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Mistake 3: Hitting on a good topic without respect for user intent
My friends on the paid side know this all too well. It’s easy to skip levels of intent and try to go right for the sale. (Or, on the B2B side, the “book a demo” CTA.) But it won’t serve your long-term strategy or your relationship with your users.
Without understanding and targeting the correct user intent, your content may fail to resonate with potential customers.
If users have educational questions, like “do organic products clean as well as non-organic,” create content that explains the differences in ingredients and why you’ve chosen them instead of just linking to a product page.
Similarly, for mid-funnel queries like “how to remove motor oil stains,” focus on content like buying guides or articles on ingredients that target oil rather than just product pages.
To see what kind of content users find helpful, search the query on Google and check what ranks high. Use this information to improve your topic clusters.
Mistake 4: Trusting the content to speak for itself
My hope for your brand is that you produce such incredible multimedia content that you can ride content quality all the way to record-setting engagement goals.
Let me tell you why that’s not realistic: you also need to build authority through your content authors. That means:
Creating bio pages for blog authors.
Featuring guest experts in interviews or quotes.
Providing a detailed “About us” page on the site for folks to learn more about the brand and its leaders, etc.
Ultimately, users (and Google) need proof that the folks producing content for these clusters are sources of authority and expertise.
No matter how great the content itself is, users should have the chance to learn who’s producing it.
Mistake 5: Forgetting to refresh and update your clusters
Like everything else on your website, your clusters should be constantly evolving.
Whether you need to incorporate related new content or build out a whole new sub-cluster (e.g., if your business is in tech or has a tech component, chances are you need an AI cluster), make sure you have a cadence for assessing how to add and refine your clusters as you go.
If new trends emerge or user questions shift, update your content to reflect these changes.
Dig deeper: How to identify and create content pillars that boost brand awareness
Create meaningful content experiences for users with topic clusters
Building effective topic clusters requires more than just creating content around broad themes.
Focus on creating valuable, user-centric content pieces that are meaningfully connected to improve your SEO performance and foster stronger relationships with your audience.
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