If you publish content without a plan, you’ll end up with disconnected pages that Google and AI search platforms struggle to recognize as evidence of expertise.
That’s a problem: Ranking algorithms and AI answer engines reward sites that can prove topical depth.
The solution? Topic clusters.
Below, we’ll cover what topic clusters are, the benefits of building them, a five-step process for creating and monitoring your own, and real examples of clusters that are already working.
What is a topic cluster?
A topic cluster (or content cluster) is a group of interconnected, thematically related pages on a website.
Each cluster includes one pillar page — the main page that provides a broad overview of a particular topic — and multiple subpages (also called cluster pages) — which cover associated subtopics.
All of these pages are connected with internal links (links that direct to other pages on your site). Like so:
For example, restaurant team management platform 7Shifts has a guide to restaurant costs that acts as a pillar page for other related topics. It links to 7Shifts’ other articles about restaurant bookkeeping, accounting, and labor costs.
What are the benefits of topic clusters?
Topic clusters build topical authority, which helps you compete for visibility in both search engines and AI-generated answers.
When you build topical authority, you’re helping your site compete for more keywords in search engines and appear for more prompts on AI search platforms like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews.
Let’s say you have a pillar page about how to decorate an apartment, and cluster pages that talk about kitchen decor, living room furniture, and bedding.
Publishing high-quality content on all of these pages signals that your website is an authority on apartment decoration.
This is important because search engines display authoritative content in their results, and AI search platforms cite it in their answers.
Topic clusters also help you optimize for query fan-out, where an AI search platform expands a user’s question into several related sub-queries before composing an answer.
Topic clustering naturally addresses these sub-queries and can help you increase mentions and citations within AI systems.
Plus, topic clusters contribute to an effective site structure. By linking to and from a pillar page, you allow search engines, AI search platforms, and users to easily:
- Find related content
- Understand the significance of the pillar page
- Recognize semantic relationships (how the content fits together)
Last but not least, establishing a reputation as a subject matter expert lets you attract and convert target audiences. Because people usually prefer to engage with credible companies.
How to create topic clusters and monitor their performance
Create topic clusters that drive organic traffic, boost your visibility on AI search platforms, and improve your site’s user engagement by:
- Choosing a core topic
- Researching your topic to find suitable keywords
- Identifying pillar pages and subpages
- Creating quality content for pillar pages and subpages
- Measuring cluster performance
We’ll use an example of a fictional pet supply business to illustrate each step.
1. Choose a core topic
Choose a topic to base your content cluster around by starting with a simple brainstorming session.
Ask yourself:
- Which topics are relevant and important to your brand?
- Which topics have worked well for you in the past?
- What content do you already have?
- Which topics does your target audience care about?
- Which topics do your competitors talk about?
Your chosen topic should be broad enough to warrant several pieces of content. But not so broad that the cluster could become oversized and unfocused.
Depending on your industry and offering, you might have a lot of ideas for topic clusters to include in your content calendar. That said, you may want to keep your brainstorming focused as you’re starting out.
Nathan Gotch, AI SEO Practitioner, shared an X post recommending that those optimizing new websites prioritize building authority around a single topic or service line to see the best results:
For our hypothetical pet supply business, we’ll use “dog toys” as our core topic.
2. Research your topic
Research your topic by looking for keywords with a suitable intent and a reasonable difficulty.
Doing this ensures you pick topics where you have the best chance of earning visibility.
Use the Keyword Magic Tool to find and analyze keywords. To start, enter your topic into the search bar and your domain for personalized data. Click “Search.”
Look for a term that’s relevant to your brand and broad enough to include additional pillar pages and subpages. And look at the following metrics:
- Intent: Search intent can be navigational, informational, commercial, or transactional. The search intent you choose depends on your goals. For example, if you want your topic cluster to drive sales, you’d lean toward commercial and transactional intents.
- Personal Keyword difficulty (PKD %): A score indicating how difficult it’ll be to rank in Google’s top 10 organic results for a given term for your site. Generally, the higher the number out of 100, the harder it’ll be to rank.
In our example, we might pick the term “dog toys for aggressive chewers” since it isn’t too difficult to rank for.
Once you’re happy with your starting keyword’s potential, the next step is to determine your pillar pages and subpages.
3. Identify pillar pages and subpages
To find ideas for your pillar pages and subpages, use Semrush’s AI-powered Keyword Strategy Builder. For a deeper walkthrough, see our guide to clustering with the tool.
Enter the keyword you identified in the previous step and click “Create.”
The tool will then generate topics, pillar pages, and subpage ideas for you (this process can take up to 15 minutes).
In this case, one topic is “interactive toys for aggressive chewers,” and its pillar page targets the keyword “interactive dog toys.” Its subpages cover topics like “tug toys for dogs,” “sensory chew,” and “toys for high energy dogs.”
Both pillar pages and subpages contain what’s called a keyword cluster, which is a group of search terms that share the same intent. (You can see any page’s keyword cluster by clicking the gray arrow next to the respective page.)
Using a single page to target each of the terms in the keyword cluster enables you to rank for more search terms — and mapping each cluster cleanly to one page, rather than splitting it across several, also helps search systems disambiguate which of your pages actually answers a given query.
When two pages compete for the same terms (known as keyword cannibalization), search systems have to guess which one to cite. A clean one-cluster-to-one-page mapping removes that guesswork and makes each page easier to retrieve as a distinct, authoritative answer to its slice of the topic.
Whichever page you choose as your pillar, it should:
- Be the most complete resource on your core topic
- Target the broad head term rather than a specific variation
- Map its H2s and H3s to the subtopics your subpages cover
The tool can potentially provide many ideas. So, prioritize pillar pages and subpages by evaluating intent, search volumes, and difficulty scores. Keyword mapping can help you keep track of which keyword cluster is assigned to which page as the list grows.
And consider incorporating both highly specific and popular search queries to increase your chances of becoming more visible in search results more quickly.
4. Create quality content
Creating quality content that’s useful, authoritative, accurate, and relevant to your target audience will help your chances of earning visibility.
It’s a good idea to start with your pillar page. Because this is the page that provides a broad overview of your core topic and is the foundation for your topic cluster.
Then, create your pillar page with links to your cluster pages in mind. Structuring it around the subtopics you’ll cover separately makes it easier to link out to each one as you publish them.
After publishing your pillar page, you can create cluster pages at your own pace. (Of course, the sooner you publish your content, the sooner you can start seeing results.)
Remember to add internal links from the pillar page to its cluster pages. And vice versa.
If you need help creating search-friendly content, use Semrush’s Content Toolkit. Access the AI article generator directly in the Keyword Strategy Builder.
Select “Generate content” > “Article.”
Fill out the popup and click “Generate SEO-rich article.”
Click “Open SEO-rich article” to open the Content Toolkit. The tool will spend several minutes analyzing competing pieces and generating an optimized article with your keywords.
Once done, the Content Optimizer scores your article and gives you prioritized fixes for improving its visibility in both search results and AI-generated answers.
Apply the tips to further increase your content score and improve its chances of earning visibility in search results and AI-generated answers.
And as you review the tools’ recommendations, keep these tips in mind:
- Write for people first: Make sure your content is created primarily for your target audience — not for search engines or AI search platforms. Providing genuine value should improve rankings and engagement.
- Be clear and concise: Make it quick and easy for readers to get the information they need. Structure and format your content thoughtfully to make it more digestible.
- Build internal links: Link to other pages in the cluster, so users can easily navigate between them. And attach your links to keyword-rich anchor text to enhance Google’s understanding.
5. Measure your cluster’s performance
Measure your content cluster’s’ performance so you know what’s working and what isn’t.
This way, you can:
- Expand top-performing clusters with additional content
- Review and improve low-performing content
- Adapt your topic cluster strategy based on meaningful data
There are many content marketing metrics you can track, but a topic cluster’s health comes down to a few specific measures:
- Organic traffic to the pillar page versus its subpages
- How often visitors click from one cluster page to another
- How much of the cluster’s target keyword set you’re actually ranking for
Together, these tell you whether the cluster is functioning as a connected unit or just a handful of unrelated pages that happen to share a theme.
Clusters are also judged on whether they show up in AI-generated answers, not just Google rankings.
A well-built cluster gives an AI system a clear, authoritative page to point to for each sub-query within the topic, helping you appear in AI Overviews and similar answer experiences. Which is worth tracking alongside your Google rankings.
We recommend adding your target terms to Semrush’s Position Tracking tool.
It tracks your Google rankings, including AI Overviews, and lets you monitor your positions in ChatGPT for the same set of terms.
Plus, you can use tags to group related keywords (i.e., keywords targeted on the same page).
Navigate to the “Tags” report to see how each keyword group — and by extension, each page in your cluster — is performing as a whole.
Treat your cluster as a living structure rather than a one-time project: Keep the pillar page evergreen as the topic evolves, and add new subpages as fresh subtopics earn a place in the cluster.
Topic cluster examples
For a better understanding of what topic clusters are and how they work, check out these topic cluster examples:
Healthline’s allergy content cluster
Healthline’s “Everything You Need to Know About Allergies” article is the pillar page for an allergy content cluster. It overviews several subtopics, including symptoms, causes, and treatments, and each subtopic gets its own subpage for deeper coverage.
The pillar page links out to those subpages for more detailed information.
Like this:
Here’s a snapshot of one of the linked subpages, on food allergies specifically:
Each subpage goes deep on one subtopic while the pillar page keeps the overview intact, so readers can start broad and drill down as needed.
Petcube’s puppy care content cluster
Petcube, a pet technology company, uses a “Puppy Care 101” guide as its pillar page — covering all the basics that first-time puppy owners need to know, with links out to subpages that go deeper on individual subtopics.
At the ends of many sections, Petcube links to those more detailed subtopic guides.
Like this:
Other subpage topics include raising a puppy, adopting from a shelter, puppy-proofing, puppy supplies, and crate training.
Wistia’s video marketing guide
Video marketing platform Wistia’s video marketing guide is the pillar page for a cluster that includes subpages on video marketing funnel stages, examples, promotion, and more.
Unlike Healthline’s overview-style pillar, Wistia structures its guide as sequential chapters — a format that works well when the subtopics build on each other.
The pillar page also includes numerous instructional videos, which makes it a valuable resource on its own and adds to Wistia’s topical authority.
Build your topic clusters in minutes
Topic clustering requires plenty of topic research.
But with Semrush’s Keyword Strategy Builder, you can save hours.
The AI-powered tool automatically generates pillar page and subpage ideas. Allowing you to populate your content calendar in a fraction of the time it takes to do it from scratch.
That means you can start creating content — and improving your visibility — right away.
