SEO is an activity that requires constant study and attention . After all, while you are reading this text, search engines, such as Google, are updating their robots.
The objective of the search engines is always the same: the website with the greatest potential to respond to what the user searched for appears first on Google . This is why content has become increasingly important in Digital Marketing.
In SEO, the latest innovation in terms of strategy is topic clustering. In other words, it is a way of organizing the pages of a website so that they are “cleaner” and more intuitive.
First of all, understand the evolution of SEO
SEO strategies are always based on changes in search engines . In turn, search engines try to adapt to user behavior . In other words, in the end, SEO needs to focus on people and behavior.
Previously, searches were based on simple keywords , such as “restaurant in São Paulo”. Nowadays, searches are longer and more complex . People literally ask Google questions.
As a result, Google has been changing to argentina email list adapt to this new way of searching. Thus, it uses other factors to show results on the page, such as synonyms and the user's location . In the last major change, Rankbrain , Google launched a learning algorithm to understand the context of searches . In other words, the algorithm began to associate the current search with similar previous queries and, thus, find the best results.
The consequence of all these changes is that company websites also need to change, as do content production and SEO strategies.
What are topic clusters in SEO
Everyone already knows that good content is useful and relevant within the company's segment and according to the personas' doubts.
Now, new studies are revealing that, in SEO, topic clusters can also significantly improve a website's search rankings .
Topic clusters aim to reorganize the structure of a website so that the subtopics of a content are related to each other and have a pillar page . In other words, there is a page that talks about this content topic in depth. In addition, it links to other pages , which talk about specific or complementary points of this topic.
In other words, the organization of content within a website becomes more specific, rather than generic. And this is positive for both users and search engines.
The importance of topic clusters
Let's assume that your company has a blog. As the blog is updated, new pages are created on your website, making its structure full of links and complex.
As a result, it’s harder for Google to crawl all of your site’s pages quickly. Additionally, these URLs can often start competing with each other, causing your SEO efforts to become fragmented.
The SEO topic cluster is used to organize this complex structure more carefully. This way, Google will know which page should be prioritized for each topic. As a result, the pillar page gains more strength.
Additionally, this clustering tells search engines that your company offers depth to that content. And guess what the Rankbrain algorithm loves? That’s right, your site is rewarded for this organization with higher search rankings.
How to organize your website with topic clusters
The big secret here is to stop thinking about SEO in terms of keywords and start thinking about topics. So the first step is to review the pages on your site and group them by topic.
Think of the pillar page as answering all the questions related to that topic. It will also be a platform to adequately cover other blog posts that address that topic.
Another tip here is that the pillar page should also not cover a narrow topic or long-tail keywords. In other words, it should be broader.