If you’ve worked in SEO or content marketing for a while, then you’ve probably heard the term content clusters. As Google keeps updating its algorithm to favour helpful and useful content, SEO is moving towards a content cluster model.
In this article, we discuss what content clusters are and how you can add them to your SEO strategy to help improve your rankings.
What is a content cluster?
So, first thing’s first – what is a content cluster? Sometimes called a hub and spoke strategy, a content cluster begins with a single “pillar” page or blog post, which is the main hub page for a certain topic. Other content pages related to that topic then link back to the pillar page, which becomes an authority for that topic. These supporting pages are also known as cluster pages.
Topic clusters help to optimise the structure of your website and help with your internal linking strategy. Content clusters can work on both e-commerce websites and content-driven websites such as blogs.
Let’s take a content marketing blog (like this one!) as an example. The pillar page might be something like “SEO tools,” and then some of the supporting blog posts might be articles such as “Best free SEO tools for small businesses” or “How does SEMRush work?” These supporting blog posts would then link out to the pillar content.
The more contextual internal links to the pillar page, the more Google sees its value. Backlinks are one of the highest ranking factors, and internal links help to pass on authority to your pillar page. And the good thing about internal links? You can sort and control internal links yourself right now rather than hoping and waiting for high domain backlinks from other sites to your site.
Content clusters are also called topic clusters, content silos, pillar pages, and cornerstone content.
How can content clusters help with user experience and SEO?
Google’s algorithm is ever changing. Google now recognises search intent and rewards helpful content rather than content stuffed with keywords. Its Helpful Content update released in December 2022 (following the launch in August 2022 of the helpful content system) is just one example of its commitment to good content.
Search engines can now understand the context behind searches and relate these to past searches.
All of this helps the user get better results for their queries, even when they are more complex.
Search engines find it more difficult to crawl and categorise a website with a flat structure and many content pages. If there are also numerous pages on the same site about a specific topic, these can end up competing with each other for rankings.
The internal linking to the pillar page tells Google that this page should be prioritised for this topic.
Cluster content experiments have found that the more interlinking between cluster pages and pillar pages, the better the rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and the more views the pages achieved (source: Anum Hussain and Cambria Davies, 2016).
How do I create a content cluster?
If you already have plenty of content on your website, then chances are you won’t need to create anything new. If you’re just starting out, then it’s a good idea to plan your upcoming content to fit into content clusters so that you won’t need to go back and do this retrospectively.
1. Identify your purpose
Have a think about your strategy for content clusters. What problems is your business trying to solve for users? Thinking about this from a user’s perspective will help you discover what searches they will be doing and how you can provide content to answer these.
2. Group content pages by topic
Start by grouping all your content pages by topic. This grouping could be done in a spreadsheet to help you keep track of all your pages. Having a spreadsheet of all your existing content is also helpful for seasonal content updates, so it’s definitely worth investing some time in this.
On your spreadsheet, include the fields: URL, cluster topic, and keyword. Then add a checklist for linking to the pillar page.
3. Identify your pillar pages
If you don’t have a post covering the topic in its broadest sense, you may need to create one. Examples of these pillar pages for a content marketing blog might be “Content Marketing Strategy,” “Blogging,” or “Spelling and grammar.”
Try to forget about ranking for specific keywords but instead think about your pages being shown for topics.
When creating your pillar page, ensure that the topic is broad enough for around 20-30 sub-posts. It may help to add ideas for posts to your spreadsheet for when you have time to create them if you don’t have the content already.
Pillar pages shouldn’t try to rank for long tail keywords or explore a narrow topic.
4. Create supporting content
Once your pillar pages are ready, it’s time to create your supporting content. Supporting content should go into depth about one aspect of the overarching topic. For example, if your pillar content is “blogging,” some supporting content might be “SEO checks for blogs” or “How to find ideas for blog posts.”
If you’re still thinking in terms of keywords, then your supporting pages should be about targeting those long tail keywords, or a secondary search a user would do, after they’ve already found the pillar page.
Pages that relate to the pillar page should all link back to it. Try to use the same anchor text each time to let search engines know that the pages are part of a content cluster.
How can you tell if content clusters are working?
Of course, it’s all well and good creating content clusters, but you need to know if this strategy is actually working for you. A lot of the data in analytics tools focuses on the performance of pages independently of each other, so it can be difficult to measure the impact of a content cluster.
Fortunately, there is a feature in Google Analytics (GA) called Content Groupings that helps you analyse your content clusters’ performance. You can use the spreadsheet you created earlier to help set this up.
This guide from Pepperland Marketing gives you an easy step-by-step guide to configuring the setting for Content Groupings in Google Analytics. Once you’re all set up, you’ll be able to analyse the views for a topic cluster as a whole, the page value, the average time on page, and the exit rate percentage.
