘content refresh’ dates in your annual calendar. Laws change, new statistics are published, and the world changes – you need to refresh your content accordingly. And, everyone knows that if it’s not in the diary, it’s not going to happen.
Extra tip: On your content spreadsheet, have a column that shows where an article refers to an annual report/other regularly updated statistic. That way, you know to revisit it and update the figures when the following year’s is published.
You want your audience to be able to rely on the validity and consistent quality of your content. And you’re aiming to create evergreen content clusters to get the most ROI from your marketing budget. Building these kinds of failsafes into your content plan elevates your output and gives you an edge over the competition.
Adding topic clusters to your wider lead generation strategy
Topic clusters aren’t a standalone tactic. They scaffold a certain type of content creation that works brilliantly within your overall lead generation strategy, in a variety of different ways, including:
- Lead magnets: Topic clusters naturally create opportunities for a range of lead magnets as part of your content clusters. Not just the traditional eBooks and downloadable guides, but webinars, podcasts, quizzes, waitlists, video mini-courses… the only limit is your imagination!
- CTA placement: Interlinking doesn’t replace calls-to-action. Make sure all your pillar and cluster content leaves your audience with a clear next step.
- Enhanced user experience: Isn’t it great when you walk into a shop and can just instinctively find exactly what you’re looking for? That’s the kind of online experience topic clusters give your audience.
You meet them where they are on their customer journey, with exactly what they need and signposts to their next question – that they haven’t even thought of yet! Everything they need is right there in your corner of the internet.
And with every piece of high-quality content, you build their trust in you as a subject matter expert – turning more curious leads into customers.
- Be the key person of influence: By thinking in terms of ‘topic’, not ‘keyword’ for your topic cluster strategy, you’ll develop authority that search engines recognise and reward – and become the best-known expert online.
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