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Content is king — or queen — and plays an important role in digital marketing strategies However, with great organization comes the need for great content. Your digital strategy shouldn’t just be focused on creating an engaging content piece, but it should also be organized in ways that enhance user experiences and search engine optimization. We’re specifically talking about creating content clusters (also known as topic clusters) and pillar pages.
Content clustering allows marketers to categorize website contents around a related core topic, which helps them improve their SEO efforts:
To better understand what content clustering means for you, imagine you’re reading a book on how wellness can be improved. The book contains different topics, and each chapter is devoted to a particular wellness topic, such as eating healthier or exercising more. Each chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the main topic.
Instead of book chapters, content cluster landing pages are web pages on a website. And rather than flipping through the pages of a hard cover book, people can access the topic cluster landing pages by clicking on the internal links on a page.
But wait — what’s a pillar page? Content marketing is a term that refers to pieces of content that provide a broad overview of a particular topic. A pillar page is an umbrella that all of the supporting content (content clusters), including blog posts, eBooks, videos, etc., relate back to.
Because they cover so many related subjects and keywords, pillar pages tend to be long-form articles, usually longer than 2,000 words. You’ll create a pillar page for each pillar of your site, and link all of your clusters throughout the content of the pillar page. Interlinking makes it easy to go back up your marketing funnel, visit more specific topics, and move to a different page.
Which comes first — the clusters or the pillar content? Once you’ve defined your content clusters, you’ll want to perform some basic SEO keyword research to determine which keywords you should focus on.
Think of it this manner: Your pillar page is like a decadent dinner plate full of delicious offerings, but your clusters are the meat and potato — they’re the things that are going to fill your appetite with content. For example, if you’re trying to promote an event, focus on one specific topic.
Search engines like Google are interested in understanding the content and structure of websites. Why? So they can determine the best way to present your content to their audience. So, the more Google knows (or thinks) about your website, the easier it is for it to send visitors over. The result? Higher search positions and more website traffic for you and your business.
While your pillar page will include and seek to rank for short-tail keywords, your topic clusters will center around long-tail keywords. And while long-tail keywords — which generally consist of specific keyphrases — get less search traffic overall (since they’re so specific to a user’s search), they typically yield higher conversion rates.
But first, let’s back up and make sure we’re on the same page regarding what exactly constitutes a long-form keyword. Here are a few examples that you may have seen — or searched for yourself — on Google:
Because these phrases are so specific and users who use them are more likely to buy your product or service, they’re more likely to be found by people searching for your product or service. Because there is less competition, marketers who use long-tail keywords to create topic clusters tend to get higher conversion rates than websites that focus solely upon short-tail keywords.
Besides strengthening your SEO game, there’s another benefit to using content clusters on your website.
This is because it requires a lot longer for a newly created piece of content to get indexed by the search engine results page and gain authority than it does for an existing piece of content to be updated.
Content clusters also help you gain authority online.
By creating subtopic pages for the keywords related to each subject, your website can answer all potential searchers at any point in their buying journey. So long as you’re creating high-quality content that is well-research and thorough, topic clustring allows you to provide comprehensive coverage on a variety of topics.
In the eyes of Google, this will make your site come across as an authority in this particular subject. And when Google categorizes you as an authority, you’ll receive higher search engine rankings that lead to more organic website traffic and better lead generation.
It’s true that creating content clusters can increase search engine rank and optimize lead generation. However, a topic cluster also makes life easier for those who visit your website — AKA current or potential customers.
Google and other search engines prioritize websites with an optimal user experience: clean, organized and easy to navigate. When you create content clusters, you make it easy for users to find the information they need. And if you utilize interlinking strategies — meaning that you create an internal link between the topic cluster page and the main pillar page — you make it easy for users to jump around and get the answers they need fast, which enhances UX.
When UX improves, not only will your site likely receive more organic traffic, but you’ll also notice an increase in the number of time people spend on your website. And the more time users peruse your site, the better opportunity you’ll have to increase brand awareness and turn those visitors into customers.
Content clusters have the power to grow top of funnel website traffic to create better lead generation. By building valuable and easy-to-find content, you’ll be able to:
Once you’ve introduced visitors to your brand and demonstrated the knowledge you have on a specific topic, you can start to implement other tactics — like presenting gated content or prompting newsletter subscriptions — to move prospects down the marketing funnel.
Now that you know what content clusters are, we’ll talk about creating them yourself next. To develop clusters for your website, use these four steps:
First things first, let’s talk content pillar page strategy. You’ll want to make sure you’re choosing a pillar topic that fits with your business goals and your target buyer personas. You want this topic/page to be specific to your business, but broad enough that it can generate a good number of keywords to help you create your cluster pages. Your pillar page is your content cluster headquarters because this is where all your content cluster pages will be linked to and from.
A prime example of a pillar page done right would be about the future of content strategy. Not only does this post align with HubSpot’s business objectives—assisting brands with inbound marketing—but it’s also broad enough to make creating content clusters easy-peasy.
Now that you’ve got your pillar page topic prepared, it’s time to start writing. It’s now time to determine what your blog posts will be about. To do so, you‘ll need to conduct some keyword research.
For this portion, we’ll be using a reputable keyword research tool — such as Google Search Console — to develop a list of keywords. When researching, you enter your pillar topic into the tool’s search bar, then select keywords that align with the topics you want to expand upon
If you’ve been working hard at creating content for your website then your approach to building content clusters will be slightly different. Instead of researching what kind of content you need to create, you’ll first want to perform content analysis. To do this, first, you need to figure out which of your existing content is most valuable. Then, you’ll decide whether to keep it or not.
Once you’ve gotten rid of everything you don’t need, it’s time to organize your space. Start by grouping your articles into clusters, making sure they include internal links back to their overarching pillar pages. Furthermore, you should still do a bit of keyword research to ensure you cover all of the necessary topics and if there’re any topics that your website is lacking.
Once you have a complete pillar page and the content cluster to support it, it’s time to add that finishing detail: internal links. Make sure all of your keywords for your pillar page are links that take people to the supporting content cluster page. All of your cluster content should link back to the pillar pages.
If you’ve put in the effort to create killer content, make sure you‘re also collecting and analyzing metrics to see which kinds of results your content is generating.
However, this can sometimes be a bit tricky because it doesn’t tell you exactly how many leads/sales were generated from each content group. Instead, to get a better idea of how your content performs, you’ll want to use more advanced tools — like Google Analytics — which allow you to track performance metrics like:
Now comes the best part: applying everything we’ve reviewed about topic clusters to your content marketing strategy. Once you have your foundation down (i.e., your pillar content) you’ll be better equipped to generate some killer clusters.
If you’re still feeling a little stuck, here are a few jumping-off-points to get those creative juices flowing:
A great pillar page isn’t necessarily complicated; it could just be as simple as discussing what you do and what you stand for! By creating a general branding page, you can generate relevant content that leads people to specific landing pages that explain your services, products, missions, values, and more
Imagine you own a camping store. You could include a long page explaining your brand. But within that context you’d include keywords like:
These keywords become your topic clusters, and each one needs to link to an internal page about the specific product or service.
Creating an in-depth guide is content cluster creation 101. Within your guide, you can touch on related concepts, which then become your content clusters.
Now that you’ve seen some of the ways in which content clusters can be used, are you itching to create your own? Hopefully, the answer to your question is yes. But if you’re still a little fuzzy on why content clusters are important or you need some help organizing your current content, we’re here to help.
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