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As a content marketer, you know you need consistent, high-quality content. You also know that creating content that’s relevant and targeted to what your ideal customer is searching for is a must for search engine optimization.
However, these days, even that’s not enough to rank well in the search engines. You have to make sure your content is being read and acted upon.
One of the best ways to do that while delivering a valuable user experience is by topic clustering. Topic clustering structures your content around specific themes and subtopics.
The best part? AI is a huge help when it comes to topic clustering! Let’s take a closer look:
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Topic clustering organizes content around a central “content pillar” that covers a topic broadly. Around this pillar are “clusters” that cover specific subtopics. These clusters are then interlinked to improve SEO, provide more depth to the content, and deliver a better overall user experience.
Example: Email marketing is an incredibly broad topic. An example of topic clustering with email marketing would involve a broad piece on “Email Marketing Best Practices”, and then cluster pages based on subtopics like:
When search engines crawl these sub-topics, they understand that you’re writing in-depth on this topic, and that in turn increases your chances of ranking higher.
Topic clustering goes beyond just a way to organize your content. It’s also more than just a content marketing strategy. Done correctly, it can greatly enhance your search engine optimization efforts by:
By creating clusters that go into detail on specific topics, you show search engines that you have a profound knowledge of the topic (or topical authority), a key aspect of Google’s Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content guidelines. The more you continue to publish content that meets these guidelines and is fully optimized, the better.
Linking your pillar pages with your cluster pages makes it easier for search engines to crawl your pages and index them. You want to make it as smooth as possible, as the more pages they index, the more likely your site will be found when your ideal customer searches for a keyword you’re targeting.
Clusters let you target several related keywords and phrases naturally, rather than just focusing on one at a time, improving your chances for short-tail and long-tail keyword searches.
When users come across a cluster of content, they’re much more likely to spend a longer time on the page learning and following the steps or educating and informing themselves by reading your content.
This shows up in your analytics as a low bounce rate and higher time on site, which are both indicators that search engines use to identify quality sites and rank them accordingly.
Rather than having a bunch of standalone posts that are isolated from each other and scattered on a variety of topics, topic clustering keeps your content in one cohesive unit making it easier to see where you may have content gaps so that you can stay ahead of the competition.
AI is an excellent tool for handling much of the heavy lifting. Researching, planning, and clustering topics by hand is time-consuming.
AI makes the process simple and straightforward by:
Now that you know why using AI for topic clustering and SEO is a smart idea, how exactly do you do it? Follow these steps:
Start by choosing the broad topic you want to talk about. For example, if you run an email marketing blog, you might start with “Email Marketing Basics.”
This is meant to be a purposefully broad keyword and topic. Consider what your audience is looking for, where your expertise lies, and how this aligns with your overall goals.
There are a variety of AI tools that can help you identify the best topic clusters for your SEO and content marketing efforts.
For example, ChatGPT and other AI writing assistants can help you brainstorm subtopics while creating relevant outlines and highlighting potential FAQs.
Then, search engine-specific tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs (and other keyword research tools) let you research a topic in greater depth while giving you detailed keyword and keyphrase data.
Originality.ai’s Predictive SEO Tool will show you how optimized your content is in comparison to the competition, find relevant keywords to help you build topical authority, and offer intelligent AI SEO suggestions you can implement to help your content rank more competitively.
The Originality.ai Predictive SEO Tool is also manipulation-resistant to tactics like keyword stuffing. Learn more in our Predictive SEO Accuracy Study.
If you’re using an AI Chatbot like ChatGPT, add a broad topic, and prompt the AI to generate subtopics.
Depending on the tool, it may generate related topics, variations on keywords, or questions people ask related to the topic. Use this information to create a list of potential cluster topics.
We ran a brief test in ChatGPT, going back to our example theme of email marketing content:
When prompted, ChatGPT recommended several subtopics including email list building, email automation, and email marketing metrics that could expand the topic cluster.
Be sure to keep user intent in mind. You want your subtopics to span all of the different stages of the customer journey, including awareness, consideration, and decision.
Once you have a list, review it carefully. Keep in mind that not every suggestion that AI makes needs to be a cluster of posts.
Prioritize your strategy by focusing on:
The last step is the content creation process. Draft your outlines, ask AI to suggest FAQs and headings, and use Originality.ai’s Predictive SEO Tool to optimize your articles.
Additionally, make sure your content is clear, grammatically correct, and readable. The more time a user spends on your pages consuming your content, the more beneficial signals get sent to the search engine algorithms.
Finally, interlink your cluster pages back to your pillar page and vice versa. This type of interlinking structure helps search engines understand how your topics relate to each other to improve SEO overall.
Now that you have a better idea of what AI topic clustering is, how can you make sure you’re getting the most productive results out of AI when you use it?
Follow these best practices:
AI tools are great for suggestion keywords, and it can be tempting to want to fit them all into your content. However, resist the urge to over-optimize your content. You want to avoid keyword stuffing or adding keywords to the point where it affects readability as that can have the opposite effect on your ranking. Striking the right balance is crucial!
Using the Originality.ai Predictive SEO Tool is a great way to naturally incorporate relevant keywords and intelligent SEO suggestions, as it is resistant to keyword stuffing and rewards genuine content improvements.
User intent is at the core of not just a good search engine ranking, but the entire experience from landing on a page to reading content to drawing information from it and then acting on that information. So be sure to keep user intent at the heart of your research.
Gradually review your content from time to time to make sure it continues to stay relevant to what searchers are looking for. The last thing you want is to secure a top ranking only to show visitors outdated information. AI can suggest updates based on different trends and new information to help you keep that hard-earned ranking.
Although AI can do a great many things and handles much of the heavy lifting when it comes to research, nothing beats personal insights, innovative research, and anecdotes. Incorporate your expertise and unique brand voice, so that you are writing people-first content for your audience.
Using AI for topic clustering is a great way to build on your existing content strategy. Not only does it help you create a more organized, unified content creation process but it can also help boost your search engine ranking and your authority over time.
By following these steps when creating your content clusters, you’ll have a much more efficient process in place and continue to stay one step ahead of the competition.
Complement your topic clustering marketing strategy with the Originality.ai AI Checker, Predictive SEO Tool, and Grammar Checker.
Then, learn more about topical authority:
