Content Clustering

Overview

Contextual content clusters are a topic modeling strategy in which you create a “cluster” of content around one topic.

First, you want to build out content that is informative, but ties directly into your product or service offering.

A secondary goal of content clusters is to build up the authority your site has around your main products and services.

How Does Topic Modeling Work?

Content clusters are important largely in part due to the evolution of Google’s algorithm and the way we approach search engine optimization strategy today. Long gone are the days of keyword stuffing. As Google has advanced its algorithm and machine learning technology, the need to be topically relevant has become increasingly important.

Benefits of Content Clusters

Linking your content together has important benefits that cannot be overlooked.

• 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.

• 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.
  
  Understanding User Intent

• What does the user want?

• What is the user looking for?

• Based on that intent, what would the user be most likely to convert on?

• What type of action might the user intend to take?

• What type of next steps would the user be interested in?

Selecting Keywords For Your Content Cluster

When it comes to building out a content cluster the first thing you’ll want to do is identify informational keywords associated with your core transactional pages. While you are looking to build the cluster around topics, it’s important to know what topics are highly searched.

ie: Property Marketing, Tenant Screening, Rent Collection, Property Maintenance, Financial Reporting, Eviction Protection, Changing Property Managers, Canceling with Another Brokerage, Landlord Rescue, etc.

Use the property lifecycle, your processes or additional services to plan out your content.

Strong Internal Linking Strategy

One of the most important parts of getting results with content clusters is having a strong internal linking strategy. Linking between pages gives Google messages that your content is related and allows you to pass authority between topics.

When you are linking you should keep things as​ organic​ as possible while also being strategic with your anchor text. You should be using anchor text that matches the target keyword or topic of the page you are linking to.

OR

Stop competing with yourself

Think of it this way: when you have all of your content clustered together, you’re creating a ‘megasite’​ in a sense and showing that you have an authority on a certain topic. If you see that someone has 20 pages all about property management, you’d reasonably assume that they know a lot about it, right? Google does the same thing. That one page that links to all ancillary pages, over time, will increase in rankings as an authority page. And like a rising tide that lifts all boats, all these related pages that link to each other will get a boost when the main authority page gets a boost. See diagram above.

However, if you have 20 individual pages about how to manage a property, those pages are essentially competing with each other for rankings, because they’re all about related, but slightly different keywords. Why would you want to compete with yourself? Enter content clustering to boost your rankings, instead of competing with your own rankings. See diagram to the left.