What are Topic Clusters and How to Use It in 2023? – An Overview

Topic Clusters are a strategy that makes content creation a breeze, and the results are just beyond expectations. With that mentioned, you must be intrigued to know more about the strategy.

Well, you can know everything in this article. So, go on, have a read further!

What Are Topic Clusters?

One of the biggest challenges in content creation is finding the right ideas and topics to write on. Well, topic clusters are a way to overcome this challenge big time!

Topic Clusters can be defined as content groups that revolve around a specific topic that’s much broader than any piece of content within the entire cluster.

Let’s understand it better with an example!

Suppose you want to write about “Books.” Now, there are so many more things that you can cover about the topic. For example, there is a whole history about books that you can cover; there are genres, and why not include some book reviews too? So, while “Books” become your parent topic, all the other topics that you can cover with it become a part of your topic cluster.

To put it all in a nutshell, a topic cluster is a content strategy that covers multiple aspects of a broader topic and supports your SEO strategies and processes by helping with strong interlinking between all the content within the topic clusters.

This involves the creation of a parent page (in our example, that would be “Books”), and then all the other pages that follow are the subpages/ topic clusters that you interlink with the parent page.

So, as you can see, there are three basic components involved in a topic cluster, viz., Parent Page, Topic Cluster, Internal Linking. Let’s understand these terms in more detail.

Components of a Topic Cluster

Parent Page

It is also known as the Pillar Page for your topic cluster. This page holds details about the broad topic that you wish to cover. It is also known as the Pillar Page for your topic cluster. All the other topic cluster pages are linked to and from.

Sub Clusters

These are the subpages that you create within your parent page. These are more specific to one particular aspect of the topic and are more in-depth. These pages are further linked back to the pillar page.

Internal Linking

This is the most important part of the topic cluster, more essentially the essence of the entire strategy. You create topic clusters for this very purpose. As you create more pages within your topic clusters, you link them back to your pillar page and other subpages within the cluster.

This requires a clear strategy in your mind so that you are linking the pages right and in a way that keeps your audience hooked to your website.

So, with topic clusters, you can easily cover a broad concept while even writing about even the smallest of the details that fall within that concept. You can assume the many benefits that this strategy can bring about. However, to be more explicit about them, let’s see some of the major advantages of topic clusters.

Benefits of Topic Clusters

Here are some of the major benefits that you can derive from a well-planned topic cluster strategy.

Easier and Faster Content Creation and Organization

If you want to get the best results from your content, you need to be well organized. Additionally, you need to be consistent with content creation and publishing—topic clusters aid both of these goals.

With topic clusters, you can easily plan the content, and anything that’s well-planned shall be well-organized. You’ll also know precisely the topics you need to cove with topic clusters. Finally, the research work shall also be easy as whatever you research forms a part of the entire topic cluster.

So, you won’t have to look around for new ideas all the time or do your research from scratch every time you sit down to write a piece of content. Since you will know your topics and be through with your research, you shall write better content in a far lesser time.

Enhanced SEO

Internal linking is an essential aspect of any SEO strategy. The better you can internally link the pages within your website, the more search engines recognize and rank them. Additionally, the domain and page authority will increase with strong internal links.

As topic clusters are a lot about internal linking, it’s needless to mention that they shall support your SEO strategy, practices, and goals and bring about enhanced SEO results.

So, you can see that building topic clusters are in your favor in every manner. However, how do you exactly build and them? We shall be covering this in the next part of this article.

How to Use Topic Clusters?

Well, the only way to use topic clusters is to build them for your website. So, you must be asking how to make topic clusters? Well, you are not far from the answers either!

Here is everything that you need to do to build your topic clusters.

Decide the Broad Topic for the Pillar Page

The first step in building a topic cluster is to know what you want to write about. So, you need to decide the broad topic or subject you will cover.

When you do that, ensure that it is related to your business and offers a way to promote your products and services.

Create a Plan for Other Sub Topics to Give More Shape to The Topic Cluster

Once you know the broad concept you want to cover, it’s time to decide the sub-topics to link back to the pillar page.

This involves in-depth brainstorming and asking yourself different questions as regards the topic. You need to dig into what your readers would like to read, ask questions around the same, and note down the topics you wish to cover as clusters for the broader topic.

Perform the Keyword Research

Once you have all the topics for your clusters, you need to research them to begin writing the content. However, before you explore the topics, it shall be wise to perform keyword research for each topic on your list.

You can also use the perfect keyword research tool like SEMRush. You can find more ideas and topics in your cluster as you perform keyword research. Additionally, you will determine the keywords you need to add to your content to ensure that it’s well-optimized for search engines.

Content Creation

Now, you have everything you need to begin creating the pages for your topic clusters. So, start creating the content for your pillar page and the sub-topics. You can either write it yourself or outsource the same. Whatever you do, you must make sure that the content is well-researched and doesn’t lack quality.

Additionally, when creating content, you must ensure that the pillar page has important and broader details while the clusters are more specific to the topic they are about.

Internal Linking and Publishing

This is the last step in building your topic clusters. Once you are done with your content, you need to go back to it and strategically place the links within your website. All the subpages must go back to the pillar pages. Additionally, as you publish more and more content within the cluster, you can internally link subpages.

The better, stronger, and more strategic your internal linking, the more enhanced results you get from your topic clusters. Once you have done the internal linking, all you need to do is publish the pages on your website and then analyze the results to improve and enhance the same.

Final Words

So, that’s all about topic clusters. It’s a brilliant strategy to support your content marketing and overall SEO goals. All you need to know is the right way to do the same.

We hope that this article was helpful to you in getting the understanding of building topic clusters, and you are right on your way to using this brilliant strategy to the best of its capabilities.