Content Clusters: Your Strategy for User Experience & SEO Success

Some say the only constant is change, and given Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, we’d be inclined to agree.

Earlier in 2024, Google released a helpful content update, favoring content written to inform, not just attracting clicks to a webpage. Implementing content clusters in your keyword strategy is a proven way to earn search engine favor and boost your site’s activity and relevance to your audience. In fact, in 2017, HubSpot started the idea of a content cluster strategy and saw a 107% traffic increase when they implemented it for their resources.

4 Benefits of Using Content Clusters

Content clusters, or topic clusters, are a method of planning and organizing your content around topics as opposed to keywords. Topics feel more human, mirroring the way we naturally process—they help you stand out in an age of AI. Revisiting your keyword strategy to align with this approach can help both your site’s users and search engine crawlers understand your content. An honest check-in is a great place to start.

Is this content more valuable to my reader or a search engine robot?

If the answer is the latter, consider a strategy refresh. The truth is content clusters are here to stay when it comes to SEO rankings, and fortunately, abiding by Google’s rules has a lot of benefits!

1. Boost Your SERP Rankings

This may feel like an obvious one, but keeping your content within the bounds of its title and your company’s expertise is the way to go. For example, an ice cream store with a generic keyword strategy might consider writing a blog about donuts to rank higher for the keyword “dessert.” However, Google’s crawlers could detect this as outside the site’s expertise and knock that page for irrelevance.

Alternatively, diving deeper into the topic of ice cream by writing content related to ice cream toppings, ice cream flavors, etc. would prove more relevant to site users and earn some points in SERP results!

2. Improve User Experience

Intuitive web design aims to help users find your content when and where they need it. Incorporating this principle into your content cluster strategy can look like linking relevant sub-pages to your services page, prompting search engines to value the pages you actually want to rank for. For an example, visit our Inbound Marketing page. The “Our Competencies” accordion menu helps users interested in search engine optimization naturally find the sub-page they’re looking for.

Internal linking is a link-building practice that can help you grow your influence by creating easily navigable pathways from one piece of relevant and valuable information to the next. This creates a cluster around a pillar page focused on one topic. Pillar pages contain content that answers a wide range of questions someone searching for a topic could have or link to related content that does.

3. Reduce Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization is when multiple pages on your site are competing to rank for the same keywords, hurting both of their chances of performing well—like trying to score against your own team.

One way to combat this phenomenon is by optimizing your previous blogs. By combining content tailored around the same or closely related keywords, you allow like-minded content to work together, not against itself. As an added bonus, long-form blogs tend to yield better conversion rates than short-form blogs.

4. Build Subject Authority

By providing a slew of helpful resources, you prove yourself deeply knowledgeable in your audience’s field of interest. Going after topics rather than keywords makes your page a one-stop shop for all the ice cream information, marketing services, and you-name-it content your audience is searching for.
Not to mention, internal linking passes authority between site pages, building subject authority in the minds of your readers and search engines.

Where to Start with Topic Clusters?

So now that you know the benefits, where do you begin? Remember, the idea behind content clusters is more than just adding a few links to pages that may share similar content. It’s a strategic way to organize your content to better inform and delight the users of your website. As such, your content should be well-planned and intentionally created. This begins with deciding what content you want to display on your website and how it should relate to other content on the site.

Step 1: Define the Topics that Make Up Your Site

To start, you need to know what your website’s structure will look like and then plan your content accordingly. When designing your structure, it’s important to keep in mind the topics your website will revolve around. Some good questions to ask at this stage are:

• What are your core products or services?
• What do your customers want in relation to your website?
• What makes your business unique?
• What is your competitive advantage in the market?

Once you feel like you’ve got some clarity on the questions above, it’s time to start deciding on the core topics of your website. This is important as it literally defines the structure of your website.

Once you’ve decided on a topic, you can follow up with subtopics, articles, and other resources that will help users better explore the topic. For example, on the PHOS website, we have a category for inbound marketing, which would be considered a pillar page. From that page, users can explore different subtopics of inbound marketing such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, digital advertising, and content marketing.

When we write blog articles, we actually tag them based on these subtopics. Our hope in doing this is that if a user has a specific search query, like… Oh, I don’t know… let’s say “Why should I use content clusters?”, they will be led to an exquisitely crafted page related to their search query and then invited to explore the subtopic of SEO and even browse other inbound marketing services.

Furthermore, this tells search engines like Google that this article is connected with SEO and inbound marketing topics in general, so if someone searches for a broader query like “topic clusters for inbound marketing” (inbound marketing being the pillar page for this content), the search engine will know exactly where to send them.

Step 2: Organize Your Topics into Clusters

Remember the spider web diagrams teachers used to have us create in school to help consolidate ideas and organize notes on a particular subject? Well, they’re about to make a comeback.

When initially designing your site, start with a piece of paper (or an online diagram maker). Write down all the ideas you have for potential pages on your site and the subtopics they are connected to, then connect those subtopics to the main topics you’ve already decided upon, and—BAAM!—you’ve got content clusters.

Once you get all your ideas out in the open, a few things will become apparent. You’ll notice connections where you may not have realized them before, and you’ll notice that not all of your ideas should make it onto the final website.

For example, we once had a client request that we put a page for their secondary side hustle on their current business’s website. In their mind, this would be a great way to promote and grow their second venture with their current audience, but in reality, it would likely just confuse their users and search engines and have a negative impact on their primary business. That’s not to say the side hustle webpage doesn’t have a place—it just doesn’t have a place on another business’s site.

This organization of ideas can also be helpful if you already have a website and would like to better organize your content. First, identify all the current pages on your website, write them down on paper or in a document, and start making connections. You may come to the conclusion that you are crushing the cluster game, or you may realize how disconnected and difficult your website is to navigate. If it’s the latter, no need to worry—our team are experts at creating an unforgettable user experience and would love to help!

Step 3: Create Content Accordingly

Once you’ve decided on the topics you want to incorporate into your website and how you want to organize them, it’s time to start creating content. Remember that all content should lead back to a pillar page. So, whether you are writing content for a website page displayed in your navigation bar or a blog article, make sure it connects seamlessly with the topic it represents.

There are a lot of great ways to ensure that your content leads users back to the main topic. We’ve already talked about internal links, and to reiterate, it’s important to provide relevant links throughout your content that point back to the pillar page they relate to. Be careful with links though. You can cause challenges for web crawlers if you link too frequently. This is why a cluster strategy can be helpful as it creates an intentional connection to pages that precede the page (i.e. pillar pages) or pages that relate to it (i.e. similar pages) on your website. Ultimately, the goal of every link is to provide additional value to the user of that page.

Another way to ensure that the site is well organized is to make sure that your page path showcases the user’s journey. To bring back our example from earlier, a page path like besticecreamshop.com/icecream-flavors/holiday-flavors/christmas-flavors/ is far more organized than several separate page paths (such as besticecreamshop.com/christmas-flavors) even if it looks longer at a glance.

Another way to display this, especially if your website is already established, is to guide visitors and search engine crawlers using breadcrumbs. If you are utilizing a content management system, like WordPress, this is as simple as downloading the right plugin and taking the time to set them up.

Improve Your Content Efforts with PHOS

The idea of overhauling your site’s structure to center around content clustering can be overwhelming. At PHOS, we usually opt to implement content clustering in our content creation strategy first, then consider site layout.

There are a variety of ways to prioritize topics over keywords. We hope you have a few jumping-off points to help your content stand out. If you need a hand taking on the world of search engine optimization, our team of experienced, digital marketing strategists is happy to help!