If you’re looking to step up your content creation game, you’re likely already familiar with the concepts of search engine optimization (SEO) and topic clusters. But how do you actually go about creating an SEO topic cluster? Essentially, an SEO topic cluster is a grouping of content that revolves around a central topic or theme. From an SEO standpoint, creating topic clusters helps establish your website as an authority on a given subject. This, in turn, can lead to increased visibility and traffic from search engines like Google and Bing.
Plus, from a user perspective, organizing your content into topic clusters makes it easier to navigate and consume. Win-win!
Step 1: Identify Your Central Topic
Choosing a primary topic or theme is the first step in developing an SEO topic cluster. Something fairly general that can include a wide range of subtopics is preferable. If you’re running a food blog, for instance, you might choose as your overarching theme “Healthy Eating,” which encompasses such diverse subthemes as menu planning, ingredient swaps and nutritional advice.
Step 2: Brainstorm Subtopics
Once you’ve identified your central topic, it’s time to start brainstorming the subtopics that will make up your topic cluster. You can begin by thinking of any related topics that immediately come to mind, but it’s also a good idea to do some keyword research to get a more comprehensive list. Try using tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush to see what phrases and questions people are searching for related to your central topic.
Step 3: Organize Your Content
You can now begin structuring your material after you’ve identified relevant subtopics. This could involve either making new content that is directly relevant to each subtopic or rearranging the existing information into a more logical order. Either way, you should ensure that all of the information within the cluster has good connections to one another.
Common practice calls for making one page the “pillar” of your topic cluster. This page should serve as a hub for all of the cluster’s material by providing an overview of the topic and links to each individual piece.
Step 4: Optimize Your Cluster for SEO
It is essential to keep SEO best practices in mind as you are developing and structuring the content on your website. This involves things like inserting important keywords in your content, optimizing your headers and meta descriptions, and making sure that your pages load quickly and are pleasant to mobile devices.
It is also vital to keep in mind that search engines are progressively valuing longer-form content for highly competitive topics. Because of this, you should strive to make each individual item that is a part of your topic cluster as exhaustive and in-depth as possible.
Creating a Successful SEO Topic Cluster
By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to creating a successful SEO topic cluster that can help increase visibility and traffic to your website. Remember to keep your central topic broad and comprehensive, do thorough keyword research to identify related subtopics, and optimize each piece of content for search engines. Happy clustering!
