In this week’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Chima walks through what you can do before, during, and after your research process to ensure you’re creating elevated and relevant content within your topic clusters.

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Hi. My name is Chima, and today I'm going to be talking to you on how to do comprehensive research for your topic cluster. I'm going to walk you through the before, the during, and the after so that you can start implementing this on your own right now. All right, let's get into it.

The first step is to choose a topic with a ton of search volume. Now I've worked with clients in the SaaS business who were building products that nobody was searching for. So the most important thing we're going to do here is to make sure that the cluster we're building actually has search volume. I like to go with something like 10k at the minimum for a search volume if I'm doing like a topic cluster for my homepage or whole website. But if I'm doing like a really small niche cluster, then 5k is like a decent search volume to aim for. 

The next thing is to find your audience. Who are you going to be targeting with that cluster? This is going to be very important when we start looking at filtering with modifiers. 

Next step is to do a content audit. Now, just to be clear, we are doing a content audit just for this cluster. We are not doing a big site-wide content audit here. When you do a content audit, we are looking for what do we want to keep in the cluster, what do we want to consolidate, redirect, update, or create net new. 

Now here's the rule I usually use for myself. What I like to keep is content that is performing really well, content that people are still reading, that is getting some really good clicks. What I want to consolidate is content where I see that there is keyword cannibalization. What I want to redirect is content that is getting no clicks, that is outdated, or that isn't serving any purpose for our brand anymore. What I'm going to update is content that is on page 2, page 3. Content that I think has potential but we just maybe need to do a little bit more work to get it ranking on page 1. And what I want to create net new is keyword gaps that I've identified while doing my content audit. 

Next step, competitive research. When I'm doing keyword research, I'm the laziest person on Earth. So I'm always looking for what is the fastest route to find what I'm looking for. And for me, that is doing competitive research. I'm going to look at my competitors to see what keywords they are ranking for around my cluster. If you use a tool like Moz Pro, you can usually filter this in Keyword Suggestions to see what keywords your competitors are targeting for that specific cluster, export that into a CSV, and just keep it there, along with what you found in your audit. 

Next step is to do topical keyword research. That means that when you are doing your research, you are filtering by that cluster topic. And you also want to do a gap analysis to understand, what do I have in my current content, and what do I need to create net new? A keyword gap analysis using a tool like Moz Pro will usually uncover this for you. 

Now you have a really good sizable SEO list of keywords. But what about coming outside of SEO? What else can we find out there? 

Social media. I love using social media to do keyword research. I've found some really great gold mines by looking at keywords on Twitter and LinkedIn. I refuse to call it X. 

I also like using Reddit and Quora for community research. You can just go on Reddit, especially, type in the main keyword you are trying to target, and it's going to show you some really good threads or forums that people have created to talk about that keyword. That's going to give you some great insight on real questions that people are asking around that topic. 

Next step, and this is the most important one for me, filtering with modifiers. I did a previous Whiteboard Friday on money keywords that I think is going to really help you with choosing your modifiers, so check that out. When you filter with modifiers, you are looking for things like how to, what is at the top of the funnel. You are looking for buy keywords at the bottom, and all of those other words that will just help you to like really dig down into the core of what keywords you should be targeting. 

The next step is to identify problems your product solves and to create sales enablement content for it. Again, modifiers are going to help you with this. So really check out that other Whiteboard Friday I worked on. Now when I say sales enablement content your product solves, I'm talking about when you look at the problem your product is targeting, what can you do for your sales team to help them solve that problem? 

Let's say, for example, you run a user research platform. People are using your platform for research, for doing behavioral analysis, whatever that is. If your audience is looking for content, they'll probably be looking for buying guides and things like that. What are the questions that your sales team is getting when they are speaking to potential customers? You can pull all of that together for content ideas. 

Cluster keywords by search intent. You have all of your keywords now. A great way to cluster is to look at how many keywords have similar intent, and that is going to help you prevent cannibalization and creating more content that you don't actually need. 

Match keywords to different stages of the buyer journey. Are they at the top? Are they at the middle? Are they at the bottom? Or perhaps they are at the post- purchase stage of their journey and are just looking for that content that is going to help them use your product or service better. 

All right, during. When you are writing the contents for your cluster, I always advise people to start from the bottom and work their way to the top. Reason being that if you start at the top where you have a lot of search volume, you are going to shoot yourself in the foot because you don't have a lot of chance to rank for that keyword. But if you start at the bottom where competition is lower and the intent to buy is higher, you can start to see returns quickly that justify working on the cluster. 

Use social proof to build trust. As you create this content, if you've gotten customer testimonials, you can repurpose them into what I like to call image CTAs and just sprinkle them throughout your content to build trust and let your customers know or people within the content know that this is actually really good stuff and you're not just making stuff up. 

Show product in action. I love doing this, and I think this is so important when you are creating content. You are not just writing content for people to read and to learn from you. You are also showing them, "Here is how our product works," in collaboration with solving a pain point. 

Interlink within and outside the cluster. Content in isolation is going to die a quick death, but content that is interlinked in a cluster is going to live forever. So it's very, very important that when you create content, you find all the other connected content pieces, and you create a beautiful home between them.

Use first-hand experience. We are unfortunately and maybe fortunately living in the age of AI. You can literally just put a keyword into ChatGPT and it's going to give you a 5,000-page content. But this is what sets you apart from everybody else. No two people can have the same experience. First-hand content allows you to tell stories from a unique perspective that nobody else has. And this is something I'm beginning to see more and more in Google Discover. So if you want to create clusters that stand apart from everything else on the SERP, I advise you to start leveraging first-hand experiences. 

Okay, you finished building your cluster. What happens next? Use AI and human writers to scale content creation. Massive mistake I see people making is that they try to use AI as the all in all, and I hear words like "hack." You can't hack content. It doesn't make sense. The best way is to use AI to create those content outlines and then use human writers to write the content using first-hand experience. 

Next step, measure metrics according to goals for the cluster. What are the goals you set for the cluster? Is it to drive traffic? Is it to drive new customers? Whatever those goals are, that is what you're going to be measuring for the cluster. 

Update high-performing content at least once a year. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you've probably seen me bemoan time and time again about how much I absolutely hate updating content. But this is such an important step in content creation. We just can't ignore it. So identify your best-performing content in a year and make time, at least push out one month and say, "This month is going to be the month where I update my best-performing content." And that just allows you to keep your ranking rather than investing in net new content that takes up so much more time. 

Use social to reinforce topical relevance. Again, thanks to ChatGPT and other AI tools, people are looking to thought leaders for guidance on what to do strategy-wise. You can be at the forefront of that discussion by using social media to share your content that you have created. Your blog is not the only way to reinforce authority. I really, really encourage you to start creating social content to reinforce topical relevance. 

And finally, partner with influencers to co-create opinion-driven content. Your POV is not enough. Are there other influencers in your industry who are talking about that topic whose voices might lend credibility to you? Partner with them to create content. It doesn't have to be blog posts. It could be video content. It could be webinars. It could be podcasts. Whatever it is you're trying to reach your audience, they can lend credibility to you, and that also allows you to tap into their audiences and grow your follower base. 

That's it. I think, with this, you have enough to go and create your first topic cluster or to even create a better process for building topic clusters. Bye-bye.