We all agree that Digital Marketing is one of the most promising strategies for companies to conquer online space, right?

And in your business, has the work performed met expectations? If not, maybe your content is in need of a little push to reach your future customers and that means you should improve the SEO for your site.

To help you on this, we’ve prepared this blog post about Topic Clusters, a digital trend that will help your website gain more visibility and be noticed by the audience. Check out:

What are the Topic Clusters?

Topic Clustes propose a new way of organizing content for websites, distributing information in groups around a main topic.

This strategy was created by HubSpot based on the observation of the way consumers answer their questions online. The company realized that you can't just focus on keywords, search engines want more than that: they want answers for users.

The main objective of Topic Clusters, therefore, is to reorganize the structure of a website so that it is clearer for users and search engines. Let's better understand how this works next:

How do Topic Clusters work? 

Topic Clusters are structured from three elements: the post pillar, the clusters and the hyperlinks. But what does this mean in practice?

With this technique, the content is organized so that its sub-themes are related to each other and have a more in-depth pillar page. In addition, the information is connected through links, which point to specific or complementary points of the same topic.

Topic Clusters Structures

Pillar content

If a Topic Cluster is understood as a group of contents, the pillar post is its main base. It works as a framework to support clusters as well as hyperlinks.

The pillar content allows a theme to be approached by embracing sub-themes in its structure. But how to define which post will be the pillar of a content group?

The general rule is to select a theme that can be explored in a comprehensive way. In practice, the pillar post needs to be made around a keyword, a broader subject. In addition, it must be aligned with the company's ranking and conversion strategy.

Here, at Easy, for instance, a good call would be to create a pillar content with the title ‘what is software development?’

Clusters

With the pillar defined, it's time to think about clusters, that is, the contents that will appear in the main post and will help classify the page as relevant among search engines and rank the site among the first results.

While the pillar deals with broader themes, clusters content should be more specific. They must be able to talk about a single subject and approach it as thoroughly as possible. It is recommended to produce 10 to 30 clusters for each pillar post.

Following the same example above, if our pillar post is about software development, clusters can be: programming languages, automation, software factories, artificial intelligence, web development, applications, cybersecurity and more! 

Hyperlinks

Have you noticed what we did in the previous paragraph? In the structure of Topic Clusters, working with links is essential, as they connect the pillar to the clusters and help the site to gain authority with the main search engines.

This linking, however, cannot be done without a plan, you need to follow this recipe: clusters must always be linked to the pillar post and vice versa to create a content net. Also, it is important to use anchor text (i.e if the post is about software development, the hyperlink should be added in those words, as shown in this sentence). 

Once you’ve finished writing all your posts, pillar content, clusters and hyperlinks, it’s time to create a content diagram and provide a good experience to the user. To do this, you can include navigation menus, conversion points, share buttons, and whatever else you need.

Considering that the pillar content is dense and long, also keep in mind to add a button on the page that allows the user to go back to the top. And, if possible, create videos and infographics, to make a more dynamic content. This will give a whole different experience to anyone who’s reading it!

Now that you know how Topic Clusters work, how about reorganizing your website content? 

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