Pillar Content: Using Topic Clusters to Bolster SEO Impact
Search engine optimization (SEO) and content go hand-in-hand. It’s almost impossible to make progress in SEO without a solid content strategy serving as your foundation, and any reasonable pillar content strategy should at least give you some SEO benefit. However, several factors are making it increasingly difficult for amateur content developers to see the SEO results they want. For starters, Google search is introducing updates that refine its algorithm and allow it to evaluate the quality of content more stringently. Hummingbird, from 2013, introduced semantic search, which practically eliminated exact match keyword consideration in favor of considering context and meaning. Since then, synonyms and contextually relevant phrases greatly increased in importance when optimizing for strategic keywords. Additionally, the SEO industry has become incredibly competitive, with millions of websites often fighting over the same groups of keywords and phrases. This makes it increasingly hard to stand out, and nearly impossible to rank for the most hotly contested phrases in an industry. How can you combat these effects and improve your SEO results? One solution is using topic clusters, a content-focused strategy that can help you rank for highly competitive head keywords and accessible long-tail keyword phrases simultaneously. If you want to remain competitive and maximize your SEO results, you need to include some variation of the topic clustering strategy. What Are Topic Clusters? We’ll start with a high-level overview. What are topic clusters, and how can you use them for SEO? A topic cluster is an assortment of individual pieces of content that are all relevant to the same overarching key themes or topics. Working together with an anchoring piece of content, usually called “pillar content,” your topic cluster will yield much better search engine ranking results than a conventional content strategy. Your pillar content for a given cluster will work as a functional overview of a broad topic. You can think of it as the center of a wheel, with each piece of topic cluster content serving as a spoke in that wheel. The pillar content is meant to provide a comprehensive overview of your chosen topic, with each of the “spokes” covering some aspect of that topic in much greater detail. For example, let’s say you’re a digital marketing firm. You might create content pillars covering the topic of “onsite SEO.” This article covers all the important aspects of onsite optimization, from a somewhat high level. It also links to a variety of other pieces, which cover more specific aspects of onsite SEO in greater detail. For example, you might link to pieces on topics like “how to audit your current onsite SEO,” “how to increase your site speed,” “technical onsite SEO for beginners,” and “how to write better onsite content.” Each piece of cluster content should attempt to target a long-tail keyword phrase, while your content pillars target a more competitive head keyword. Each of these keyword terms should be at least somewhat relevant to the others. By the end of your strategy, each of your cluster content pillars should rank highly for their low-competition, “low hanging fruit” keywords, all while lending support to lift your content pillars beyond where it could rank on its own. Google will come to see you as an authority on this central topic because of your work throughout the cluster, and you’ll likely earn more backlinks as a result as well. The Benefits of Topic Clusters and Content Pillars for SEO So what are the benefits of using topic clusters for SEO? These are some of the best advantages: Head and long-tail keyword optimization. This strategy allows you to take advantage of both head keywords and long-tail keyword phrases simultaneously. Head keywords tend to be short and broad; they have the benefit of offering very high search volume, but they’re also incredibly competitive. By contrast, long-tail keywords tend to be longer and more specific; they’re not competitive, so they’re easy to rank for, but they also have a lower search volume. Head keywords require a lot of time, effort, and patience, as well as a huge volume of relevant content. Long-tail keyword phrases are easy and convenient, but individually, they can never be as powerful as a head keyword. With pillar pieces and your entire topic cluster, you can get the best of both worlds. Feeding high search volume results. The most lucrative positions in SEO are the top-ranking positions for highly searched keywords and phrases. The downside is that it’s incredibly difficult to attain these positions. With topic clusters, you can optimize your entire pillar page content strategy to “feed into” the pieces most likely to achieve these feats. In other words, you’ll be pumping up your best content and greatly increasing your chances of getting to those sought-after high-ranking positions. Internal linking and user retention. Creating content pillars and clusters allows you to foster better internal link building and optimize for user retention. Readers who peruse your pillar content will naturally want to follow links to your complementary, more detailed subtopics. Conversely, readers who stumble upon your niche content will naturally want to read more about the “big picture” of the topic. Ultimately, this strategy helps you keep users on your website, which is valuable for increasing conversions; it’s also useful for lowering your bounce rate and positively affecting other important onsite behavior metrics. Authority and reputation. Writing pillar page content in the form of a topic cluster will increase your authority—both in the subjective sense, and in terms of domain authority as considered by Google. In the former case, readers who follow your pillar page will quickly learn that you’re an expert in this field; they’ll have high-level and low-level content to review, and given enough time, will think of you as the thought leader in this area. In the latter case, your pillar page will be much more likely to attract links and social media posts and shares, ultimately increasing your domain- and page-level authority. Development flexibility. While there are some best practices that everyone should follow,