Cluster Chronicles: The Art of Strategic Content Grouping

By Mitali Purkait Ghosh on April 29, 2024

Google’s March update has been terrible news for websites that keep posting the same content spun by artificial intelligence. Instead, the search engine giant is prioritizing topic clusters more than ever to combat content spinning and match user intent while providing them with comprehensive sources.

As a search engine optimization company for small businesses, Digital Concepts always recommends our clients to create topic clusters for their blogs.

What are topic clusters?

As the name suggests, topic clusters or content clusters are a group of relevant content that relate to a broader topic and are grouped with the help of hyperlinks. So, what are the key components of topic clusters?  

There are three major components:

• Pillar Content
• Cluster Content

• Hyperlinks

Pillar content acts as the anchor that connects all the cluster content via hyperlinks. For instance, if you are trying to promote your gym through your website, you can create a topic cluster for your blog with ‘Taking the first step towards fitness’ being the pillar content.

Once that pillar page is created, you can create cluster contenton related subjects like nutrition, hypertrophy, workout regimes, and more. All those pages link back to the pillar page. Topic clusters are darlings for both content writers and SEO experts at Digital Concepts. One gets to explore a lot of ideas while the other can encourage casual visitors to explore more of the website.

With that out of the way, let’s find out two amazing ways to create effective topic clusters for your site.

1. Identify topic cluster opportunities in existing content

Your existing content may have a lot of gaps or be re-organized with proper content hierarchy to create new cluster opportunities. Conduct an extensive audit of the existing content to find out those opportunities.

At the end of the audit, you should end up with a list of every content that has been published on the site. Next, you can:

• Group content on similar topics. A digital content writer can be instrumental in this process
• Identify a new pillar page in each group or create one for them.
• Link each cluster content to their respective pillage content.
• Keyword research every group and find out new cluster content that can be written for existing pillar pages.

2. Use AnswerThePublic

If you are starting from scratch, AnswerThePublic is a great tool for providing fresh ideas on creating topic clusters. Let’s go back to the example of the gym owner. You’ve researched the right keywords – ‘Start Your Fitness Journey’, selected the region as the US and the language as English.

From our search, we got six questions with –

• “How to Start Your Fitness Journey” having highest search volume and keyword difficulty and,
• “How to Start Your Health and Fitness Journey” having the lowest search volume and keyword difficulty.

Now, you’ve got your pillar page. This is a great foundation for your digital marketing content writing strategy. If your content starts ranking for the keyword ‘fitness journey’ you hit the search button on AnswerThePublic with this keyword. Go to the Alphabetical section. It will show you several options that would help you create the perfect cluster content depending on your niche.

For instance, if you want to promote your gym, “Fitness Journey: Before and After”‘ can be a great post where you show the results of different gym members.

On the other hand, if your gym is located in a retirement neighborhood, you can write on “Starting Your Fitness Journey at 50”.

If you’re trying to create helpful content to simply reach more eyes, write on “Starting Your Fitness Journey at Home”. While you provide genuine value to your users through this content, you can also link to a post that talks about “The Limitations of Fitness Journey at Home” and subtly promote your gym in the process.

You can use a similar approach to find new subtopics for your existing topic clusters.

By leveraging topic clusters, you can create a content web that satisfies both search engines and readers. By strategically interlinking well-researched content around a central theme, you establish your website as a trusted authority, improve SEO ranking, and keep visitors engaged. This can be a time-consuming process, especially if you’re aiming to create in-depth content clusters. To ensure you’re delivering high-quality content that resonates with your audience, consider hiring content writers online.

Need help for creating topic clusters and compelling content that converts? Reach out to Digital Concepts at +91 98301 40672 or click here to know more about our online content writing services.