Topic clusters and internal linking: connect your blog posts for SEO

Many businesses feed their blog with random topics: a campaign this week, an industry news item next week. Search engines, however, look for depth and completeness on a subject. The topic cluster approach turns content from scattered posts into a knowledge network where pieces support each other.

What is a topic cluster?

A cluster has three parts:

• Pillar page: The core page that covers a broad topic comprehensively. For example, “Local SEO guide”.
• Supporting posts: Posts that go deep into the sub-topics of the pillar. For example, “Google Business Profile checklist”, “Review management”, “Local keywords”.
• Internal links: Supporting posts link to the pillar, the pillar links to the supporting posts, and related posts link to each other.

That way users reach related content easily, and search engines understand how the pages relate and your site’s expertise on the topic.

How to plan a cluster

1. Choose your main topics. Pick 3 to 5 topic headings directly tied to your services and products, and that your customers really wonder about.
2. Collect the sub-questions. Draw sub-topics from customer questions, sales conversations, search suggestions and Search Console queries.
3. Separate search intents. Do not write several posts targeting the same keyword; let each page serve a single intent. Otherwise your own pages compete with each other.
4. Decide the publishing order. Start with the pillar or the first supporting posts, then the rest. Whenever you publish a new post, add links to the other pages in the cluster.

How to do internal linking

• Anchor text should be descriptive. Instead of “click here”, use phrases that say what the reader will find, such as “Google Business Profile checklist”.
• Link in context. Put the link in a sentence that is naturally relevant, not piled up at the end of the page.
• Give important pages more links. Link to your service and product pages from the relevant parts of blog posts; this guides the visitor and signals the page’s importance.
• Keep it reasonable. Putting a link in every paragraph disrupts reading.
• Check for broken links regularly.

Find orphan pages

Pages that receive no links are hard for search engines and users to discover. Use a site-crawling tool to list pages without incoming links and add links from suitable posts.

Update and merge existing content

Writing a new post is not always the best move:

• Update old posts that have traffic, with new information and internal links.
• Merge weak, similar posts on the same topic into one strong post and redirect the old URLs to the new one (301).

Measure

In Search Console, track impressions, clicks and average position for the pages in the cluster together. Look at the rise of the cluster as a whole rather than of single posts. In analytics, follow the movement from the blog to service pages and the conversions that come from there.

Common mistakes

• Writing several posts for the same keyword.
• Publishing a post without adding internal links.
• Bloating the blog with off-topic posts.
• Only producing new content and neglecting the old.

To plan your content and technical SEO together, see our SEO service.