Getting started with content clusters
The gap between knowing this and actually doing it is where most teams lose ground. A short on-ramp to content clusters for teams who have not touched it before.
Search engines are trying to answer a question, so the pages that answer questions clearly tend to do well. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.
Why it matters
Grouping related pages around a pillar topic builds authority. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Interlink the cluster so the theme is obvious
- Change one thing and measure it
One thorough page beats five thin ones on the same idea. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
How to tell if yours is fine
Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Three things worth confirming about content clusters before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Interlink the cluster so the theme is obvious — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.