How to Ignite Organic Growth With a Topic Cluster Strategy in HubSpot

You want to grow your website’s organic traffic through content. But if your content strategy still centers around one-off keywords, you might be struggling to nudge these traffic trends.

Search engine algorithms today understand how ideas relate. They uselatent semantic indexingand weighsite expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness（E-A-T）为更相关和权威的结果提供。围绕类似关键字创建页面仅会使搜索引擎混淆 - 您的内容应具有相反的效果。

与其痴迷于单个关键字，不如将内容策略集中在一些核心主题上可以帮助您赚取搜索引擎信任（以及随后的自然流量）。

Known as a topic cluster strategy, this mindset puts readers, search intent, and context at the forefront of your content strategy and can lead to serious organic growth. By shifting your thinking and approach from one-off keywords to topic clusters, you can save your team time, eliminate content waste from your day, and win big with SEO.

In fact, after implementing a topic cluster strategy for our clients atHuman, their organic traffic has experienced 7 to 10 times organic growth over the past year.

So how can you get started with topic clusters? Let’s walk through the basics.

Breaking Down Topic Clusters

Topic clusters are groups of related web pages that all link to one core pillar page. Organizing your site content into clusters helps search engines distinguish your area of expertise and better understand the relationship between these pages.

创建一个集群主题涉及三个主要混合涂料nents:

• A pillar page
• 集群内容或子主题
• 超链接

The pillar page is at the core of the cluster and serves as the authority page for the core topic you aim to rank for. Educational resource pages or services pages could stand as pillar pages.

假设您出售狗水瓶，您的目标是排名为“狗水分”。在主题集群场景中，您的支柱页面将是一个深入的资源，涵盖了搜索者对此主题的核心问题。

Next is the cluster content or subtopic pages. These pages focus on longer-tail queries that relate to your core topic, typically in the form of blog posts. By linking your subtopic pages to their pillar page, you’re signaling to search engines that the pillar page is the authoritative resource on your primary topic.

In the same example, you might create a subtopic page on the topic “dog water calculator” to help readers calculate how much water to give their dog based on size and other factors.

自从为一个电子商务客户实施主题集群策略以来，我们将有机博客流量从每月500个访问者增加到近190,000，增长了37,900％，并将其博客变成了该业务的利润中心。

How to Build Topic Clusters With HubSpot

UsingHubSpot’s SEO tool，您可以构建和管理主题群集，以帮助可视化您的站点体系结构并衡量主题权限。

实施主题群集策略归结为几个核心步骤：

1. 定义您的内容主题或主题。
2. 制定您的子主题。
3. 将您现有页面映射到主题群集。
4. 实施链接结构。
5. Create and execute a stellar content plan
6. Measure and improve your content

Here’s how you can start today:

1. Define your content topics or themes

You have a slew of ambitious keyword targets or topics for your website. But how do you know which are the most critical to your business?

在为客户制定内容策略时，我们会使用这些提示来集思广益主题集群主题：

• 您出售的产品: You want to be known for your flagship product. A recent client we onboarded sells “curtain rod brackets,” so that now serves as the primary content theme.
• How customers use or benefit from your product：客户如何使用您的产品或服务？在我的客户示例中，我使用此提示来同意内容主题：“如何悬挂窗帘”。
• Pain points your product or service solves: Some people know they have a problem but don’t realize a solution exists. Target the key problems your product solves to get in front of people just beginning their search. My client’s product offers a damage-free solution to hanging curtains, so I chose “damage free curtain hanging.”
• Profitable paid keywords: Your paid and organic strategies should work together. Evaluate high-ROI paid keywords to find opportunities for content topics.

专家提示：对您的主题群保持保守和现实。如果您有一个具有弱领域权限的新站点，请从一个或两个最关键的主题开始。

Once you have your initial topics, you can add them to HubSpot to begin building and managing your topic clusters.

要在HubSpot中创建您的主题群集，请按照以下步骤：

• 登录到您的HubSpot帐户（如果没有一个帐户，在这里开始).
• Navigate to营销>Planning and Strategy>SEO。
• Select添加一个主题并输入您的主题。
• Click on your topic and selectCreate Topic。

2. Strategize your subtopics

一旦您解决了一些主题集群，就该制定策略子主题来支持每个内容主题了。

Subtopics are related, long-tail queries that will serve as the primary focus for your supporting content.

So how do you come up with new, unique subtopics?

在人类中，我们始终通过采用角色思维方式开始次要和SEO研究。以下是您的子主题的灵感来源：

• 与您的销售或客户支持团队会面: Compile a list of frequently asked questions around one content topic.
• 从您角色的角度思考: Jot down all questions your target audience might have about your core topic.
• Browse forums and review sites: Forums like Quora and reddit are subtopic gold mines. Reading through customer reviews on your website or Amazon can also spark ideas for related questions and pain points.
• Use HubSpot’s SEO tool: HubSpot’s SEO tool provides recommendations for subtopics to help build your list.
• 调查您的客户: Use在线聊天或者形式to collect information from your visitor & customers on the type of content they want you to cover.

Pro tip: Each subtopic should be semantically unique to avoid confusing search engines. If you’re unsure, do a quick search of related queries to see whether similar search results appear.

Of course, you’ll want to confirm these subtopics have SEO value through basic keyword research. Using an SEO tool likeMoz Pro或者ahrefs, you can evaluate search volume and prioritize subtopics.

From your topic clusters in Hubspot, you can also research and add subtopics using theAdd subtopic keywordbutton.

Once you’ve added your topic and subtopics, your topic cluster should look something like this:

3. Map your existing pages to topic clusters

要查看当前页面适合您的主题群集策略的位置，请使用HubSpot的SEO工具。它可以自动将您现有的网页映射到预定义的主题群集。

您还可以通过以下步骤手动用现有网页手动填充主题群集：

• Navigate to your topic from the SEO tool in your HubSpot account.
• 单击您的亚主题。
• In theManage Subtopicsidebar, you can search for pages in the search bar or select添加外部URLfor pages hosted outside HubSpot.

4.实施链接结构

A critical piece of your topic cluster strategy is the linking structure. By pointing relevant, valuable pages to your pillar page, you can help build the authority of this page.

从HubSpot的SEO工具中的主题群集视图中，您可以查看哪些亚电页面缺少指向其各自支柱页面的链接。

Go through each topic cluster, and add any missing links from each subtopic page to your pillar page. Because these topics should closely relate, you should have no trouble finding a natural place to incorporate the link.

SiteBulb也是一个很棒的可视化工具，可以向您显示网页之间的链接关系。实现链接结构后，您的网页应在您的SiteBulb报告中形成有组织的群集。

5. Create and execute a stellar content plan

After you’ve filled out your topic clusters with existing content, you’ll probably have scores of new pages left to create.

Prioritize these topics in your content calendar based on their search potential and relevance to your business. Start with the subtopics that most closely relate to the challenges that your product or service helps your target customer overcome.

The next step is producing your content — the most critical phase of earning E-A-T.

重要的是要记住，发布弱，浅的内容不会带来任何有机搜索结果。深入编写，上下文丰富的内容是主题群集策略的基石。您必须努力成为该搜索查询的最佳代表，以获得信任。

以下是我们在人类内容研究阶段采取的几个步骤，以创建上下文丰富，搜索的内容：

• 评估您的目标主题或亚电位的前三个搜索结果在开发内容之前。您也可以使用Moz的关键字探险家to compare the top search results and find additional keywords.
• 编译核心问题搜索者正在询问有关该主题的问题使用类似的工具AnswerthePublic或者the “People also ask” section of the Google search engine results page for your primary keyword target.
• 查找与语义相关的主题以在您的页面上讨论usinglsigraphand theSearches related tosection of Google’s SERP.
• 研究目标主题的SERP功能和机会。如果当前的特色片段是列表，请确保以列表格式构建您的文章。
• Incorporate targeted H2s and H3saround the primary questions or subtopics you narrowed down in your research.
• Identify content gaps in the current search results并找到相关的知名研究以纳入。
• 编写内容时采用搜索者的心态。如果您正在搜索该术语，您希望看到什么信息以及您希望哪种格式？始终将读者放在首位。

6. Measure and improve your content

One of the best things you can do to earn search authority is to continually evaluate and improve your content.

In the past, measuring your content and SEO efforts might involve hours of sifting through endless keyword rankings and movements, leaving you stumped about what to do next.

HubSpot’s topic analytics dashboard simplifies the reporting and analysis process. Instead of evaluating similar keywords, you can see how your topic is performing as a whole — the number of organic visitors these pages are driving, customers that have engaged with these pages, the average time spent viewing the content, and more.

This view is insanely helpful for ideating future content topics or exposing weak content that should be improved.

例如, from the screenshot above, we can see that the topic “sweat proof shirts” has the highest customer conversion rate. From here, we can incorporate related subtopics into our content plan to help drive more revenue and provide increased value to this audience segment.

准备应用您刚刚学到的东西了吗？

最终想法

像SEO的任何东西一样，与主题群集成功一样，需要时间，耐心和持续的改进。您不能期望一夜之间的结果。

Of course,其他数十个技术因素affect your search engine rankings. But taking a calculated approach to providing value and earning real search authority is one of the best steps you can take to establish a lasting online presence.

For more step-by-step tips for building and executing topic clusters, download our complete guide:Converting to Topic Clusters。

Want to connect with others on HubSpot tips, tricks, and updates? Head over to theHubSpot社区to join a conversation or start one of your own.