What is a Content Cluster?
We use the term Content Cluster to refer to a group of content pieces, clustered around a central theme, that are part of the overall SEO strategy for a website. We have been deploying this approach for a number years, going back to some industrial marketing work over a decade ago, and more recently with a number of hunting outfitters and fishing lodges. The content types, or media forms, can vary, but the approach is consistent.
The Content Cluster Theory
When search engines index websites, and the content of websites, they break the site into many assets and many assets within assets. Each webpage is a group of assets, containing text, headings, images, inbound and outbound links, meta data, and many more components. Good webpages are generally built around a theme, or a search term that the site owner values as a traffic source for their business. The Content Cluster theory then is to create a number of assets, all clustered around the same theme, but using different sets of sub assets such as different content forms and media types.
In the world of industrial building marketing, we would build a customer profile page, a testimonial, and a video, surrounding a theme such as their building type or the building application. We would then carefully develop and edit the content to relate to this theme and each piece of content would interlink with each other.
In the world of outfitter SEO, we are following this approach, using blog posts, videos, image galleries, testimonials and Google Web Stories to cluster around the theme, such as "trophy Saskatchewan Whitetail hunting" or "luxury guided fishing lodge". The content types can vary. the number of pieces of content, or search assets, can vary.
Content Clusters in the Wild
A great example of how we have deployed Content Clusters out in the wild is with one of our favorite hunting outfitter clients, Chaparral Hunting Adventures. Chaparral hired us to help them grow their business by increasing the traffic to their website and ultimately the number of qualified inquiries leading to more bookings. We devised a plan to first gather the raw content then to exploit this content by developing a number of new finished content pieces. The first task was to gather the content. We went on a road trip to one of our favorite places, a black bear and whitetail deer hunting camp. We sat down with a number of their hunters (or went fishing with them) and had a conversation about their experiences, about their outdoors passions, about the week they were having. From this raw content we were able to develop a number of new assets for the client, videos that we posted to their YouTube page, blog articles, Google Web Stories, testimonials and image galleries. Each client we interviewed had a different story, from how they started hunting, to where they are from, to their most recent experiences at Chaparral.
Here is an example list of links of what we were able to put together from just one of the interviews, with a client named Mike Graham.
- Testimonial Blog post of Mike Graham
- YouTube video of the Interview
- Google Web Story featuring Mike Graham
- Testimonial snippets posted to Bear Hunting Page
In addition to the value of developing and posting new content, the Content Cluster approach also develops new pathways from various platforms and various online sources to the website. Each blog post page is a new set of assets, a potential page to show in the search results and content that helps to show hunting client satisfaction. Each video posted to the Chaparral Hunting Adventures YouTube channel is findable on that platform (nearly 1000 video views in just 5 months) and creates a new source of traffic to the website. Each Google Web Story is a mobile optimized form of content. Google has stated that their search algorithm reserves specific spaces in the search results for this content format.
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