SEO Copywriter, Milena Alexandrova, provides comprehensive insights into effective keyword research and content strategy within the framework of topic clusters.
She talks about;
Name: Milena Alexandrova
What she Does: SEO copywriter & strategist for B2B & tech SaaS companies
Company: https://www.milena-alexandrova.com/
Noteworthy: She has embarked on a mission to help tech companies get their ideas out there – and be understood by their customers, 100% of the time. No matter how complex the topic is.
💡Introduction to Topic Clusters.
Milena provides a clear introduction to the concept of topic clusters, emphasizing their importance as a content strategy. She defines topic clusters as a collection of content organized around a common topic, explaining how they help build authority and improve rankings on search engines.
Milena illustrates the structure of topic clusters, with a central pillar article surrounded by supporting content, and highlights the significance of internal linking for both user experience and search engine optimization.
💡Benefits of Topic Clusters
Milena outlines the numerous benefits of employing topic clusters in content strategy. She explains how topic clusters assist in ranking on Google by addressing the challenges of ranking for specific keywords individually.
Moreover, she delves into the aspects of building trust and authority, emphasizing the role of topic clusters in positioning a brand as an expert in a particular field. Milena also discusses the advantages of internal linking, website architecture, and guiding visitors through the marketing funnel.
💡Alignment with Buyer’s Journey
Milena connects topic clusters with the buyer’s journey, illustrating how they play a crucial role in guiding potential customers through different stages. She breaks down the buyer’s journey into awareness, consideration, and decision stages, explaining how topic clusters address the diverse informational needs of users at each phase.
Milena’s insights shed light on the strategic use of topic clusters to align content with the buyer’s journey, enhancing the overall user experience and conversion rates.
💡Strategic Funnel Stages and Content Creation
Milena guides us through the stages of a marketing funnel, recommending starting with bottom-of-the-funnel content for maximum impact. She explains the significance of building content for conversion, consideration, and awareness stages, and the importance of creating a pillar article early on for effective internal linking. Milena suggests an omnichannel approach, utilizing various platforms beyond the blog, such as podcasts, webinars, and social media, to reach a wider audience.
Content Ideation and Strategy
Milena shares practical steps for content ideation and strategy within topic clusters. She emphasizes the importance of defining main keywords, auditing existing content, and conducting thorough research on the target audience and buyer personas.
Additionally, Milena provides insights into understanding the specific needs of buyers in terms of content, utilizing social media and forums for research, and leveraging the sales team’s expertise to identify relevant content ideas.
Keyword Research in Topic Clusters
Milena walks through the process of keyword research within topic clusters, starting with identifying the main keyword and exploring content gaps. She stresses the need to compare content between existing competitors and content competitors. The brainstorming phase, Milena’s favorite, involves using tools like “Answer the Public” and leveraging Google to generate content ideas based on user queries and interests.
Strategic Decision-Making in Content Creation
Milena concludes by emphasizing the importance of strategic decision-making in content creation within topic clusters. She underscores the need to be comprehensive in covering various subtopics, plugging content gaps of competitors, and prioritizing content ideas. Milena’s insights provide a practical guide for content creators and strategists to effectively implement topic clusters in their overall content marketing strategy.
Connect with Milena;
Chima Mmeje 0:04
Today’s the last episode of The FCDC expert series. And I’m emotional. I’m also excited because Milena is talking about a topic that I have built my whole expertise around. So kind of very excited to hear her take on topic clusters and how to beauty of very first topic clusters. And after this, don’t be an expert series but I just want to say thank you to everybody who has joined us this season.
This has been I know we’ve only had one season before what this has been an incredible season. Every week, I have learned at least one or two things from all the guests that we’ve had. So to all our members that are showed up every week. Thank you so much. Milena. All right, tickets. Sorry, am I pronouncing your name right? I don’t want to murder your name.
milena alexandrova 0:50
No It’s perfect. Milena is awesome
Chima Mmeje 0:54
All right, take it over from here.
milena alexandrova 0:58
Thank you Chima. So today I’m going to talk about topic clusters, what they are, why they are such a good content strategy and also how, how to build them and how to think about about them on a more conceptual level, how to present them to clients, and how to, like, organise everything in one table. For example, one spreadsheet that you can then present to your clients, um, honoured honoured to be here, and I’m very happy to be joining you this last session of the expert series. I hope I live up to everyone’s expectations. And also thank you Chima, for having me here. And if you have any questions, you can ask them in the chat. And then at the end of the session, we’ll have for 1015 minutes to to answer let me first tell you a few words about about myself.
So I’m a content writer and strategist as your content writer and strategist and I work almost exclusively with with software companies with most of them startups, most of them in the b2b b2b sphere. However, topic clusters are not limited to to the sector, you can use them for anything you can use the most for b2c, you can use them for, to build any, any kind of content, basically any kind of web content and to build topical authority. I’m, I live in Paris in France, and I have been doing this for the past six years. At first I started as a generalist, I was writing on anything and everything and I was just eager to learn. And then I started specialising first in first in SEO and then in more technical content.
So for, for software companies. Um, I was writing mostly and doing a little bit of strategy here and there. And now I’m shifting gears and I’m starting to do more strategy and a bit less of writing. I’m still doing the two the two things I’m still doing, I’m still sometimes just an executioner and sometimes just writing content for for other teams who sometimes give me ready made briefs and who already have every, every system in place and strategies in place. And sometimes I’m on the strategy side of things where I help I help startup builds, build their content strategy and decide actually what they need to do, how to get started, where to where to get started, whether they want to invest in, in content, how exactly to do this and so on. So I have experienced from both sides.
And today I’m gonna I’m going to explain you my approach on topic clusters. Actually, I learned about topic clusters from Chima. I was I discovered her in LinkedIn, I would say maybe two or three years ago and and then every every post she wrote was filled with with value and and she was often talking about topic clusters. This is what I associate with. So then I started thinking, Okay, what is this? Why? Why is this useful? How can I present it to clients? What can I make of it? Is there something in it for me?
And then I figured that, yes, actually this is this a strategy that makes a lot of sense. And today, you’ll see why. So, I’m gonna share a presentation with you. As I told you, you can ask questions in the chat, feel free to just try them there at any point and then after. After I’m done with the presentation, I will get to your questions, and I’ll answer as best as best as I can. Um, let me now share my screen.
milena alexandrova 6:04
Okay, so. So first, let’s, let’s see what topic clusters actually are. You, I guess some of you some of you’re deeply familiar with the notion. And this might be a bit of a simplification, but I just want to quickly introduce the notion for those your own, those of you who aren’t topic clusters is a topic clusters are. It’s a collection of contents that is organised around a common topic. So the central topic, which is also the central keywords, is what informs your whole strategy, and they allow you to build authority on this topic.
So nowadays, it’s very difficult to to rank for specific keywords if you if you’re writing on this specific keyword only. So if you write just one piece of content on a given keywords, unless your website has very good authority already and has lots of related content, your article will probably not be noticed by your search engines. So one way to think about keywords is to think of them in a structure in a bigger in a bigger structure. And topic clusters are exactly this. So in Topic clusters, you have a pillar article, or, which is also known as is the parent content or the pillar page or content hub, there are a few ways to learn, there are a few ways to name it, it means the same thing.
That is the main the main, the main article, and that is usually the longest one. And then you have content that are organised around it in sort of a circle you can imagine that doesn’t circle it doesn’t need to be circle, of course, but this is just an easy way to see what the topic clusters look like. And these articles support the main article. So the main article is very high level and it gives you a general overview of a topic for example, let’s take running socks as a topic, the main article will be about running socks, what they are, why they why need them, what their benefits are, etc, etc. And then the articles that support this main article will be built around it and to address specific subtopics that are related to it, and then you have links it have links from the main topic to the pillar or to the supporting content and also from the supporting content to the main topic. So, to help you see what I mean exactly this is a visual representation of a topic cluster.
So here in the centre, you can see the pillar content, the pillar article, and around it, you can see cluster content which is which are the different content pieces, that kind of data are organised around it plus the links, the links from the from the main article to the to the supporting articles. And the other way around, there is another visual representation of topic clusters they like more, which is this one, because actually topic clusters are a bit more complex than just one piece of content and the supporting articles. Topic clusters.
The links between topics plus the links between each article or the topic cluster aren’t just from each supporting article to the main article. They are also between the supporting articles and In different in different configurations. So internal linking is very important to help first of all, your readers navigate your page and stay longer on your page. And also for for Google to present your story search engines now not just Google, to understand how your content is built, and what’s important. So every supporting article should link to the, to the main article, to the pillar article. But also, sometimes you will have links between the different articles and this makes perfect, perfect sense. Because they will be sometimes related to each other. And also, the topic cluster is not just about one main topic and all the supporting topics that just coexist, but it serves to guide your buyer to the buyers journey, so to the different stages of the buyers journey.
And here, you can see that with colours. So first, you have the awareness stage of the buyers journey where people are generally problem aware, and they understand that they, they have something that they need to solve, but they don’t know yet exactly how to solve it, then you have the consideration stage where people know what solutions they are. And they have, they have an idea about the solution. They know some of the specific solution solutions, but they don’t know yet exactly what to make out of this. And then you have the decision, decision stage of the buyer’s journey, which is the I would say the most important one actually. And you’ll see why because here people decide to buy a specific product or service.
And this is this is central to topic clusters. So here is another way to think about the buyers journey. It here it looks quite simple and linear. It’s not always like this buyers, the buyers journey can be quite complex can go and go from A to B to C but not in a linear fashion, it might sometimes directly go to C but then go back to to previous stage for different products for different type of product etc. So this is this is quite simplified, but just gives you an idea of the different stages. And you’ll see why this is important. Later, a bit later on. Um, topic clusters have many, many advantages for for companies who want to that want to rank in Google because they they help them build trust present their product in a way that makes sense to buyers for different stages of the buyers journey and also focus their marketing reports. t
So let’s let’s go over some of the benefits that the topic clusters have and that you can also use to present the idea of topic clusters to clients to your clients. So first of all topic clusters help you rank in Google as as mentioned, it’s very difficult to rank with one piece of content it’s nearly impossible. Especially if your website this is a new one you need to think of content is a long term strategy. It can be just about short term goals about this specific article that you’re gonna write and might or might not rank and it probably will not rank very high contents inbound content marketing is always about the long term vision of for brands and with time, and with building your topic cluster progressively you can start ranking for first for related keywords for long term keywords which I will also explain a bit later on and then for for the main keyword with time. This in turn helps in turn helps build authority and trust because People start seeing your brand, they start associating associating you with,
milena alexandrova 15:07
with this specific topic, with this series of topics, and they start, they start to trust you is one of the one of the authorities on this topic, and they start to see that you have something meaningful to bring to the conversation. Topic research should always exist in relation to, to expertize. So it’s not, it’s not just about producing low quality content on a given topic, and just writing optimate it’s about it’s about new ways to, to present the content, new, new topics that you can bring to the conversation, new ideas that you can bring, and this all helps you to build your authority and builds trust, which then helps the become that helps you become a Top of Mind solution for for clients.
Because if, let’s say, let’s say for example, from socks, if, if I’m searching for running socks, and I’m searching for different types of points of support to know what So, what running socks are best for me, and if I search for a few related keywords, which I probably would and if I notice the specific brands come on top or near the top each time and give me lots of valuable information, then these brands will slowly become one of my references, it will slowly become one of the solutions that I will consider that I will consider and that I might consider quite quickly actually considerations that the consideration stage of the buyers journey in the in b2c is much comes much faster, usually than in b2b, but the principle the principles are the same.
So, once you become a Top of Mind solution, once people start associating this topic with your brand new, then then you have successfully positioned yourself as as one of the experts there. Um, topic clusters also are very helpful in helping you improve internal linking and website architecture which is important for users for for the user experience, and also for for search engines at the same time. Search engines care a lot about the user experience, and they want to they want your users to have a good time on your website, they want users to find useful information. So the more you give users useful information, the more you give them easy navigation between the different elements of your topic cluster, the better, the better you your rankings will also be.
Of course, rankings don’t depend just on that. But this is this an important factor. So internal linking helps you guide users through the buyers journey. And also it helps search engines see what your website is about and how it’s structured. Which, which is exactly the next point, guiding visitors through the marketing funnel, so I guess most of you are familiar with the notion of a marketing funnel, that’s the top of the funnel. You have very high level, high level content and also people who are only problem aware and then at the bottom of the funnel, you have people who are ready to buy, we’re ready to decide. We’ll see. We’ll see that in more detail in a few minutes. But it’s important to have to provide a consistent experience.
So to be able to take clients from the top of the funnel to the bottom of funnel, you need to have content for the different stages of the funnel. When you first start out, you will not have content for every station. You don’t see you shouldn’t try to build everything at once you will not be able to you need to concentrate your resources and we’ll see how in in more detail. Um, it’s also complex. Topic cluster sorry on roles or a great way to focus content efforts on on a specific approach and on a specific topic.
And therefore get better return on investment on content marketing. Usually, when you sell content, a content strategy or content in general, to, to clients to your own clients, you need to be very strategic about it, you need to explain why, why it makes sense to do this. And also, you need to compare it to other marketing strategies, you probably not have the numbers for everything, but explaining the principle of a topic cluster and explaining how it helps build authority. And explaining how it focuses teams on specific content is very helpful.
And by focusing the efforts of a content marketing team on a specific cluster, it might not be a team, it might be just the one person that was doing everything, it might be just you, for example, but in case it’s a team, it allows, it allows the company to to really benefit from, from content marketing, and not just for, because they know they have to do content marketing. Um, let’s now look at the how the how of topic clusters and how to build them. So in this presentation, I will go through the high level strategy, we don’t have time to go through all the details of every every element of it, but I will give you some some ideas of about where to start. And you can use each one of those ideas to build on that later on.
So the first step is to define the main keywords of the topic cluster. So when you speak to two companies, they usually, they usually have a good idea of what their main keyword is, but this might not always be the case. So if it’s a company that sells running socks, then it’s, then it’s quite obvious, of course, if however, it’s a company that is selling a software product, and they don’t know exactly what makes more sense for them now to use as their main keywords, then it might make sense to to help them with that, actually. So don’t just take for your keyword that your client gives you at face value, you need to still look at your keyword research and see whether it makes sense for them.
Whether it makes sense in terms of volume, and whether it makes sense in terms of user intent. To the users who are search are the users who are searching for this term looking for what your client is offering. Basically, this is this is how you can think about user intent. Once you have the main keyword, you need to audit your content to see what’s already there, what you can use to support your topic cluster and what you are building. Because unless you’re working with, with someone who’s really just starting out, and a company that is that has just launched their their product or service, there probably is some content that they already have on their blog.
And it makes sense to really go through go through it and see what you can use from there and also what you could update and what you could improve, because you don’t always need to do everything from scratch. In some cases you do. But improving your improving existing content is is a lower effort strategy that that can be really helpful, especially for companies that have a more limited budget, let’s say. And also, by auditing your existing content. You can see how to organise all of this. Then you need to look at your target audience and an ideal buyer. You need to do research on your ideal buyer Most companies
milena alexandrova 25:03
that you’ll be working with will already have done some sort of target audience research. But you might need to go deeper, it might be too personal, you need to get familiar with what they have done and ask questions and see how whether this, this makes sense from from a content marketing perspective. And then you might also need to do some research yourself based on the based on the existing content based on the keywords and based on, of course, most importantly, what the company is offering, what what problem they’re solving who they’re solving it for, and how they’re solving it exactly. And the buyer might not, might be one type of buyer, or it might be a few different types of buyers.
So you might need to think more globally about the buyer, not just about this one particular buyer that that is the ideal buyer, but also about different teams, for example, who might purchase this kind of software solution, or the different types of runners, let’s say if we stay on the example, running socks, and you need to define buyers personas, then you need to start thinking about what your buyers need, in terms of content. So this is, of course, they need a solution. Of course, they most of all, they need a solution to their problem.
But they also have specific needs in terms of in terms of contents, because they want to know what their problem is exactly how other people have solved it, what potential approaches there are, what strategies they can use, what software tools, for example, exist out there, etc. And also, think about the whole research process. So when you buy something, whatever you buy, you’re probably researching needs at least one extent. So if you’re buying a new computer, you’re you’re gonna do lots of research to see what brands and what model to best. And this research usually goes from high level questions that you have about brands, let’s say to more targeted questions about specific models of Ico about why this is better than, than that about whether in this specific feature, etc.
So here, you need to really put yourself in the buyers shoes and and think from their perspective and think about what they need in in particular in terms of content. A great way to to do this is to think of the questions that they’re usually asking and hear from more established companies who already have existing clients, the sales team will be could really help you with with this, because sales teams are on the frontline and get lots of questions about about the product, and they get the exact same questions that people will also research that for example, does this product have this feature? Or is this product better than that one? Or how do how does pricing compare things like that.
So if you can get a hold of someone from the sales team or from our sales manager or through the marketing person talk to to someone from sales, this could be super useful for you. And also it can help inform other marketing strategies, not just the topic cluster. So it can actually be a very good exercise for everyone. Another way to to find out what your buyers need is to go on social media to go on social media and to search for for forums and groups and and so content that is hot right now and see what people are talking about and see how they’re talking about it.
What they’re saying muggles are, what their what topics come up what they want to know more about what they don’t find this information, etc, the Reddit can be a great resource for that, by the way, especially for b2c Reddit is, is one of the tools I’m personally using whenever I’m buying something, and it really helps make a decision because because I can see what other other customers think of the specific thing that I’m considering buying, and also what they struggle with and what I might need to consider. So use any any any approach that you can to figure out what your ideal buyers need in terms of content, because you’re going to be producing the content obviously. Then comes keyword research. So we’ll go into the details in in a few minutes.
Keyword research will be informed by your workup now, and also by the SEO tools that you’re using. So this can be href, this can be SEMrush. This can be Oh, surfer for SEO, this can be any other tool that any any tool that you’re using. If your client is, is familiar with the specific tool, it makes sense, it might make sense to use it if they are able to give you access to their accounts, or by an account for you, this can be also very, very useful. Many tools offer different ways to build topic clusters. So I’m not going to go into the details of all this.
But each two of the more more popular ones will have ways to support you, basically. And then the last step is to based on the keyword research and based on all the previous steps to identify the best content ideas and to make decisions on what to focus on and what to eliminate. Because not everything will not everything will be relevant that you don’t need to write about everything and you will not also be able to. So you need to unique focus on specific topics. And you need to also make decisions on which topics to work on first, which which pieces of content to work on first. Let’s now look at a keyword research in, in particular, keyword research.
So first of all, you have one central keyword, this is your high level keyword. This is for example, let’s say talent, talent analytics. Let’s say that your client has a talent analytics software tool and that they want to build content around this keyword you need to look at content gaps, you need to look at what is there already and also what is not there. And how you can how you can leverage this you need to find content gaps first of all in your own content if there is any if content, so if some point that already exists, and also in the content of your competitors.
So, you want to when you cover a specific topic in a topic cluster you want to be as comprehensive as possible, you want to cover it from all kinds of viewpoints and perspectives and you want to cover all kinds of subtopics in order to build your authority in order to plug every hole there is in the in the content gaps of your competitors and also have your own your own content. For content gaps in particular you can use you can use SEO tools and and you need to compare content between what you have what competitors have four different competitors have also. So for all this you need to identify your content competitors and content competitors by the way are not always
milena alexandrova 34:56
direct competitors. So if for example you Your clients sales, talent analytics platform content competitors might not be other talent analytics platforms, but might be for example, Skill Assessment platforms, so not the same thing, but in terms of contents, they might be quite similar. Um, then is the brainstorming part which is my my favourite, this is where you note down content ideas and and see what makes sense. So you can use different tools products, you can use answer the public, for example, which gives you lots of lots of ideas.
This is a platform for forum. Yeah, for keyword research, let’s say gives you lots of ideas of things that people are interested in related to your main topic, if your main topic is dark chocolate, then it will give you lots of content ideas around dark chocolate, lots of questions that people are asking lots of related queries etc. You can also use in Google. So, you go to google.com you type your keywords, and then you type each letter of the alphabet to see what shows up. For example, let me um, oops, let me quickly show you how this works.
Okay, so, yeah, so, for example, we have running socks, you have running socks, they have the first letter of the alphabet, which is a and here you get ideas. So, for example, it might not make sense to talk about brands, it might make sense however, to talk about ankles. So, these are just ideas, this is the keyword research, the actual keyword research will come after that, but this this gives you ideas on topics that might be interesting or important. So be will be for example blisters, sealed bean, cotton, etc. So, this is this is one of the ways to to gather ideas basically.
milena alexandrova 37:34
Then, again, we have input from from buyers, and and this is where again, you can talk to sales teams, and you can talk to sales managers to see what buyers want to know about and also do your own research in social media and forums. And then you have keyword ideas in your SEO tool. So this these are questions keyword variations, etc. And then you can also use the trajectory for brainstorming it can be it can be quite useful for for this it can be useful for many things, but brainstorming ideas is is great, you need to be very targeted in your in your questions you need to be specific, but you can read through down and and collect lots of ideas.
It will not do of course, the keyword research for you, but it will give you ideas. Then, once you have a lot of ideas, which you will have after this brainstorming stage, you need to start thinking of what you want to focus on. You need to eliminate some ideas and focus on on others, you need to eliminate keywords that aren’t relevant to your message that aren’t relevant to your brand. And they don’t align with it. And then you also need to focus on highly specific keywords and bottom of the funnel content which is I will explain to you shortly why the best.
The best starting point is here is a screenshot of of Atrus keyword research tool. So this is for the keyword talent analytics and hear in questions you can see what questions you might want to use. As you can see, so this is this is volume this search volume. search volume for questions might sometimes be quite low, which might make you think that this is not relevant and this is not worth exploring. I would argue that it is still worth worth exploring because Questions are usually longtail keywords that have very high intent intent to purchase.
And therefore, even if you have a very limited search volume, it might still make sense to to explore this topic, and it also might might make sense to explore this topic in order to build build content for the different stages of the buyers journey, so it might be content that is not really searched. searched for on Google, but it might still be topic that is relevant to your to your users. Um, so about your audience audience’s questions. I just want to focus on this a little bit more, because usually, I face a lot of resistance from from clients, they say no, I just want to write about, about this topic, and I don’t want to answer questions, or I don’t see how this is relevant or questions have very low search volume, etc.
But questions actually help drive conversions, because they specific questions are usually asked at the bottom of the funnel and where users are nearly almost always either ready to purchase, or really the final stages? And are thinking of different different solutions? Of course, I don’t mean questions like What is what is downtime analytics, I mean, more specific questions like what, what platform I can use for talent analytics, or how this platform a compared to Platform B, etc. Or what features I should look for etc. And then also, questions are usually show a better awareness of, of the problem and the potential solutions.
And, again, this means that you don’t need to educate your your audience from from scratch, but you that you’re already working people who know about, about what you’re selling and want to know more. And questions are usually very specific. So of course, they can be also very general, but some questions can be very specific, which allows you to demonstrate your expertise you it allows you to, to demonstrate. Also our unique perspective, and unique point of view. And this is very, very important, especially nowadays, where when we have more and more content that is AI generated and demonstrating unique ideas is one of the best ways to stand out.
Um, let’s see some content ideas for for clusters for topic clusters. So first of all, you have related other related keywords. So these can be related keywords that you get from us or the public is can direct keywords that you gather from your own research in just by using Google winter alphabet, alphabet, the process they showed you, this can be questions also. And keep in mind the three keywords don’t need to contain the main keyword, they can also be they can also be a variation of it or they might also just contain one of the elements if it’s for example towards keywords, etc. You have questions which we already covered, you have guides and how to articles which can be either high high level also very focused, it can be a general how to article on talent analytics and it also can be a very specific article on how to use a specific feature of your, your platform.
You have lists also best best running socks, types of running socks, running socks strategies from what makes sense but talent analytics strategies, good examples especially when you talk about abstract notions, etc. You have also PDFs and here the keywords that you might want to target this Just your keyword plus PDF. So, for example talent analytics strategy plus PDF. And this if you offer of course, PDF that explains a thought analytics strategy or different strategies, this can be a great way to capture the attention of people who want something very specific. So, a PDF in this case PDF keywords will be low volume in most cases, but again very this will be very meaningful traffic.
And then you can also use problem and solution specific contents, which can be tied to your specific features, the features of, of your platform and also wider or related problems with which which can be which I would advise you to delve into once you have already covered your content, your topic cluster, but still meaningful Avenue. Um Okay, we don’t have we then don’t have a lot of time left and so you want to leave time for questions, but I just want to go through through the funnel stages quickly and through content ideas for specific funnel stages.
So you have you probably noticed, you have probably already noticed this performer four and boffo talk over the front row, middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel, these are terms that are used a lot in marketing, one thing I want to advise you is when you build your topic cluster is to start at the bottom of the funnel, because this is this is the most meaningful content that is that is targeted towards people who are already ready to make purchase or who are who are considering different different different possibilities and are now making a choice. So start at the bottom, these keywords are usually lower volume, but also lower difficulty and then build your way up progressively as you go. So
milena alexandrova 47:25
this can help you build traction, this can help you get off some conversions, which can be very useful in convincing your your own customers in the in the benefits of marketing funnels. So this is what a marketing funnel looks looks like this very simplified representation and you basically want to build content for the conversion, conversion stage first, and then consideration and then awareness, then the highest level content, which is also the centre of your topic cluster, you might want to build your pillar article somewhere in the first few months, let’s say but you might first circle first start with the smaller topics and then move on to it.
It’s still meaningful to build the pillar article rather early on because it allows you to, to, to work on your internal linking structure, which, which is important. Um, and now just quickly, let’s go through some some topic ideas with the keywords talent analytics. For top of the funnel content, this can be for example, what is data analytics, doing talent analytics, what companies are using data analytics, etc. Your you your goal is to educate customers and in this type of content, you shouldn’t be directly inviting users to make a purchase because they probably will not be ready to and so this might even put them off. In this content, you’re looking to build awareness basically.
Then you have middle of the funnel Content Examples I’m not gonna read the more I can activate Share, share my presentation, but this is more focused content and here you can already start building you can first of all start talking more about your brand and then you can also weave in social proof. So social proof will be proof will be case studies will be testimonials will be reviews from other customers and this is the This is very meaningful, because it shows your prospective buyers, what others are getting from, from you and how it’s beneficial for them.
Um, and then, in the bottom of all the bottom of the funnel, you need to be very specific and very concentrated on, on features on specific benefits on, on how to guides, but that are not just how to about topic in general, but about how to do this specific thing. You can also use ebooks and PDFs, you can also give out free stuff, which can be your premium version of your product, if you have one, or it can be frameworks, tools, additional tools, etc. Here, you can also use promotions. And here you can already use very targeted, very targeted cold calls to action. So this is a product that is entirely product product focused and that is focused on your product in particular.
And that helps demonstrate what the value of your product is. And then you also need to build post purchase content, I would do this after the middle of the funnel content. But this, this is something that depends on you. This would be content about your products and targeted towards existing users. So not just people who are new. So for people who already made the purchase, basically and who want to get the most out of your product. And this needs to be very targeted, it might not only live on on your blog, by blog, by the way, it might also be email content, it can be social media content, it can be webinars, you can you can spread it in many different in many different ways.
And so so this is overall what what the topic cluster looks like. And more specifically, what content ideas you can use and how you can do it. For the details, I invite you to really focus on on each each of those, each of those ideas, and to do keyword research with with with an SEO tool. Some SEO tools have free versions or free trials that you can use. And sometimes clients are willing to share their accounts with you, which, which I invite you to just ask about you, you can never you have nothing to lose.
Of course, if you can afford to, then that’s great. What I usually do is I just buy it to buy a subscription for a month when I’m using it actively. And then if I’m not using it for a while I just put it on pause and then whenever I need to I resume it. And and yeah, this is, this is what topic clusters are all about. I will check with Chima how I can share this presentation with you. She has lots of useful content on topic clusters. And she has also a course on the topic clusters that that has been very helpful for me so. So yeah, I would invite you to check it out
milena alexandrova 54:10
so let’s check the questions.
Chima Mmeje 54:15
Yes. Thank you so much for that presentation milenna. And that was super detailed. That was
milena alexandrova 54:22
I tried to pack a lot of information. I don’t know how familiar everyone is with different concepts and hope I didn’t bore some of you.
Chima Mmeje 54:33
That’s really good. Okay, so question from Roshni. Yeah. Oh, yeah. She said she just showed the tofu slide. Example one more time.
milena alexandrova 54:42
Sure. Tofu tofu. Yeah. Just look me up. share my screen again.
Chima Mmeje 54:52
Yeah, it’s just used to share me your screen your screen is still showing.
milena alexandrova 54:55
Oh, okay. Sorry. Up So yeah, here it is. So this is high level content, this is the content, I would advise you to build last. Don’t, don’t start with it unless you already have some of it existing and you can improve on this. So this is just this. These are examples for the specific keywords. Were for other keywords, you might use a different approach.
Chima Mmeje 55:24
Okay. The other question is also from Roshni, can you show an example of promotions? Under BOFU contents? I don’t know whatdoes she mean by promotion. Does she mean examples of content formats on that? bofu? Not sure what she means by promotion. Yeah.
milena alexandrova 55:45
So promotions, if you mean, if you mean promotions, in the sense of Oh, yeah.
Chima Mmeje 55:50
She says promotional content. Okay. Sorry. She says promotional contents under BOFU.
milena alexandrova 55:56
Okay. Let me see if I can, if I have a quick example. So, right now, I don’t have a quick example. Oh,
Chima Mmeje 56:08
Hold on let me see if I can bring up Roshni to ask this question. Because, yeah, I am having.. Roshni can you come up and ask the question, like more properly so that we can understand what your question is, I’ve just given you permission.
Roshni Shaikh 56:24
Hey Chima Oh, hi, hi, Milenna. Thank you. Thank you so much for the presentation. Yeah. So, you had mentioned under Bofur content, if you can go to the Bofu slide.
milena alexandrova 56:37
Bofu slides. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Roshni Shaikh 56:40
So, after you have detailed comparisons, alternatives, step by step guides, free stuff, and then you have promos, do you mean promotional emails or promotional content? What is?
milena alexandrova 56:57
Sorry, yeah, please. So promos can be can be actually can be discounts can be very specific or promotions can be things that you offer on top of something, for example, it can be limited, limited in time promotion, for an extra feature that otherwise cost more to get. It can be discounts for for specific time of the year. This is what I mean by promotions.
So promotions, promotions, usually wouldn’t live on your blog promotions might rather be sent out through through through email, for example, or social media, or on there might be supporting content on the blog. But the blog is not the main channel that you should use for promotions. Promotions are more global approach.
Roshni Shaikh 58:06
Right. Okay. So that’s the question I had. I mean, how do you do promos on a blog, because we have heard about promotional emails. But promotional blogs was something that I had never heard of? That’s the reason I asked you to give me an example. But it’s clear now. Thank you.
milena alexandrova 58:22
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. So you can you can supporting content on the blog, but the main distribution channel will be a different one, most likely, because it will not rely on this year, it will not rely on rankings so much. It might sometimes. So it might sometimes rely on rankings. But this is I would say for the biggest brand out brands out there. For example, I don’t know, motions or whatever.
Chima Mmeje 58:51
And this is why I’m moving towards the more omni channel approach that is not just focused on blogs, and why Well, what I’m trying to do now is okay, everything can only one blog, Weibo can have some of it as other contents from us, like on social media, you know, us emails, you know, the all these different ways that we can still publish contents within a topical cluster format, but not just content that’s going to go on the blog.
So yeah, we need to start thinking outside the box about how we can create content that doesn’t just there is not just in words, or text, what is in all these different formats. And I can live in all the different platforms that people are consuming content on. Because not everybody reading your blog.
milena alexandrova 59:31
Absolutely, absolutely. And SEO is just one side of the things. You can have a podcast you can have a series of webinars you can have for LinkedIn groups, for example, you can have your own LinkedIn content. You have your newsletter, lots of different channels.
And this is why I also invite you not to fixate on on keyword volume, because this is just one side of the thing. Okay, Reading and keyword volumes are important, but they’re not the only thing that you should consider.
Chima Mmeje 1:00:08
Alright. Question from Fiyin? Sorry, I hope I’m pronouncing your name right. I’m not sorry. Can topic clusters walk for information? I’ll block that don’t necessarily have a product or service to sell. I can just say yes, right off.
milena alexandrova 1:00:24
Yeah.
Chima Mmeje 1:00:25
If you have a, okay. Yeah, like, for example, you have a blog and fitness. Yes, definitely. Would you advise a client to invest in topic clusters, especially since it’s a yes, in fact, that is even the kind of blogs that should be doing that should be creating topical contents. But over to you, Milena?
milena alexandrova 1:00:42
Absolutely, absolutely. Actually, it makes perfect sense to use topic clusters for informational blogs, because it allows you to structure your blog in a meaningful way meaningful for your users. So from a user experience, point of view and meaningful for search engines.
So absolutely, you can definitely sell topic clusters to clients who have informational books. Anyway, even if they’re not selling a product, they are probably monetizing their content somehow. So it might be through through through a newsletter, it might be through affiliate marketing, it might be a service, it might be ads.
But in all cases, it still makes sense to use the topic matters because it allows you to, to build authority on a specific topic. And especially topics like fitness or lifestyle in general, which are very competitive hydraway also can really benefit from this. And it allows you to become the reference for this specific topic.
So if it’s a specific diet or a specific, I don’t know, workout routine or whatever. If you’re consistent, you can start showing up in in search results in a matter of months, sometimes even weeks, but it really depends on the on the topic. We don’t hear you. We don’t hear it. Yeah,
Chima Mmeje 1:02:25
sorry. Anyone who’s asking for the slides, when the post is ready to go on the website, the slides be added to them so you can see whatever slide he wants to see. But just be patient on that already run over time. So I don’t want to waste them on anything that is not important.
Milena, thank you so much for doing this. This was really, really good. Thank you to everyone who stayed on to the end, we’ve officially come to the end of season two of the FCDC expert series. Thank you so much.
milena alexandrova 1:02:54
Thank you, everyone for participating time. Thank you, Chima for your trust. And I was really happy to talk to you all. And if you want to get in touch with me on LinkedIn, please feel free to do that.
If you have any questions. Happy to answer and I will check with him how I can share the slides with you so that you can use them. Take them use them, do whatever, whatever whatever you need to do
