Allow Me to Blow Your Topic Cluster Mind

byParthaB

4.2K followers

Updated 3 years ago

After spending 2,196 hours THIS WEEK going through my 63,997 Private Messages, while ignoring 63,996 of them (sorry, I’m getting there, I promise)...

SOMETHING OCCURRED TO ME

I may, I repeat, “MAY”, be prone to exaggeration (just a little bit).

However, for those who think I’ve deserted you forever, I have just replied to someone who messaged me in January, hahaha, so, I’m definitely working my way through them.

In fact, I have decided to use one YOUR Wacky Affiliate phrases in relation to my answering of PMs:

“It’s a Marathon, Not a Sprint”.

Anyway, let’s get back to the point.

There has been a lot of talk in 2022 about Topic Clusters.

In fact, many SEOs are starting to believe that “keywords” are becoming obsolete and being replaced by “searchable topics”.

People always have to complicate things, don’t they?

In my mind, they pretty much mean the same thing.

BUT

This simply means you don’t have to be so… hmmm… what’s the word I want… hmmm… got it… anal.. That’s the word. You no longer have to be so anal about using keywords.

By this I mean that for many years now we have done our research, found a rankable keyword (apparently), and then written an article around this keyword.

However, we would not want to alter that keyword in any way, shape or form.

Basically, we would want to keep the keyword in our content with the exact words, in the exact order, and woe betide anyone who chooses to put ANOTHER word in the middle of our chosen keyword phrase.

Well, as I have been preaching for a couple of years now, those days are well and truly gone.

In fact, in my blog post Allow Me to Blow Your SEO Mind I have even provided proof of rankings and traffic to an article for a keyword THAT ISN’T EVEN MENTIONED IN MY ARTICLE.

As I’ve explained many times, ranking in the search engines is more about RELEVANCE nowadays.

As an example, this means that if I written and properly optimized an article titled:

“How to Lose Belly Fat”

When someone searches the term

“How to Get Rid of My Saggy Stomach”

I may well be ranking for that search term.

Why?

Because I am RELEVANT to what the searcher wishes to know.

Oops, I’ve gone off on a tangent again, haven’t I?

Topic Clusters!!!

Dammit, concentrate Partha… stay on-point.

TOPIC CLUSTERS

In truth, “topic clusters” is just another way of saying “having many articles around the same subject”.

So, in effect, if your website is in the Make Money Online niche your categories may be as follows:

• Affiliate Marketing
• Ad Income
• WordPress Tips & Tricks
• Hosting
• Blogging
• SEO
• Dropshipping
• Amazon

You get the idea.

Now, a topic cluster would involve picking just one of these categories, possibly drilling down even more, and then finding a subject within that category.

So, as an example, I choose the category “hosting” and by drilling down I have decided that my topic cluster is going to be “shared hosting”.

Therefore, I will now produce a number of articles around “Shared Hosting”.

I would typically find 20-30 article topics to write about shared hosting and then link them all together in some way.

This is what a topic cluster is.

I actually think this is a great way to start a new website.

What you’re doing is almost creating a micro-niche on your niche website.

By writing a good number of articles around one tiny topic you are in effect creating authority around that tiny topic.

What’s even better is that if you use my keyword research methods to find UNDERSERVED TOPICS ( topics that hardly anyone has written about before), you can almost create brand new authority.

Basically, Google and the other search engines MAY look at your cluster of articles on the same topic and think, “Well, this is original and informative, and I haven’t seen many websites writing about this before. Let’s rank this website’s various articles around this tiny topic”.

Now, the reason I always say to go after underserved topics (things that other people aren’t writing about) is because it’s very easy to rank these articles.

Realistically, most of the content on Google page one for these types of topics will be User-Generated Content (Quora, Reddit, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Forums, Q&A sites, etc.)

And this is what makes it very easy to rank articles like this.

So, when you have 20-30 articles around one tiny topic, you have in effect created authority for yourself.

You could have ALL 20-30 articles ranking in the top 3 spots on Google.

Admittedly, some of these tiny topics may not bring much traffic, INITIALLY.

However, as I always say, ONE article can rank for MULTIPLE keywords, and this typically grows month-after-month.

Let’s Look At An Example

Okay, I’ve done quite a few topic clusters on the Exercise website in my profile.

Basically, I choose a topic and then write quite a few articles around this topic in a short space of time.

I’ll admit that writing about the exact same subject over-and-over can kill your motivation/burn you out, so I like to write a few of these articles, write about another topic for a few days, and then return to the original topic again, and write more articles.

Right, I have started an article cluster for the workout supplement, “creatine”.

Initially, I wrote one article on this subject in July 2021.

The article started out slowly in the first month, but then started to pick up more-and-more visitors in the subsequent months.

By mid-October (so only 3 months later) the article was averaging 500 visitors a month.

And to be honest, ever since October 2021, the article has maintained around 650-750 monthly visitors.

So, I decided to write a few more articles around “Creatine”.

All I did was use Google Autosuggest to come up with “keywords” or topics to write about.

This involved nothing more than typing:

• Why Creatine
• Can Creatine
• Should Creatine

Into the Google search bar, running through the alphabet in-between the first and second words, and seeing what autosuggest comes up with.:

• Why a Creatine
• Why b Creatine
• Why c Creatine

• Can r Creatine
• Can s Creatine

• Should p Creatine
• Should w Creatine

You get the gist.

Anyway, I came up with a total of 20 phrases and wrote most of them during October and November 2021, plus I added a few more this year.

How is The “Creatine” Topic Cluster Going

Admittedly, it’s very early days (remember, you have to allow the search engines plenty of time in order for an article to reach its FULL potential), but it appears to be going okay.

From 1st March 2022 - 31st March 2022 my 20 creatine articles produced 4,990 visitors.

As you can see from my analytics graph I generally averaged between 100-200 visitors a day (just from these 20 articles, don't forget the website has over 500 articles on it).

And Wednesday 30th March 2022 saw a total of 234 people come to my site to read a “creatine” article.

Here’s a breakdown of the 10 creatine articles which produced the most traffic in March 2022. Plus, I've included the date the article was published. But, remember the traffic figures are JUST for MArch 2022

A Total of 4,990 visitors to 20 “Creatine” articles in March 2022

November 7th 2021 - Is it Bad to Dry Scoop Creatine? - 2,079 visitors in March 2022

July 4th 2021 - Why Does Creatine Make Me Feel Sick? - 730 visitors in March 2022

October 17th 2021 - Why Does Creatine Make Me Fart? - 601

November 9th 2021 - Does Creatine Make Your Face Fat? - 512

November 6th 2021 - Why Does My Creatine Smell Bad? - 216

February 1st 2022 - Why Does Creatine Make Me Hungry? - 171

October 24th 2021 - Can I Take Creatine on an Empty Stomach? - 142

January 30th 2022 - Why Does Creatine Make Me Pee So Much? - 112

October 31st 2021 - What Happens if You Don’t Drink Enough Water With Creatine? - 111

January 22nd 2022 - Should I Take a Break From Creatine? - 66

So, I would say that the top 4 articles are performing fairly well, while the others may require more time in order to rank for more phrases.

Then again, all these articles MAY have reached their full potential.

And that’s the whole point - you never know how well an article is going to perform.

This is also why I always tell people not to dwell on just one article, or to stop trying to perfect every single article.

You don’t decide which articles will perform best, Google does.

Plus, I think I’ve mentioned before that some of my worst work produces the most traffic and income.

Whereas, some of the articles that I’ve slaved over for hours-and-hours, articles that I believe are my greatest work ever, have totally bombed.

So, stop worrying about what you can’t control (by the way, change of subject, THIS is the key to a happy life - stop worrying about things you can’t control, especially OTHER PEOPLE).

Here’s a few other topic clusters I have on the Exercise site and the traffic they produced in March 2022 (plus, these are only a small percentage of the articles on my site, many of which are yet to become part of a topic cluster)

Biceps - 17 articles @ 1,398 visitors in March 2022

Deadlift - 32 articles @ 4,126 visitors in March 2022

Bench Press - 41 articles @ 3,081 visitors in March 2022

And in ALL cases, 3-5 articles are producing the bulk of the traffic, whereas the others are only producing a trickle of traffic..

And this is how blogging generally works.

Not many people (if any) are lucky enough to have an even amount of traffic to all their articles.

The Pareto principle probably applies - 20% of your articles will produce 80% of your traffic.

In fact, even “SEO GURU” Neil Patel gave an insight to his main website back in 2020.

Off the top of my head, he had approximately 4,500 articles published on his website, and yet 90% of his traffic came from approximately 250 articles.

So, if an SEO GOD like Neil can’t get traffic to ALL of his articles, it shows you just how the Googley World Works.

Don’t Fight It, Just Write it (I think that may be my new saying).

Final Thoughts

Daaayyyyyaaaammmm!!!! This was quite a short blog post for me.

So, let’s keep the sign off short and simple

What Topic Clusters are YOU going to write about on your website?

Thank You For Reading

Partha