How to build a topic cluster

Before you start

• A subject you genuinely know
• Search Console or query data to pick the spokes

The steps

1. 1

   Step 1: Pick the subject

   Something you can cover credibly and that relates to what you sell.

2. 2

   Step 2: Allocate keywords

   One broad term for the pillar, one specific term per spoke. Write the allocation down before writing anything.

3. 3

   Step 3: Write the pillar

   It must be useful alone, not a table of contents. Someone arriving from search should get a complete answer.

4. 4

   Step 4: Write the spokes

   One per subtopic, each answering its own question completely.

5. 5

   Step 5: Link up and down

   Pillar links to every spoke; every spoke links back to the pillar.

6. 6

   Step 6: Link across sparingly

   Two or three genuinely relevant siblings per spoke, not every combination.

7. 7

   Step 7: Link out to commerce

   Every page in the cluster links to the service or product it relates to.

Why the structure works

It concentrates internal links on the pages that matter and makes topical coverage legible. One article about a subject competes with everything; a pillar plus eight spokes reads as a site that knows the subject.

The discipline that keeps it working

One primary keyword per URL, allocated in advance. Two spokes targeting the same term is cannibalisation, which is far cheaper to prevent at planning time than to diagnose later.

How long it takes to work

Months, not weeks. A cluster published today will typically show meaningful movement at three to six months on a site with some existing authority, and longer on a new domain. That timeline is the reason to plan the whole cluster before writing the first page — abandoning it halfway leaves a pillar linking to gaps, which is worse than never having started.

The background behind this

The 35 types of SEO, explained without the padding covers the reasoning in about 6 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who wrote this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.