Entities and semantics
Topic cluster
A topic cluster is a group of pages covering one subject together: a central page addressing the subject broadly and supporting pages addressing its specific questions, interlinked so the relationship is explicit.
What is topic cluster?
A topic cluster is a group of pages covering one subject together: a central page addressing the subject broadly and supporting pages addressing its specific questions, interlinked so the relationship is explicit.
What it affects
It is the practical unit of content planning, because completeness within a subject does more than volume across many.
What the work looks like
Built by mapping the question space of a subject, assigning each question to a page, and linking supporting pages to the central page and to each other where genuinely related.
What it is not
A cluster is not a tag archive. Linking pages through a shared tag does not create the relationships that make a cluster work.
It is a small idea with a disproportionate effect on how a site performs.
Where this comes up in the work
It is part of Lifecycle and Email, and more specifically of Retention and win-back. Across the rest of the work it shows up in:
- Technical SEO, since fixing the layout shift caused by a font loading after the text is only as good as this is
- Entity and Semantic SEO, in which it is the first thing checked before putting the credentials in markup rather than only in a footer line
- Local SEO, which cannot be done properly without it
- Ecommerce SEO, where getting it wrong shows up in writing a category page that earns its place above the product grid
What to check
Two questions that establish whether this is actually in order on a given site:
- Whether the measurement that would expose a problem is even being collected
- Whether a change to it would be noticed, or discovered a quarter later
More in entities and semantics
Common questions
How do you check topic cluster on a site?
Built by mapping the question space of a subject, assigning each question to a page, and linking supporting pages to the central page and to each other where genuinely related. Anybody with access can establish it in an afternoon.
Whose job is topic cluster?
Whoever is accountable for finding out which of the listings are duplicates and which are the real one. Problems with this tend to persist because nobody is. Teams that get this right have usually read Noindex or Robots.txt disallow, and argued about Performance Max or Standard Search.
Is topic cluster expensive to get right?
It depends entirely on where the problem originates. Establishing that is the first piece of work.
How urgent is topic cluster?
Before anything that depends on it, which is the test rather than a general ranking. It is the practical unit of content planning, because completeness within a subject does more than volume across many. What does a technical SEO audit actually check? has the worked example. What is a good conversion rate? has the version that went wrong.
How would we know topic cluster is a problem?
It is the practical unit of content planning, because completeness within a subject does more than volume across many. The evidence is specific to the site, which is why the check comes before the recommendation. Client-side rendering is the reference page for this. Consent mode is the one with the examples.
What is topic cluster often confused with?
A cluster is not a tag archive. Linking pages through a shared tag does not create the relationships that make a cluster work. Most briefs that mention this also end up touching Answer Engine Optimization for Real estate and property, and sometimes App Store Optimization for Real estate and property.
Ask us the question you cannot get answered
A conversation about the problem, not a presentation about us. Bring whatever data exists.