If you ever feel frustrated by content marketing, you are not alone. Many marketers struggle with measuring ROI, performing keyword research, and ranking well in the search engines. It’s frustrating to develop content, only to learn that it’s not driving the traffic or results you had expected. Fortunately, there are things you can do to become a more effective content marketer.
One way to make your content marketing more effective is by creating content clusters, or groups of related content. This is a different approach because it looks at your visibility across a specific topic rather than a keyword. Today, we are going to teach you how to use content clustering to your advantage.
How Content Clustering Works
Traditionally, keywords referred to 10 or 20 words that people would search for within a certain topic. Now, there are hundreds or thousands of variations of keywords, making it difficult to include them into a single content piece. That’s where content clusters come into the picture.
Content clusters allow you to create groups of related content to build relevance in the search engines. Part of this strategy requires you to link related pages of content together, and then link them to a central index or hub. The links that are placed into your content help with authority. The more pages that link to your index, the more relevant you appear to the search engines.
Benefits of Content Clusters
Linking your content together has important benefits that cannot be overlooked.
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Happier customers. When people visit your site for information, it’s helpful to have all related topics grouped together. Customers stay longer, enjoy their experience, and view you as an industry expert.
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Happier search engines. The search engines appreciate clusters of content. Authority comes from having many relevant pages on a specific topic, and you can link your hub page to your homepage. This moves the page up in your site’s hierarchy.
We highly recommend this article from Hubspot on developing content clusters. It gives you a great idea on how everything works together – pillar content, cluster content, hyperlinks – to move a website up in the SERPs.
Creating Your First Topic Cluster
It can be daunting to start content clusters from scratch, so the best approach is to audit your site and look for pages that relate to a specific topic. Start with an idea that is important to your audience, such as a common problem. Perform keyword research to build out core topics with subtopics, and then map out content ideas that align. When complete, add in the appropriate links to gain authority.
As you create content, think of topics that you want to be a thought leader in. It’s not just about keywords anymore. It’s about taking ownership of niche areas that only you know best.
