Why Your Blog Should be Organized Into Topic Clusters

Structure your digital content into topic clusters to achieve higher search rank, improve the user experience, and keep your content organized & up-to-date.

Is the bulk of your current site traffic driven by paid ads? Would you prefer to spend that money elsewhere, and generate traffic organically instead? Of course you would! While paid-ad traffic strategies can generate consistent traffic, they are expensive and can be tedious to maintain. Marketers that primarily rely on ads are also more vulnerable to budget cuts; when the budgetary spigot is closed then your site's traffic drops more noticeably.

An alternative is to re-allocate resources toward creating content that pulls visitors into the site organically. By creating content people want to engage with, and structuring it correctly, your website can move higher in search rankings and begin receiving more organic traffic.

Which brings us to the purpose of today's article - the structure of your content. Once you've created some bit of content, how do you build that into your page and properly grab the attention of search engines in the process? The answer is Topic Clustering. Below I have outlined my 5 First Steps to Creating Your Own Topic Clusters.

1. Determine your central theme

What is the general sort of ranking you're looking for? More to the point - what do you wish to be known for? What is the question people are trying to answer when they visit your site?

Think about this in terms of what you (or your company) does well. Does your company sell graphic design monitors? Do you provide fleet maintenance services for trucking companies? Are you a wedding photographer? What matters here is understanding what you do well and why people are visiting your site in the first place.

If you were to write a hundred little articles about your company and what they do - what would all of those articles have in common? Identify what general common threads tie those articles together. That will form the central basis of your topic cluster.

Also importantly, this step helps to delineate which content you should include and which to avoid. Do you run a hair salon? Stay focused on creating content around that central theme.

2. Identify related topics & keywords

Once you have established the central theme of your blog, you can begin identifying related topics, keywords, and questions your visitors are likely googling.

If the central theme of your topic cluster is trucking, for example, then your related topics could also include maintenance tips, parts guides, related manuals, or how-to guides. They could even be comparison articles discussing competing products.

Suppose you run marketing for a steel mill - your related keywords could be around different alloys you produce, their particular applications, how your company designs them, etc.

Place yourself in the shoes of a curious outside observer. Imagine yourself giving a public tour of your business, explaining it to a group of questioning onlookers. After you tell the visitors a little about your company, what questions might they ask? Write these down - and then write articles to answer them.

3. Consolidate & categorize your existing content

Does your organization have existing content already present in their blog? Excellent, you are already a step ahead in the process!

Think back to the sub-categories and topics you outlined in Step 2. Use them as "buckets" in which to categorize your existing blog content. Identify which of your related questions and keywords are "answered" by this existing content.

You may find several articles all effectively answering the same question. Such pages are competing for rank with each other, when they should be competing for rank with your competitor's pages. Having what are effectively duplicate pages also creates a poor user experience. How is the visitor supposed to know which content is canon and which is "old news"?

You may also come up new sub-topic/related keywords as you review your existing content. Feel free to add new categories to your list - as long as they remain related to the central theme of your topic cluster.

4. Linking it all together

Here is where the rubber meets the road. Without a link structure, topic clusters are purely academic exercises in content organization. To get started - think about Wikipedia.

When is the last time you were on a wiki article of any kind? Notice how related nouns and related topics often carry links to articles specifically about those items? This is a topic cluster. It is how wiki articles demonstrate authority to search engines, and also how these sites keep users engaged. This is what you are going to do with your own blog content.

As you create new articles around a central theme, you will discuss many of the same topics and premises again and again. When your blog references such a thing, include a link that explains that thing in detail. Did you use an industry term or reference a proprietary technology? Embed a link to an article explaining what that term references.

By adopting such a structure consistently, both Google Search and your site visitors will see you as an authority on the topic.

If you need further argument, remember that building authority is a requisite step to gaining trust, likeability and influence, which in turn lead to sales.

5. Implementation of link structure into a topic cluster

Do you have it all mapped out? Do you know which articles are going to link to which other related articles? If so, then all you need to do is build the links and/or the content articles themselves.

Next Steps...

You want a thing. Shall it be done quickly, cheaply, or correctly? Pick two. The great thing about paid traffic is that it is instant. Setup your ads account, select your target page, keywords, and budget and you're off and running. Building organic traffic, on the other hand, requires patience. You are now in the process of building a name for yourself, instead of buying one, so to speak.

The changes you implement need time to reflect in Google's database. Your visitors will also need time to adapt to your new site design. Be patient! You may not see a substantial increase in traffic for several weeks. Keep adding to and maintaining your content to cultivate that traffic. It may seem a lot of effort, but every organic click you earn is one you didn't have to pay for.