Content marketing has changed over the past few years as search engine algorithms get more intelligent about understanding content and serving it for relevant search terms. Companies used to be able to just create large amounts of content and see large results, but as search engines get smarter and smarter, site architecture and content strategy are playing a much larger role.

Topic cluster models are the new way to optimize content, where a single “pillar” page acts as the main hub of content for an overarching topic. Multiple content pages that are related to that same topic then link back to the pillar page and to each other. The topic cluster model is a way of organizing a site’s content pages using a cleaner and more deliberate site architecture with a web of core topics and subtopics. This will improve SEO rankings over time as the sup topics support the core topics and improve the domain authority.

Core topics are the main services or products that a company wants to be known for and show up in search results for. These topics are high level and substantial enough to build content around. The goal of the sup topics is to support the core topics with related information that potential customers may be interested in. All of the sub-topics fall under the umbrella of the core topic, but are still unique, and can have separate content written on the subject.

In order to apply this strategy, a company must use to implement multiple changes across its website:

• Core topics should have an entire page dedicated to them and be located in the top navigation of the website
  • These pages should consist of a broad piece of website content that’s comprised of, and connected to, a series of owned media topic clusters that cover a specific core topic in-depth
• Reformat each core topic page to make sure it fills these requirements:
  • Core topic referenced in page title, meta description, and meta keyword
  • Core topic referenced in URL
  • Core topic referenced in the H1 tag
  • Fully define the core topic on the page
  • Conversion-focused landing page elements (CTAs & forms)
• Identify current listings of subtopics on the website and add inbound links to core topic pages, as appropriate (blogs, resources, etc.)
  • All subtopics should have internal links back to the core topic so that search engines can now understand that there is a semantic relationship between the pages’ content
• If a subtopic is not already mentioned, build copy around it by either creating new blog posts or adding information about the subtopic on an informational resource pages
• Add a link to a high-quality external resource when applicable on each core topic and subtopic page