As Google gets more sophisticated, it creates a need for you to produce content that makes it easier for web crawlers to find and make sense of your content.

That's where topic clusters come in.

Most of Google's search results come from text-based blog posts, and to optimise your content for Google, you will need to have a high-quality blog that links to other content on your website. These are called Topic Clusters. Topic Clusters are kind of like a daisy chain with a single topic at their centre.

It seems people are asking complex questions in searches and are using different phrases in their queries. As search engines are adapting, they had to change their algorithms to handle topics, not just keywords. This algorithm change impacts how you need to think about and organise your website content.

Initially, our websites could have a whole bunch of pages that weren't linked, but for a search engine, the more complex your site becomes, the more it slows down the search engine. For instance, if you have a 10-page website with over 100 blogs, that's a lot of pages for Google to scan and then figure out their context.

And if you are producing blogs every week based on keywords, each page starts to compete with each other. And that last thing you need is to compete with yourself!!!!

The result; the more complex your website, the more it will slow down a search engine and result in Google not ranking you as high.

What you need to do is start organising your content into Topic Clusters that are linked. Search Engines will then speed through your site and reward this orderly linking with a higher search placement. Yea!

So how do you create a Topic Cluster?

You probably developed your website around several topics, services or products, which are called Pillar pages. Pillar pages are a single page that captures all the key points about a topic. For instance, let's say you offer digital marketing, your Pillar pages might include:

• Publishing
• Engagement
• Monitoring
• Advertising
• Analytics

Then each Cluster Page, or blog, would cover a single key point mentioned on the Pillar page. That blog would link back to the Pillar page through hyperlinks and encourage users to binge read a series of your blogs, making the Google algorithm very happy.

Below is an example of how to set up a Topic Cluster.

Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/topic-clusters-seo (Matt Barby)

It would be best to start thinking of your content assets in terms of the Pillar topics you want your business to be known for because that will drive how you develop your Keyword Strategy (which I will discuss next week).

Your keyword strategy and cluster topics are both based on a well thought out digital strategy.

Need help developing topic clusters for your business?

If this sounds like a strategy you want to develop for your business but think you are going to need some help, I built a step-by-step program that will show you how to develop topic clusters and so much more.

I will show you:

• how to to develop a digital strategy 
• how to develop a business narrative that is compelling and unique
• how to create goals for your digital marketing that align with your business objectives
• how to develop a digital strategy that goes beyond simply posting to social media
• and finally, a method to make sure you are meeting your business goals

We are talking about a jam-packed masterclass explicitly built to give you everything your business needs to build, promote, and confidently grow your business.

If you want help building a powerful business with a strong future, let's hop on a call to see if your business is a good fit.