Excelling at Topic Clustering for a Powerful Content Strategy and SEO Success

Creating content that ranks well on search engines and engages readers requires more than just writing articles. One of the most effective ways to organize your content, drive a delightful UX, and boost your SEO is through topic clustering. This method helps search engines understand your website’s structure and relevance, while providing visitors with a clear path to explore related information.

This post will explain what topic clustering is, why it matters for customers and SEO, and how to build effective clusters.

What is Topic Clustering and Why It's Important

With increasingly tight budgets, optimizing efficiencies across marketing is critical for sustainable growth. That's one of the reasons why companies have turned to digital-first programming. While push marketing like TV, print ads, and direct mail, and email still have a place in the marketing tactic tool belt, digital pull marketing like SEO-optimized content marketing, SEO site optimization, and social media are a much more cost-effective way to attract, engage, and convert audiences. And topic clustering strategy is the best practice when it comes to creating digital content.

Topic clustering groups related content around a central theme. It enables B2C and B2B businesses to deliver competitive storytelling by focusing on what matters to their audiences and their businesses. A topic clustering approach improves a site's authority (being at the top of search results) and user experience (delivering rich content experiences that nurture the customer journey).

Creates Delightful UX

Because topic clustering at its core creates interconnected topical breadth and depth in a logical flow, it invites audiences into delightful and rich content journeys––from awareness through to product-focused selection and adoption content. Visitors can start with a broad overview and easily navigate to more detailed information, keeping them engaged longer and reducing bounce rates.

Builds Site Authority

This structure helps search engines like Google understand the relationship between pages. When done well, it signals that your site is an authority on the main topic, which can improve rankings and increase organic traffic. This is even more true today with AI-powered search engines using sophisticated machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to serve contextual responses from across websites. The more credible a site is deemed for a particular topic (with breadth and depth of content), the more likely the search engine will pull the site's information into a search result. (This post on Google's E-E-A-T standards for creating people-first content and getting seen are a must read.)

The Components of a Topic Cluster

A geometric graph representing the dynamic and complex reality of how content is related

A topic cluster is both hierarchical and lateral at the same time.

At the center is the pillar content, represented by a pillar page that's a comprehensive page covering the broad topic. Surrounding it are subtopics represented by their own pages that dive deeper into specific aspects of the pillar topic. Subtopic pages support the specific questions and needs that customers have regarding the overarching topic. By incorporating keywords (aka search words) in the content, you assure that you are responding to your customers needs. Incorporating keywords in a strategic way also allows search engines to identify the relevance of the content and serve it at the top of search results. This three-pronged framework creates the topic cluster.

And, if you have tons of content, you can embed a topic cluster within another topic cluster. I would just recommend not getting into more than two levels deep as it could get confusing for the content consumer.

By employing a strategic tagging system (which I will get into at another time), content can be identified as having more than one pillar or core topic. This intersectionality of content creates a more dynamic content experience that supports the complex reality of how customers consume content.

How to Create Effective Topic Clusters

Building your topic taxonomy requires planning and research. It's like a game of chess, with the king, major pieces (the queen, knights, rooks, and bishops), and minor pieces (the pawns). Each piece has a job to perform for the good of the whole (the objective). Separately, they each have their individual capabilities (the tactic or message).

When selecting pillar and subtopics, consider breadth, depth and content commitment.

Here are the key steps to follow to create a topic cluster. At the end of this list you can see how it all comes together in a content plan.

1. Establish Your Website (the King)

For example, have a business that provides products and services related to exercising. This is your King that you want to protect. All content that exists within your site is built on a sound information architecture that is scalable and intuitive.

Let's assume, for the sake of this argument, that you already have a website in place. What you want now is to build a content resource center or thought leadership blog built on a topic clustering approach so you can attract and capture a loyal audience. Let's continue ....

First, Conduct Your Research

Pillar topics, subtopics, and keywords must:

1. Align to your brand objectives

2. Be of interest to your target audiences

3. Have enough depth to support multiple pieces of content across the customer journey.  

You can identify initial terms with high search volume using contextual AI search engine results (like Google's AI mode). Then, you'll want to validate their value using strategic SEO and competitive insights. Explore tools like Semrush and Conductor for help in assessing your brand's best keywords.

2. Identify Your Pillar Topic (the Queen)

Remember that your topic clusters, while they should delight audiences, are, at the end of the day, intended to aid in discovery and decision-making of your products and services. So choose broad (pillar) topics that are central to your business and aligned to your brand narrative. Align your products and services to your pillar topic.

Each pillar topic will have a pillar page, which should provide a thorough overview and answer common questions about the topic. A pillar page serves as the ultimate, comprehensive guide on a broad topic. For example, if your website is about exercising, one pillar page might be “Complete Guide to Running.”

Be careful not to have too many pillar content pages, as it can get noisy. And be sure to surface pillar pages only when you have enough content to support them, and you are committed to a regular publication cadence.

3. Identify Related Subtopics (the Knights, Rooks, and Bishops)

Subtopic pages (also called cluster content) dive deep into a specific, narrow aspect of that topic.

Find specific areas (subtopics) within the pillar topic that deserve their own pages. These subtopics should be closely related and provide detailed information that supports the pillar content. Again, conduct your research to determine if there is enough content to support a subtopic. Further align your products and services to your subtopics.

Using the pillar page example above, you could have the following five subtopic pages. (This list derives from my search "possible subtopic pages for the pillar page complete guide to running.")

• Running Tips and Techniques

• Running Gear and Equipment

• Nutrition and Hydration

• Training Plans

• Blog and Stories

4. Identify Keywords (the Pawns) for Your Pages

What do your audiences want to know? What questions do they have that you can answer? Do your research. Learn what your audiences are consuming. Remember to conduct competitive insights, social listening, and use an SEO analysis to understand search patterns.

Turn the intent into keywords. List your keywords and organize them into your pillar and subtopic hierarchy. Assign relevant keywords to each page, focusing on both broad terms for the pillar and long-tail keywords for the subtopics. This helps capture different search intents and improves your chances of ranking for a variety of queries.

Below are possible keywords for the pillar page and a related subtopic page:

Again, you can obtain initial results from a search query, and then validate them against your business using an SEO tool. Keywords for the pillar page (Complete Guide to Running):

• Learn to run

• Running for beginners

• Complete guide to running

Keywords for a subtopic page (Running Tips and Techniques):

• Proper running form

• Cadence

• Foot strike

• Arm swing

5. Create a Content Plan

Now you're ready to write your content for your pillar page and subtopic pages using the keywords you've identified. Create dynamic pages, rich with forms of media like images, videos, and podcasts.

Remember that each piece of content has a job to do: to address the challenge, quesiton, or need of your audience. Create content that spans the customer journey, creating a nurtured experience that leads to the associated product or service. Make sure each cluster page links back to the pillar page and vice versa. This internal linking creates a web of connections that search engines can crawl easily.

Here is a content plan using the pillar page and a few subtopic pages, so you can get a sense of how it all comes together:

Page Type	Topic Title	Focus	Format	Journey Stage	Target Keywords
Pillar Page	The Complete Guide to Running	A comprehensive guide to all things running	HTML page	All	running for beginners, learn to run, components of running
Subtopic Page	Running Tips and Techniques	The things a runner needs to know to get the most out of running and not get hurt	Blog post	Awareness	proper running form, cadence, foot strike, arm swing
Subtopic Page	Running Gear and Equipment Guide	What tools and equipment should a runner invest in, what to spend, and where to get it	Gated e-book	Acquisition	best running shoes for types of runners and terrain, tech tools for runners, winter running gear, summer running gear
Subtopic Page	Shoe Comparison	Evaluation of different running shoes on the market	Video	Conversion	best running shoes in 2026, running shoe review, top running shoes

Final Thoughts on Using Topic Clusters

Topic clustering is a practical and effective way to organize your content strategy. It helps search engines understand your site better, guides visitors through your content naturally, and improves your content management.

• Better Navigation: Visitors find related content easily, increasing time spent on site.

• Content Planning: Clusters help identify content gaps and opportunities for new articles.

• Authority Building: A well-structured site signals expertise and trustworthiness to readers.

SEO and content needs evolve. Track your cluster performance using analytics tools and update pages to keep information current and valuable.

Happy writing!