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Have you heard of Topic Cluster? This strategy aims to refine the production of your company's blog content. The software developer Hubspot believes that this methodology will be the future of content marketing, and for this reason, many brands have bet on its practice in their content marketing strategies.
This strategy has been widely used by companies from all branches to organize the most relevant content for their leads, while creating a true web of links , interconnecting them and generating authority on the subject.
That way, in addition to increasing your website traffic, it will increase the relevance to search engines. Did I pique your interest? To learn more, check out everything you need to know about Topic Cluster:
What is Topic Cluster and why does everyone talk about it?
The very literal translation of Topic Cluster would be something like "topic group".
Topic Cluster is a set of themes brought together in a single content. These subjects are considered subthemes, all within a single subject.
To facilitate, let's exemplify:
Imagine that you work with a beauty products brand and want to make a Topic Cluster.
The theme for this content would be “beauty products” and throughout the text you would mention the categories of products that are most related to your business, such as: perfumes, moisturizers, shampoos, makeup and soaps.
Within each of these sub-themes you would explain the benefits that each of them bring, showing their importance and link with content that already exists on your blog, to further deepen that content.
Following the example, it could be: “benefits of hand hydrants”, “the importance of intimate soaps”, “5 makeup tips for summer”.
Do you realize that Topic Cluster has the ability to gather a series of content that is relevant to your leads while managing to produce highly relevant, complete content and on top of working with one of the most important SEO strategies: the link builder ?
Gone are the days when only the volume of content mattered, now, more than ever, it is necessary to have depth and quality.
Therefore, Topic Cluster is one of the most used methodologies today, as it has made a big difference when it comes to building authority on the subject.
Mr Google orders and do we obey?
The truth is: yes! If Google commands, we obey. However, it is not 100% like that.
One of the major changes in SEO strategies that Google has made in recent years was to prevent content from being robotized. That is, everyone doing the same and equal.
Google doesn’t want there to be an unskilled content production line, in which all texts will be filled with repeated keywords and few focused on the quality of written content.
Due to the popularization of content marketing, companies ended up focusing on the volume of content instead of quality. Google, however, to balance this game, has made some changes to its algorithm, so that when ranking a content, it will know if it is of quality or not.
But how does this change in Google's algorithm relate to the Topic Cluster? Check out Isa's video that you will understand even more the importance of this content qualification methodology:
How do Topic Clusters work?
As you may have noticed in Isa’s video, Topic Clusters are highly organized structures. That way, they can't just be produced, they need to be planned.
In addition to the content marketing strategy for choosing the topic of the Topic Cluster and how it can help your business, you need to plan the structure of the article. This structure consists of: pillar page, reference pages and internal links .
Pillar page (epic)
If we were to compare a Topic Cluster with a tree, the pillar page would be the trunk of that tree . It will be this epic content that will support the strategy.
The pillar page will be responsible for the blogpost with the chosen theme. This theme needs to contain a keyword that covers several other contents, but that is mainly of interest to your business.
It is worth mentioning that : for the Topic Cluster strategy to work, the keyword chosen must be highly relevant in its strategy. For this, many end up using keywords head tails and top of funnel, but this is not a rule.
Here at Surfe, the keyword inbound marketing would be a pillar for a Topic Cluster, for example, since it is one of our main solutions.
Reference pages (clusters)
If the pillar page is the trunk of the tree, the reference pages are the fruits, which are positioned at the very ends of the tree. As in this metaphor, the reference pages are rich content, which fed your leads with information.
For the strategy to work, clusters will (mandatorily) need to be more specific content than what was scored on the pillar page.
Let us follow the example given earlier, of the beauty products brand.
The keyword chosen for the Topic Cluster was “beauty products”. The epic page will address what beauty products are, their importance to our society and throughout the text will bring sub-topics on the topic.
An example here could be intimate soaps. They are important to many people, as they are less likely to cause irritation in the body.
Also on the pillar page you will explain what intimate soaps are, their importance and how they work. However, it will be on another page, (in a cluster) that you will talk in detail about the intimate soap.
It is worth mentioning that for reference pages , long tail keywords are generally used and address more specific topics.
If the keyword inbound marketing is a mainstay here at Surf, an example of a reference page of ours would be inbound marketing steps .
Internal links
If the pillar page is the trunk and the reference pages are the fruits, the internal links are the branches, which connect everything.
So, I need to point out that everything is important for the strategy to work, there is no single more important point.
For the Topic Cluster strategy to work then, the internal links must be used accompanied by a plan, and therefore, focus on two points:
1- Punctual anchoring: when making the link, many people end up linking words that are synonymous or are loaded with another meaning for a cluster.
In order for the search engine to fully understand your Topic Cluster and the branching of links in it, this linking work must be punctual. That is, if you are talking about intimate soaps in one of the clusters, the word that should be linked needs to be "intimate soap".
2- Linking vice-versa: both the pillar page and the reference pages need to be linked together. Remember that the branches lead to the fruits, but also to the trunk.
A tip here is: the Topic Cluster will forever be a draft. That is, you will always be making small changes to it. This is because as you create more content, you can add it to your Cluster, enriching it even more.
In addition to improving your lead's experience (the main point to be focused on), you will always be keeping the construction of your website's content organized and ranking it.
How to start your topic cluster strategy?
Now that you understand the Topic Cluster structure, it's time to learn how to build one. Come on?
Know your persona
First of all, you need to know who you're producing for. If you know your persona , perfect! But if you don't know, it is essential that you do a survey to get to know her.
When you have your persona in hand you will know what her main pains are. To find out how your business is helping your leads, go to Google Analytics . It can help to know what is the content of your website that is being visited the most.
This metric is a great indicator of what content on your blog is most focused on solving your persona's pain.
Imagine that when you choose to create a Topic Cluster for your blog of your beauty company you end up discovering that male hygiene products (shaving cream, lotion and perfumes, for example) are the ones that are most in demand, but yours flagship are female beauty products.
By getting to know your persona in more detail, you will discover that there is potential to grow your presence in the male hygiene sector, as well as alerting you that you need to strengthen your content marketing strategy for the female hygiene sector.
Organize the pains
Using the example of the beauty products brand. If you own this store, you may have a plurality of personas, after all, your brand may be a franchise.
Thus, it is very likely that your B2B content marketing will be different from B2C and when focusing on the pain of your customers, the most visited content is:
- Importance of intimate soap
- Franchise audiences
- Ideal point to open your franchise
- Tips for shaving without causing irritation
- Does hot wax irritate the skin?
- Why are beauty products franchises booming?
Therefore, try to organize the pain according to the types of personas, as it will not make sense for you to build content that is broad enough to embrace all of them.
For working with personas totally different from B2B and B2C, a tip here is to reflect on whether you need to create different blogs to talk to these personas. Building good content marketing planning will help you make that decision.
More clusters
When separating your articles into groups, some of them may not have a recommended number of clusters and may be incomplete for production.
That way, it's time for you to go back to your published content and see if some of those that are not rated among the most ranked can be placed here to complement your strategy.
If not, the tip is to publish new content to reinforce your Topic Cluster.
Build your pillar page
Now that you know what topics you need to score, who produces the content and has enough clusters, you can finally build your Topic Cluster.
Remember that the topics should address the main pains of your persona, but without going into the last details, as this should be the task of your clusters.
Extra tip
A Topic Cluster has the potential to rank very well on search engines, if it is properly built. However, that potential can increase (and a lot!) If there are backlinks in it.
For this extra tip, I point out that you should go after partner sites and ask if they are interested in building a backlink strategy together.
Linking your article with content from outside the site and receiving links from those sites helps a lot in building your authority, which will make you rank even more.
Note: it will only make sense to do this backlink work if the targeted content is related to what you have built.
In the following video, Isa Mendes, in addition to explaining all the details of the Topic Cluster, also gives you tips on how to get started:
Real advantages of working a Topic Cluster strategy for your company
We noted earlier that the Topic Cluster strategy has the ability to improve authority on the subject of your brand and consequently improve your rating and ranking for Google.
However, this methodology carries even more benefits. Check out the real advantages of choosing to implement and optimize with topic cluster:
Generates organic traffic
Among the various ways to assess whether a website is of quality or not, one of the most important for Google is authority on the subject .
This authority can be built in several ways: evaluation of people on your site, time spent on pages, quality of content, number of daily visitors and more.
And so, Topic Cluster has great potential to make you an authority on the subject of your brand. In addition to organizing your website in relation to the content structure, it also generates a large volume of organic traffic not only on the Topic Cluster itself, but on all content linked to it.
Improves conversion rate
If a Topic Cluster is produced with the quality that is expected of it, the likelihood that the conversion rate of that content will be higher than that of a regular blogpost is greater.
This is because Topic Clusters need to be long, rich content and are hardly all read at once by people. Thus, many end up saving it to finish reading another moment.
To further increase the conversion rate, many content producers end up making the PDF version of the file available, which will increase even more.
Increases the authority of the pages
Topic Clusters have the potential to be the most authoritative pages on your site . That way, when you link various content to your main page, you distribute the authority of your content across the various clusters.
So, in addition to increasing the authority of your pages, you will also be improving the quality of your website , as I pointed out earlier.
Conclusion
Although the construction and elaboration of the Topic Cluster is laborious, this strategy usually yields good results for your website.
As we have seen, we can see that if used well, the production of this pillar page can yield authority on the subject of your site, generate more organic traffic, improve the conversion rate, improve the distribution of authority among your clusters and, of course, help your customer.
Don't forget to always focus on the quality of the content. Thus, it should not be focused on ranking only on Google, but also to help your leads.
Want to learn more about digital strategies? Check out our content marketing kit.
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