As Google continues to evolve its search algorithms to better match content on a website to a user’s search query, the strategy behind the production and optimization of content has to evolve along with it.
With Google’s recent “helpful content update’” the value and usefulness of content on websites is becoming more critical than ever before. While we may never know the exact factors of how the algorithm evaluates and scores content, Google has given us a few key aspects to consider after the update fully rolls out.
We need to connect some of the dots from other Google tools like the transition from Google Analytics 3 to Google Analytics 4, and the new metrics and methods of measuring traffic engagement. That’s our clue to how the machine thinks about content’s value/usefulness/helpfulness. Users engaging with clusters of helpful content will send signals to Google that a site is doing something right and should be “rewarded” with improved visibility and rankings in SERPs (search engine results pages).
What is it?
Clustered content opens up the opportunity to build a bigger hill of content around a specific topic or seed keyword vs. dispersed spikes of targeted pieces. Going deeper, secondary/semantically related terms come into play here, with the associated pieces of different content types supporting the main topic. Internal linking will be an even more important strategy as the links between content show crawl bots how all these different pieces of content relate and support the cluster’s primary focus.
In civilian language, applying SEO strategies to your website improves your search rankings. Applying clustered content strategies takes your SEO efforts to the next level by leveraging central gateway pages and internal links for each keyword.
How to get started
Clustered content strategies are one of the many high-impact digital marketing strategies that Gravitate can put to work for you. Want to learn more? Just drop us a line!
