Pillar Pages and Topic Clusters Explained!

in the past creating content for inbound
marketing used to be based solely around
keywords
but if you're looking to bring in more
traffic into your website and increase
conversions
creating content for keywords won't be
enough welcome to inbound explain in
today's video we're going to talk about
how you can use pillar pages and topic
clusters to boost your traffic and
improve your ranking in google
specifically we'll review what a pillar
page is what a topic cluster is
how they're used in inbound marketing
and we'll run through an example of it
so let's get started
when users make a search in google
they're not searching with keywords
they're just trying to solve problems or
questions that they have
likewise google wants to answer those
problems and those questions
so how do you make sure that your page
is the page that google shows to answer
those questions
using the topic cluster model the topic
cluster model
invented by hubspot is a method for
organizing main topic content and
subtopic content
by organizing your website in this way
you make it easier for users to navigate
through your website while also making
it easier for google to index your
website
there are three main components to the
topic cluster model pillar pages
topic clusters and hyperlinks let's dive
into each of these elements
so what exactly is a pillar page a
pillar page is a single piece of
long form content that gives a broad yet
complete explanation of a certain topic
pillar pages are based off a single
comprehensive topic that can break off
into many different subtopics
in seo terms think about a pillar page
as a short tale keyword
the topic you write about in your pillar
pages should be a topic that you're
trying to rank for
in search engines this is very important
because this will tell the search
engines what your website is all about
your pillar page topic should be related
to the products or services that you
offer
for example as a marketing agency we
have pillar page topics about marketing
and advertising
in order to create your own pillar page
think about a topic that you can write
about generally
that you have products or services for
and something that users would be
interested in
then with that try to flink it to a
keyword that you can rank for on search
engines
once you have your keyword in mind it's
then time to start writing the content
typically your pillar page content will
be much longer than your normal content
on your website
while there's no magic number that you
should be shooting for while writing
your pillar page
your main goal should be to aim to
thoroughly explain the topic so that any
user
reading that page will be able to fully
understand the topic once they're done
while you're writing don't think about
your content as a collection of keywords
instead just focus on answering the
user's questions and writing about
topics that you want to be ranked for
a topic cluster is a more detailed
specific content piece
that supports your main broad topic or
pillar page
dev topic content should be big enough
that it can be its own
blog post or video yet be able to also
fall into a bigger theme
that includes your pillar page and other
supporting topic cluster content
for example if we were to make a pillar
page about content marketing
an example of a topic cluster could be
social media content marketing or video
marketing
these are both subtopics of content
marketing but they're too specific to
explain
in depth and a pillar page about content
marketing
another example would be a pillar page
about inbound marketing and then topic
cluster content about buyer personas or
lead nurturing
you can have hundreds even thousands of
pages that support your pillar page
content they typically take the form of
a blog post or a video
just like pillar pages each cluster will
be surrounded by a keyword but the most
important thing is that you fully answer
the user's question who's reading the
content and that you provide value
the final piece in the topic cluster
model are your hyperlinks
the hyperlinks are the things that
connect your pillar page to your
subtopic content
your subtopic content should always
include a link back to your pillar page
this way users can more easily navigate
through your website and more
importantly search engines can crawl and
index your website along with always
including a link back to your pillar
page
you can also choose to include links to
other relevant topic cluster content
let's go ahead and run through an
example of how a pillar page and topic
cluster work
so what you're looking at here is an
example of cyberclick's own pillar page
about inbound marketing
inbound marketing is a great topic to
write about for a pillar page
because it's broad enough that there are
many different things that you can write
about
in separate topic cluster content while
also being specific enough that it's not
so
wide that that it could take many
different avenues it's
it really nails that sweet spot as you
can see this article
is quite a bit longer than our normal
topic cluster content but that's because
we have a lot of ground to cover
and you'll also see that throughout the
article we have a lot of hyperlinks
remember hyperlinks are important both
for the user
experience and also for google to index
your website
and navigate through your website these
hyperlinks
should be able to take you to your topic
cluster content
as you can see here this is this is an
example of one of our topic cluster
contents
about inbound marketing but also about
content marketing
so this is what i'm talking about here
when i say your topic cluster content
can be a bit more specific
this topic in particular in particular
would have been
a bit too narrow to talk about in the
pillar page but it's perfect for a blog
post on its own
as you can see it's a bit shorter than
our
than our pillar page but that's perfect
and as you'll also see
it contains a hyperlink back into the
pillar page
remember this is the most important
aspect of your topic cluster content
you always want to make sure that you're
including a link back into your pillar
page
so there you go that's a quick example
of how pillar page and topic cluster
content work
so how does using the topic cluster
model help bring in more traffic into
your website
because it helps google understand the
intent of your website
while google's algorithm is a little bit
of a mystery we do know that in the past
google used to rank content using
keywords but those days
are over google has now gotten much
better at understanding what users are
looking for when they make a search
and in turn they have also gotten much
better at assessing whether or not a web
page will be able to answer that search
this is why inbound marketers need to
create content based off of needs and
not just keywords
by doing this you're better matching the
user's need and thus
playing by google's game and there you
have it now you know more about how you
can use topic clusters and pillar pages
to help boost
traffic to your website and rank better
on google if you have hubspot and you
want to learn how you can build and
organize your pillar pages and topic
clusters within hubspot
check out our new tutorial if you want
to learn more about inbound marketing
and hubspot don't forget to subscribe to
this channel we'll see you in the next
video