Are you aware 78% of marketers believe the success of content marketing is dependent on having a well documented strategy? As a small business owner, you’ve spent countless hours setting up your eCommerce store and meticulously curating your product offerings. You’ve even put in the hard work to ensure that your website is visually appealing and user-friendly. But despite all your efforts, you may be having trouble getting your website to appear on search engines like Google.
You’ve probably heard about the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) for eCommerce, but the sheer amount of information out there is overwhelming. You don’t know where to start or what techniques will give you the best results? One approach that has proven effective for eCommerce websites is using topic clusters. In this article, we’ll discuss what topic clusters are and how they can improve your SEO and drive more traffic to your online store and eventually increase sales.
Related: Ecommerce SEO Checklist
What Are Topic Clusters? 💡
Hey there! So, topic clusters are a way to organise your website’s content around specific themes or topics. It’s like creating a hub of information on a specific subject, with multiple smaller subtopics branching off it. This helps search engines understand what your website is all about and can make it easier for your readers to find related content. Basically, it’s just an intelligent way to organise and present your information to make it more valuable and accessible to your audience.
How Do Topic Clusters Benefit SEO? 🔧
Well, let’s put it this way – if you think of your website as a party, then the topic clusters are like the cool kids who everyone wants to hang out with. They bring all the hype and attention to your website, making it the life of the party. But seriously, topic clusters benefit SEO by organising your content into specific themes, which helps search engines understand the relevancy and authority of your website. This leads to higher rankings and more traffic, which is the ultimate party favour for your website.
So go ahead and invite those topic clusters to the party; they’ll surely make it memorable! Here is how they can benefit SEO:
- Improved Crawlability: By organising your website’s content into topic clusters, search engines can easily crawl and understand the relationships between different pages. This allows them to index your content better and determine its relevance to specific keywords and search queries.
- Enhanced User Experience: When users land on your website, they expect to find relevant and helpful information that addresses their needs. By grouping similar content into topic clusters, you can help users easily navigate and find the information they are looking for, leading to higher engagement and longer dwell times on your site.
- Increased Authority: When a website covers a specific topic in depth, it can demonstrate to search engines that it is an authoritative source. This can lead to higher rankings for those pages and increased visibility for your website.
- Better Internal Linking: By linking related pages within a topic cluster, you can help search engines understand the hierarchy and importance of your content. This can lead to improved crawlability and ranking for your website’s pages.
- Improved Targeting: You can better target specific keywords and topics by grouping content into topic clusters. This can help your website rank for more precise and long-tail search queries, leading to increased traffic and conversions.
Read more: Quick Shopify SEO Checklist For Ecommerce Brands
Implementing Topic Clusters on Websites in 6 steps
With your understanding of the basics of topic clusters, it is time to explore how to implement them on your website. Here are some of the ways you can do this:
#1 Identify the Main Topics of Your Website
The first step to implementing topic clusters on your website is to identify the main topics that your website covers. This could be the products or services you offer, the industry you operate in, or the target audience you are trying to reach. Identify a few key topics your website should focus on and use ‘em as the basis for your topic clusters.
#2 Create a Content Strategy
What type of content do you create? And how do you approach each topic? Once you have identified the main topics of your website, you need to create a content strategy that outlines how you will approach each topic. This could include creating a list of subtopics for each main topic, outlining the types of content you will create for each subtopic, and setting goals for how often you will publish new content.
#3 Use Internal Linking to Create Topic Clusters
To create topic clusters on your website, you need internal linking to connect related pages and blog posts. For example, if you have a main page on your website about your products, you could link to subpages that detail each product. This helps to create a hierarchy of information and makes it easier for users to find what they are looking for.
#4 Use Keyword Research to Optimise Your Content
To ensure your topic clusters are effective, you need to optimise your content for search engines. This means doing keyword research to identify the terms that people are searching for and incorporating those keywords into your content. This will help your content rank higher in search engine results and drive more traffic to your website.
#5 Use Headings and Subheadings to Organise Your Content
To make it easy for users to navigate your content, use headings and subheadings to organise your pages and blog posts. This will help users quickly understand the main points of your content and find the information they are looking for.
#6 Regularly Update and Refresh Your Content
To keep your topic clusters relevant and effective, you must regularly update and refresh your content. This could mean updating old content with new information, creating new content to cover new topics, or deleting content that is no longer relevant. Regularly updating and refreshing your content ensures that your topic clusters are always current and helpful for your users.
How Topic Clusters Benefit From Internal Links?
So, you have created your pillar content and cluster content. What is going to hold the topic cluster together? You guessed right! The answer is internal links. Internal linking refers to linking one page on a website to another page on the same website. This can be done through hyperlinks in the text or through the navigation menu. Internal linking serves several vital functions for a website.
Here is how internal linking will help your website:
- Navigation: By linking related pages within the site, it becomes easier for users to find the content they are looking for and explore the site further. Internal linking also helps to establish a hierarchy within the website. This allows users to understand the structure and organisation of the content easily.
- Improving SEO: Search engines use links to understand the relationships between different pages on a website and to determine the relevance and authority of those pages. Linking related pages together helps search engines understand the website’s overall topic and rank it higher in search results.
Internal linking is a crucial component of topic clusters because it helps to establish the connections between the different pages within the cluster. Linking the pages within a cluster together helps search engines understand the relationships between the pages and better understand the cluster’s overall theme.
Related: Bigcommerce vs Shopify SEO
Topic Clusters & Keyword Cannibalisation
Have you ever tried optimising your website for a specific keyword, only to find that other pages on your site rank for that same keyword? This is a common problem known as keyword cannibalisation, and it can be a frustrating roadblock for any business trying to improve its search engine rankings.
Keyword cannibalisation occurs when multiple pages on a website are targeting the same keyword, causing confusion for search engines and diluting the potential for any one page to rank well. This can lead to a decrease in traffic and potential revenue for your business.
So, how do you fix it? Here are some solutions you can try:
- Clearly Defining and Assigning Specific Keywords to Each Topic Cluster: Ensure each topic cluster has a unique set of keywords that clearly distinguish it from other clusters. This will help prevent overlapping content and keyword cannibalisation.
- Using Different Variations of Keywords Within Each Cluster: Instead of using the same keyword repeatedly, try using different variations or synonyms to avoid cannibalisation.
- Using Clear and Concise Titles and Headings: Make sure that the titles and headings of your content within each cluster reflect the topic and keywords you have assigned to that cluster. This will help search engines understand the content of your page and prevent cannibalisation.
- Using Subheadings and Bullet Points to Break up Content: By using subheadings and bullet points, you can break up your content and make it easier for search engines to understand the structure and focus of your page. This can help prevent cannibalisation by clarifying which keywords are emphasised in your content to search engines.
- Using Canonical Tags to Specify the Preferred Version of a Page: If you have multiple pages that cover the same topic, you can use canonical tags to specify which page should be considered the primary or preferred version. This will help prevent cannibalisation by ensuring that search engines only index the preferred version of your content.
Related: How to improve SEO on Shopify
Final Thoughts
SEO topic clusters are essential to any successful eCommerce SEO strategy. Organising your website’s content into clusters centred on specific topics can help search engines understand your site’s overall theme and purpose. This, in turn, can improve your rankings for relevant keywords and drive more qualified traffic to your eCommerce store. Additionally, topic clusters can help improve the user experience by making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for. Overall, SEO topic clusters are a powerful tool for driving traffic and sales for eCommerce businesses and should be a key consideration in any SEO strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an SEO Topic Cluster?
SEO topic clusters are a content marketing strategy in which a central “pillar” page covers a specific topic in-depth, and multiple “cluster” pages focus on subtopics within that main topic. These cluster pages link back to the pillar page, creating a web of related content that helps improve the website’s overall SEO. This strategy helps search engines understand the website’s main topic and can improve its ranking for associated keywords.
Is a Topic Cluster Something That Impacts SEO?
Yes, a topic cluster can impact SEO in several ways. Firstly, having a well-organised topic cluster helps Google understand the content on your website and how it is related to other pages. Creating a topic cluster can also help you target specific keywords and phrases relevant to your business. Finally, having a topic cluster can also improve the user experience on your website, as it allows users to easily navigate through related content and find what they are looking for. This can lead to higher engagement and longer session times, which are essential SEO factors. Want to learn more about SEO tips and tricks? Check our blog for insights!
What Makes Up a Topic Cluster’s Core Elements?
A topic cluster comprises:
- Pillar Page: This is the main page of a topic cluster, which serves as an overview and introduction to the topic.
- Cluster: This is the group of subtopics related to the pillar page’s main topic.
- Internal Linking: This refers to the process of linking the pillar page and the cluster pages to each other using hyperlinks.
Are Topic Clusters The Most Potent SEO Tool?
Topic clusters allow for more specific and relevant content on a website, leading to higher search rankings and increased traffic. They also make it easier for search engines to understand a website’s overall theme and structure, leading to better indexing and crawlability. However, topic clusters are not the only SEO tool available. Other strategies, such as keyword research, link building, and technical SEO, can also help improve a website’s ranking.
