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Keyword Tripod Rule: How to choose
keywords for SEO?
So you’ve opened a keyword research tool and found hundreds of
keywords you could target.
Now what?
Keyword research is much more than just finding new keyword
ideas. You need to analyze them and pick the ones you’ll actually use in
your content strategy.
Luckily, there’s a simple rule that will help you rememberthe key factors
you need to consider…The Keyword Tripod Rule.
What is the Keyword Tripod Rule?
The Keyword Tripod Rule is a simple rule you can follow when selecting
the focus keyword for your page.
It reminds you of the three most important factors you need to considerin
your keyword research – popularity,rankability,and relevance ofthe
keyword.
https://bit.ly/3zMxubr

The perfectfocus keyword must be:
 Popular – the keyword has a decent search volume.
 Rankable – the keyword has a reasonable keyword difficulty.
 Relevant – the search intent matches your content.
What is a focus keyword?
The focus keyword is a keyword that is the best representation of the
page’s topic. You use it in the key on-page elements to optimize your page
to rank for the topic.
The best practice is to first find a good keyword and then create content
for it rather than the other way round.
Why a “tripod”? Because the tripod stands steady only if all three legs
have a good ground.
The same applies to any keyword and the three factors mentioned above:

 If the difficulty is OK and the keyword is relevant but it has no search
volume, you’ll get no traffic because nobody uses the keyword.
 If search volume and relevance are OK, but the difficulty is too
high, you won’t rank for the keyword due to fierce competition.
 If a keyword has a high search volume and low difficulty but the
search intent doesn’t match, Google won’t show your page for the
keyword.
…we all know what happens to a tripod if you take one of the legs.
Now let’s take a closerlook at each individual factor that comes into play
in the Keyword Tripod Rule.
Search volume
Keyword search volume refers to how many times a keyword is searched
for in a search engine during a certain time frame (usually a month).
The higher is the search volume of the keyword,the more visitors
you’ll get if you rank for that keyword.
Knowing the search volume helps you to:
 Compare and prioritize the keyword topics
 Estimate the traffic potential
 See the topic popularity from the longer perspective
How to get the search volumes
The easiest way to see the search volumes of keywords is to use a
keyword research tool.

Just enter your first keyword and the tool will show you its search volume
and the search volumes of hundreds of related keywords. Alternatively,
you can import your list of keywords.

Other things to consider
There are other things you should consider when looking at the popularity
of the keyword besides the standard average monthly search volume.
 The long-term trend – it is always good to look at the interest in the
topic from a longer perspective (Google Trends is a great tool for
that, its data is included in KWFinder’s interface too)
 Seasonality – some keywords are naturally more popular during
certain time periods (such as Christmas holidays, summer, etc.) –
take it into account
What is a good search volume?
There is no minimum search volume you should aim at. If a keyword with
a search volume of 50 is valuable for you, then 50 is a good search
volume.
What’s more, the search volume is not the only parameter that
determines the value of a keyword. You must consider the business
potential too.
Look at these two keywords and their search volumes:
 how to play chess (71,900)
 Lord of the Rings chess set (3,800)
These are two very differentkeywords with different search intent and
potential business value.
If you run a board games shop, the product-related keyword has probably
a lot biggerbusiness potential for you. Even though it has a much lower
search volume than the general one.
Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty is an SEO metric that estimates how difficult it is to rank
for a keyword, based on the authority of the websites that already rank for
that keyword.
The higher is the keyword difficulty, the harder it is to rank for that
keyword.
The metric on a scale from 1 to 10 takes into account the link profile
strength of each page on the 1st SERP for the given keyword. So if there
are many high-authority websites, the assumption is that it is more difficult
to rank for the keyword.
If, on the other hand, the result page contains websites with lower
authority, we can assume it is should be relatively easy to rank for the
keyword.

What is good keyword difficulty?
The simple answer is: the lower is the keyword difficulty, the better…
For example, let’s say you run a fitness blog and you come across a great
keyword: best workoutto lose weight.It has a huge search volume and it
would be a great fit for your blog.
However, a quick look at the Keyword Difficulty will tell you that it is almost
impossible to rank for the keyword unless you are a really authoritative
website.
So it might be smarter to focus on less competitive, more specific
keywords you actually have a chance to rank for.
In our case, it could be the keyword best exercise to lose chestfat for
example.

The search volume is much lower, but the keyword also has a much lower
keyword difficulty. So there’s an actual chance you could outrank the
competition and rank for the keyword.
That being said, although the keyword difficulty metric helps you to get a
quick insight into the level of competition for each keyword, you should not
leave it at that…
Other things to consider
Always remember that it takes into consideration only one ranking factor –
the number and quality of backlinks of your competitors.
There are other things that contribute to the equation:
 Subjective factors – Your own authority plays a crucial role, the
more authoritative is your website, the less important the Keyword
Difficulty metric is for you.

 Content quality – As mentioned above, the difficulty metric does not
take into consideration the quality of the page’s content. A lower-
authority website can outrank a high-authority website if the content
is better.
 Search intent – Sometimes,there’s not enough content created for
a specific topic.So Google ranks high-authority pages that only
touch upon the topic lightly. If you target the topic directly and satisfy
the search intent better, you may easily outrank them.
The last point is closely connected to the third important factor of the
Keyword Tripod Rule – the relevance of the keyword.
Let’s take a look.
Search intent
Search intent is the reason behind a searcher’s query. It is a crucial, yet
often overlooked factor in keyword research.
While search volume and keyword difficulty help us quantify the popularity
and rankability of a keyword, search intenthelps us recognize whether
the keyword and our contentmatch together.
There are 4 most commonly recognized search intent types:
 Navigational – the user is searching for a specific website/brand
 Informational – the user is searching for general information
 Transactional – the user wants to buy something online
 Commercial – the user wants to do the research before purchase

Why is search intent important
Let’s say you run an e-commerce store with workout equipment. You want
to optimize your product page featuring the most popular adjustable
workout bench on the market.
And you find a perfectfocus keyword – “best adjustableweightbench”.It
has a solid search volume and the competition is not that high. Yet, you’ll
never manage to rank for the keyword with your product page.

Why?
Because the search intent behind the keyword does not match your
content. The keyword “best adjustable weightbench” is not a transactional
keyword – people don’t want to find a specific product but reviews of the
best products in this category.
A quick look at the actual SERP results will show you the same:

The keyword has a commercial intent – the search engine shows the top
lists and reviews as the top results.
Although the first two tripod legs (popularity and rankability)stand
steady,you won’t find the perfect focus keyword unless you pay
attention to the relationship between the type of keyword and the
type of content.
How to identify the search intent?
Sometimes it’s hard to guess the search intent behind a keyword.
If someone searches for home gym,they may be looking for home gym
ideas (informational intent) or they may want to buy home gym equipment
(transactional or commercial intent).
Search engines deal with the same struggle. They don’t always know the
search intent with 100% accuracy but they do their best to serve results
that will most probably satisfy the user based on the large amount of data
they have.
Evergreen content: How to write articles
that last
Do you want to know a trick that helps companies build incredible search visibility, one
that…
1. stands the test of time and
2. drives them insane traffic month after monthafter month?
It’s writing evergreen content.
In fact, if you look at the strategies of the most successful companies, you’ll find timeless
content at the heart of it all.

And here’s everything you need to know to use it in your strategy too.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content is a type of content that targets topics that typically
retain consistent interest over time.
Overall, all evergreen content shares three key features:
1. It focuses on timeless advice rather than specific or timely
information. In other words, it delivers information almost everyone
in your audience would care about at some point.
2. Such content also religiously matches the user intent.
3. It delivers broad but generic information about the topic.
Here are a couple of examples of such topics:
 How to start a business. There will always be people interested in going on their own and
researching how to do so.
 What is the 80/20 rule? The informative content that describes some known things, people
or events is unlikely to become obsolete, at least not in our lifetime (although I might be
wrong here, of course).
 How to do keyword research. Although the actual process might slightly change over
time (as new tools or data sources emerge,) the interest in finding out how to go about it
will, most likely, remain constant over time.
The most common evergreen content types
Not every content type will work for creating timeless pieces of content. Some of them –
like news reports, for example – are time-bound by default.
Others, like technical articles or help documents, focus on topics that, with some minor
exceptions, will not work as evergreen ones.

What content types work as evergreen?
 Various tutorials and how-tos. Much of the evergreen topics focus
on learning how to do a particular task, after all.
 Complete and ultimate guides. Evergreen content often targets a
full breadth of information on a specific issue or topic.
 Educationaltips and advice, although not in the format of a
tutorial. Again, this is because evergreen topics often have that
educational element in them.
 Listicles, revealing a complete set of steps,items, tools, etc.,
required to complete a task.
Here, on the other hand, are some formats that you might find difficult to incorporate into
your evergreen content strategy:
 List of statistics. Although the interest in the topic might be timeless, statistics, by default,
will go out of date over time.
 Report findings. No matter what issues the report covers, the format pretty much forces the
content creator to think about the information relevant to a reader right now.
 Current news reports, for obvious reasons, of course.
 Discussions and opinionated articles. The ideas included might relate to issues that are hot
and commonly discussed now. However, there’s a big chance that either the object of the
discussion or the opinions presented will go out of date pretty quickly.
Evergreen topics target common problems that people experience over and over
again. Losing weight, saving money, earning more, finding a perfect job are some great
examples of popular topics that never lose interest.
Look at the image below. Topics relating to finding a job generate consistent interest year
over year.

Google Trends: interest over time for the search term “how to find a job”
Now, compare that with a trend for the term finding a job during Covid-19 pandemic:

Google Trends: interest over time for the search term “how to find a job
during pandemic”
Naturally, there has been zero interest in the topic before Covid. And there will be none
once the pandemic is over.
Some evergreen topics might also experience a temporary spike of interest due to
some recent event.
For example, the interest in “home fitness”has been consistent over time but it has
peaked significantly during the lockdown. That, however, does not mean the topic is no
longer timeless.

Google Trends: interest over time for the search term “home fitness”
These topics might also experience peaks of interest at different times over the course of a
year. However, those peaks will be consistent year over year.
How to find the best topics for evergreen content
Bad news first – Evergreen topics are rarely exciting.

No, I mean it!
Just look at the examples above. They’re dull.
But these are the challenges your audience encounters over and over again, and they can
keep bringing them to your site.
Tip: When creating content that aims to remain relevant over time, you
have to stay away from topics that are cool, hip, or trendy right now.
Instead, you have to target information your target audience is
continuously interested in.
The process starts with conducting keyword research. Here’s how it goes.
1. Brainstorm general topics that fit your SEO content strategy
I typically define these topics as descriptions of your audience’s different areas of interest.
If you run accounting software, your core topics might include “sales
tax”, “bookkeeping”, “getting paid faster”, and so on.
If you’re a fitness coach, those topics might revolve around fitness workouts, healthy living,
etc.
2. Evaluate resultsusing the evergreentopics criteria
Focus on keywords with relatively high search volume and consistent trends over time (for
this guide, I’m using Mangools’ KWFinder).
Look for phrases that relate to common problems, challenges, or information that
users would be continually searching for.
Eliminate all phrases that seem time-bound or reference any time-bound events. Use
common sense or focus on the search volume trend of the keyword to detect keywords
that are not popular in the long term.
Guess which keyword from the following list is not evergreen?

Although Halloween crafts is a perfect keyword for a parenting blog, it won’t work as
evergreen content as it’s only relevant during a short period of time throughout the year.
Besides the search volume trend, you can also switch to the Google Trends data in the
keyword detail to see the relative popularity of the topic from a longer perspective.
How to write evergreen content
There are several things you must do when writing evergreen content:
1. Evaluate the competition and the search intent per keyword before
writing
Another bit of bad news, sorry – Evergreen topics are often highly competitive. Because of
their timeless nature, many other brands will target them in their SEO strategies.

So, to stand a chance at ranking there too, you must know why people search for this
information. You must understand the search intent behind their search. This information
will help you plan content to deliver on their expectations.
FURTHER READING
Identify search intent from SERP data [how to guide]
2. Cover the topic in full
A great way to approachwriting it as if you were helping beginners.
This way, you’ll cover every aspect of the topic and provide value even to people at the
beginning of their journey into its discovery.
I recommend using the so-called 10x Content Strategy – understand what makes the
top-ranking pages for the keyword so good and create even better content than
theirs.

There are two reasons for doing so:
 To provide a good user experience. In turn, that will retain customers on the page for
longer, sending strong positive engagement signals to the search engine.
 To expand the topic’s coverage and ensure that the page ranks for as many relevant
keywords as possible.
3. Avoid including any time-bound information
Look, I could be tempted to add the current year to this post’s headline.
I could play on a reader’s curiosity this way, after all. Because why would writing
evergreen articles be different this year than in the years before? That could entice
someone to click and visit the page.
But that wouldn’t help me in any way. Adding the date to the headline would be
tricking the user to read my article and make the advice relevant to a specific year.
Of course, I could edit the year next year, but users are not stupid. Nor is Google.
Here’s an example of a time-bound article from Mailchimp’s blog:

Again, nobody says it is a bad topic, but it’s hardly going to be an evergreen piece visited
over and over throughout the years.
If you’re creating evergreen content, make it evergreen.
Full stop.

4. Do not split your content into separate sections
Finally, a common mistake I see with evergreen content is to split it into chapters. Each
chapter, then, becomes its page, with the main content serving as a table of contents for it
all.
Now, I can see the logic behind it. Each page can then target separate, highly relevant
keywords, further increasing the company’s organic reach.
But that’s now how evergreen content works. Creating multi-page guides is an entirely
different (and highly powerful) strategy.
If you want to create evergreen content, make it a single page.
This way, you’ll get all its benefits and the organic reach you need for the topic.
How to retain your content’s evergreen status
Here’s the thing – To drive traffic and leads, your content must stay up in the SERPs,
right?
But that’s neither easy nor guaranteed when so many other brands target the same topics
and keywords.
So, here are the 4 rules that will help you keep your content ranking and driving traffic and
leads:
Rule #1: Review and update the content regularly
It’s an easy mistake to make – Since you’re targeting more general topics, you can write
the content and leave it like that. There’s no need for updating it, right?
Wrong.
Sure, the topic might not evolve much. But the information about it or specific solutions
you’ve included might change.
 New data and research might shed more light on the problem.
 New technologies might make previous ways to overcome the issue obsolete.

 https://bit.ly/3zMxubr

 New tools might change the way you’d approach solving the problem.
Tip: There’s a handy free tool by Animalz that can be connected to your
Google Analytics account and identify pages that may need an update
based on the declining traffic.
Take the terms we’ve looked at above – home fitness. The core of the topic will, most
likely, never change.
Most people searching for it will look for information on how to stay fit by exercising at
home, right?
But the way they can achieve it will change.
In the past, home fitness meant using weights or kettlebells. Today, however, we can also
train with TRX, use exercise bands, and more.
The problem remained the same. Solutions to it, however, have changed significantly.
To keep your content evergreen, you must review it regularly and expand or update with
any new information regarding the topic.
Rule #2: Add interactive elements,if there aren’tany
Interactive content types – videos, charts, graphs, interactive graphics or maps, etc. – will
help you achieve one thing:
They will engage readers more and keep them interested on a page for longer.
This one thing, in turn, will have a significant impact on the page’s rankings. It will boost
engagement signals and tell the search engine how valuable the content is to readers.
And since Google aims to deliver the most useful content to its users, it will be more likely
to keep your page in the SERPs.

Rule #3: Keep building links to the page
Fact – Links are still a crucial ranking factor. Perhaps not as critical as they once were, but
they still hold weight.
To rank your evergreen content, you will need to build links. But don’t stop doing that once
you reach the first page.
Continue building links to ensure that no other competitors will outrank you with the more
authoritative page.
FURTHER READING
60+ link building techniques checklist[2021 update]
Rule #4: Interlink the page with any new relevant content you publish
This is where the “set and forget” mentality can hurt your evergreen page’s rankings too.
To remain relevant, the page should interlink to your new content that’s relevant to the
topic.
Every time you publish a page on topics similar to what you cover in the evergreen
content, go back to it and add internal links to that new content there.
This way, you’ll keep on increasing the page’s relevancy and authority on the topic.
A great way to keep your relevant pages interlinked is to create the so-called content hubs.
This way, you’re consciously creating content around certain topics and linking the main
content piece with other supporting articles.
Keyword difficulty: What it is and why
it’s important in SEO

Everybody knows that the search volume of a keyword is an essential
SEO metric.
But it’s equally importantto know what it takes to rank for that
keyword. That’s why every keyword research tool operates with a metric
called Keyword Difficulty.
In this guide, we’ll take a closerlook at what it is, how it’s calculated and
why it’s so important when doing keyword research.
What is keyword difficulty?
Keyword difficulty (also known as keyword competition or SEO difficulty)is
an SEO metric that estimates how difficult it is to rank for a keyword.
The higher is the keyword difficulty, the harder it is to rank on the 1st
SERP due to the high competition of the ranking websites.
There are many factors (both external and internal) that influence the
degree of keyword difficulty, including the quality of the competitors’pages
and the quality of your page.

The term is usually used with two slightly differentmeanings:
 Keyword difficulty as a metric on a scale from 0 to 100
 Keyword difficulty as a generalterm taking into account all the
aspects (both internal and external)
Keyword difficulty as a metric
Very often, the term keyword difficulty refers to the metric used in SEO
tools that scores the ranking difficulty of each keyword on a scale from 0 to
100.
It works quite simply: the higher the score,the more difficult it is to
rank for the keyword.
Note: Google Keyword Planner has a metric called Competition. Please
note that this metric estimates the competition of paid keywords for PPC
campaigns and has nothing to do with organic results and SEO.

In KWFinder, the difficulty scores are also differentiated by color to help
you navigate through the list of keywords more easily:

How is keyword difficulty calculated?
When quantifying the competition of a keyword into a metric, there’s only
one aspect of the website quality taken into consideration – the backlink
profile.

Each website ranking in the 1st SERP is given a certain score based on
the quality and quantity of the backlinks.
The authority of your competitors can be measured in various ways. In
KWFinder, you can find the Link Profile Strength metric that estimates
the quality of the website’s link profile.
The calculation is based on the selected metrics by Moz, Majestic and our
know-how, namely:
 Domain Authority
 Page Authority
 Citation Flow

 Trust Flow
After that, the average score is calculated to give one final value that
gauges how hard it is for a website to break into the 1st SERP for
this term.

Keyword difficulty as a general term
When estimating how hard it will be for you to rank for a certain keyword,
you need to consider a couple of factors, both internaland external.
The most important factors are:
1. Your competitors
SEO is all about outranking your competitors.
So looking at the competing websites is one of the best ways to estimate
the difficulty of ranking for a keyword. You should focus on the quality of
their:
 content quality
 on-page optimization (see our on-page SEO guide)
 backlinks
Backlinks are still a very important ranking factor, so they provide a good
estimation of how hard it will be to rank for a keyword.
It’s also the only factor that can be measured and put into a metric. That’s
why estimating the keyword difficulty is often reduced to finding out
how authoritative (in terms of link profile) your competitors are.
The more authority the websites ranking for a keyword have, the harder it
will be for you to outrank them.
2. Authority of your website
Besides the competitors,your ability to rank for a keyword is also
determined by the authority of your own website.
This is especially importantto keep in mind if you have a new
website. Even if the competition for a keyword is relatively low and you

write a great piece of content, you probably won’t rank with your brand
new site with zero backlinks.
Note: There’s a couple of metrics that try to estimate the authority of a
website or a specific page (e.g. Domain Authority/Page Authority by Moz
or Citation Flow/Trust Flow by Majestic).
Rememberthat they’re not used by Google in any way and only serve as
a guideline for you. Make sure to compare the values within one metric.
3. Quality of your content
There’s another side of the coin – the authority of your website won’t help
you if the quality of your content is not able to compete with the pages
ranking in the 1st SERP.
You should ask yourself these questions:
 How hard will it be for me to write content that is of equal or better
quality than the competing pages?
 Can I provide the same level of expertise as my competitors?
 Is there any benefit I can provide to the readers when compared to
the competitors? (quality, depth of knowledge, unique data, visuals,
etc.)
All of these are subjective factors that contribute to the overall level of
keyword difficulty in your specific case.
4. Search intent
Last but not least, you should considerthe search intent behind the search
query.

In other words – what kind of contentare people who used a
particular keyword expecting?
There are 4 basic types of search intent:
So, how to find out the search intent behind the keyword?
The easiestway is to “reverseengineer”it by looking at the search
results and see what kind of pages are ranking for the keyword.

If your keyword is “best air humidifier” and all the pages on the 1st SERP
are reviews, you most probably won’t rank for that keyword with your e-
commerce landing page. Even if your website was more authoritative and
your content would be better optimized.
Why should you care about keyword difficulty?
Many beginner bloggers choose a keyword, write great content and
optimize the page only to find out that they’re not ranking at all. The most
common reason – the competition is too fierce.
This is why your keyword research process should always account for
keyword difficulty.
By keeping an eye on keyword difficulty:
 You’ll get a good overview of what are the “hot” keywords and “big”
players in your niche
 You’ll be able to identify alternative keywords in your niche that you
have an actual chance to rank for
 You’ll be able to save a lot of time by focusing on keywords that can
bring you results even if your website does not have much authority
yet
How to use keyword difficulty in your SEO strategy
1. Look at the big picture
Keyword difficulty is only one of the aspects you should consider when
doing keyword research.

The other two important aspects are the popularity of the keyword
and relevance.

If there’s low difficulty but the keyword has no search volume, you won’t
get any traffic.
On the other hand, without relevance, you will not rank for the keyword
even if the difficulty metric is low because the search intent doesn’t match
your type of content.
2. Analyze the SERP results
Never rely on a single number given by a keyword tool. The keyword
difficulty metric is there to give you a quick overview – not to replace the
competitorresearch. In other words – SERP analysis is non-negotiable.
Besides the difficulty metric, always look at the SERP results and the
actual websites that rank for the keyword.
You’ll learn much more aboutthe search intent, the type of content
that ranks for the keyword as well as how deeply your competitors
cover the topic.
You may also notice, for example, that the top positions are taken by “big
brands” (e.g. Amazon, Pinterest, YouTube) with high authority, which may
not be reflected in the 0-100 metric but will influence your ability to rank for
the keyword at the top.
That being said…
3. Don’t be afraid of high difficulty
The keyword difficulty metric alone shouldn’t deter you from trying to rank
for a keyword with medium or higher difficulty.
It’s more about getting a general sense of what you’re up against and
determining what you need to do to make your page a viable competitor.
Here’s a couple of things that can help your rank for a highly competitive
keyword:

 Outstanding content – you may outrank highly authoritative
competitors with quality content that shows better expertise and
covers the topic in a much deeperway (see the 10x content
strategy)
 Topicalrelevance – having a narrowly oriented website with quality
internal links can help you outrank authoritative websites that cover
the topic only sporadically and rank mostly due to their overall brand
authority
 Quality backlinks – a high number of quality backlinks to a specific
page can help you rank for that page even if your overall domain
authority is lower
4. Compare the values within one tool
There are many keyword research tools out there and each may use a
differentbacklink database or a differentway of calculating the keyword
difficulty.
Therefore,the keyword difficulty scores may differ from tool to tool
and it’s important to compare the values within one tool.
Content hubs for SEO: Boost the
visibility and authority of your key pages
Every content creator knows the struggle.
You put a lot of work into your content, only for your posts to:
 Get buried down in your blog archive by newer posts.
 Never rank because more authoritative websites dominate all the
SERPs.
 Leave readers asking more questions with little directionon where to
find the answers.

There’s one SEO strategy that will help you with most of these
issues: content hubs.
What is a content hub?
A content hub is a collection of pages that are all related to a certain topic.
The pages are interlinked and provide general information on the main
topic as well as in-depth insights into the sub-topics.
In general, there are two main types of content hubs:
 The “contentlibrary” type – a set of pages with the main page
serving as an index; it usually has tens or hundreds of pages that
are systematically interlinked (e.g. category pages,glossaries,
knowledge hubs); example: Optimization Glossary by Optimizely
 The “topic cluster” type – a smaller group of topically-related posts
with the main postserving as a broad insight into the parent topic;
the pages are interlinked contextually (e.g. ultimate guide + some
additionaltopic-related posts); example: our Complete SEO Guide
for Beginners
Although these are not strict categories and some content hubs can have
elements of both types, we mostly refer to the topic cluster type in this
post.
Here’s a typical example:

As you can see, there are 3 main components of a content hub:
 Pillar content – represented by a pillar page that provides a general
overview of the broad topic, usually targeting a broad keyword (e.g.
jogging)
 Cluster content – related posts that unpack smaller topics within
the theme in more detail (e.g. jogging benefits,jogging shoes,
jogging mistakes)
 Internallinks – hyperlinks that connect the cluster content to the
pillar page and vice versa.
With content hubs, you’re not just writing a singular, standalone post on a
topic. Instead, you create a comprehensive set of resources that answer
all your audience’s questions on the main theme.
Now let’s take a look at why this strategy is so beneficial.
Why are content hubs good for SEO?
You know that old saying: “There’s strength in numbers”.
That’s just one of the reasons why content hubs end up becoming such
SEO powerhouses for websites. Rather than create content one-by-one,
targeted at individual keywords you hope to rank for, a content hub
switches up this approach.
Here’s a couple of reasons why content hubs are good for SEO:
1. More value for the readers
Content hubs are thoroughly written and well-organized resources. If the
pillar post doesn’t provide every answer to the question at hand,the
linked-to posts will deal with them.

As you can imagine, this provides visitors with a satisfying experience
since they don’t have to jump from site to site or do a new search trying to
get the answers they seek.
All the information they need is right there, well-organized, and easy to
find.
2. More topical authority
The cluster posts link to your pillar page and your pillar page links to the
cluster posts.This isn’t just beneficial for visitors.
Internal linking, in general, is a valuable on-page SEO tactic. For content
hubs, it plays an important role in building authority for your website.
What is topical authority?
Topical authority (or topical relevance) is the process Google (or any other
search engine) uses to figure out how relevant a page or site is to a
certain topic.
It works like this:
When you link from one page to another with a relevant and descriptive
anchor text, this establishes a semantic relationship between them. This
link lets Google know there’s a shared connection in terms of theme or
topic.
As OnCrawl explains in this post on Search Engine Land:
By strengthening key subjects and grouping relatedcontent around pillar pages,
you can improve the authority of all pages on a topic and gain positions in the
SERPs. (…) The more the pages in a thematic content group link to one
another, the better the group can place in the SERPs.

By writing a content hub, you simply get relevantinternallinks to
your pillar content from as many cluster pages as you create.
In other words, the more pages that talk about “jogging” link to your
jogging guide, the more relevant and authoritative your guide may seem in
the eyes of Google.
3. Better content structure
Content hubs also help you shape your content strategy by
creating logical and semantically-related topic clusters.

It’s not easy to create a good content hub. But it will benefit your blog in
the long run, because:
 you are forced to plan the topics around the topic clusters –
which makes you think about the structure of your content
thoroughly,
 you have to do proper researchand distinguish what focus
keyword to use for each page in your contenthub – which
means you are systematically covering all the important keywords
from your niche.
You no longer write posts ad hoc based on your current mood, switching
from one topic to another without ever answering all the questions your
readers may have.
4. More engagement
By their design, content hubs provide complex information on the given
topic. So visitors are likely to stay longer or return again to reference the
material and explore links they may have missed previously.
This will help decrease your bounce rate and increase your:
 sessioncounts
 dwell time
 number of pages visited
These are all indicators that Google may take into consideration, but
mainly, that improve the engagement of your visitors and strengthen your
brand.
Not to mention the fact that a well-written comprehensive piece of
content will attract more links and social buzz.
How to create a content hub?

As you might imagine, a content hub takes a while to put together since
you have to first strategize what it’s going to look like. Then, create all the
content for it.
But the payoff is worth it. Here’s where you’ll start:
Step 1: Do your research
In order for a content hub to be successful,it has to be built around a
subject your audience isn’t just interested in, but craves information for.
To find the topic, you’ll need 2 things:
 good knowledge of your niche
 a keyword research tool
If you know your niche, you probably already have some broad
topics in mind. Or you can just browse the keyword research tool, look at
topics people talk about in niche communities (social media, forums, etc.),
or get inspired by your competitors and the topics they cover.
There are hundreds of ways to find new keyword ideas. We won’t go into
detail since we have a whole chapter on this issue in our keyword
research guide.
Just remember you’re not just looking for keywords.You’re looking
for topics.
A topic can include several keywords but should be represented by one
focus keyword.

So what kind of focus keyword should you be looking for?

 For pillar content: a broad keyword that has a high value for you
and that encompasses the theme of the hub
 For cluster content: a unique keyword related to the topic, broad
enough to be used as a focus keyword for a standalone post but
more narrowly oriented than the main theme
Let’s say you run a parenting blog and you know that “activities for
toddlers”is quite a huge topic.
If you enter this keyword into a keyword research tool like KWFinder,you’ll
see that it has a solid search volume and there are many great long-tail
keywords related to the topic.

It will not only tell you what the monthly search volume and competition is
for your keyphrase, but it’ll also show you which websites currently rank for
it.
Be sure to get a gander at the competition as their content (whether part of
a content hub or not) will be useful in building out your topic cluster.
Step 2: Map out your content hub
After you’ve selected your main topic and associated keywords, map out
your content hub.
Not only will this help you to better visualize what you’re creating, but you’ll
want this frame of reference when it comes time to update the hub or add
more content to it.
A great tool to create a mind map is MindMeister. It’s free and easy to get
started with.
Here’s an example of a basic content hub map for “activities for toddlers”,
witch focus keywords and search volumes of each post in the cluster:

When selecting the focus keywords for your cluster content, you should
consider:
 How the keyword is related to your main topic
 What is the search volume
 Whether the topic is in accordance with your business plan
Note: Don’t be afraid to include existing content. A content hub does not
need to be created 100% from scratch. If you have existing content which
performs well and is relevant to what you’re trying to do here, add it to your
map.
Step 3: Create your pillar page
Your pillar page most probably targets a big, highly competitive keyword.
If you want to rank for it you have to create an outstanding piece of
content that is better than your competition (the so-called 10x content
strategy).

The length and depth of your pillar page is a great advantage. But it can
also discourage people if it’s just a long wall of text.
Your design and UX has a really big role to play in terms of making sure
your pillar content gets read – both in terms of visual appeal and
readability.
How to make your page more visually appealing?
 use a readable font
 write short, easy-to-digest paragraphs
 use appropriate subheadings
 break the text every now and then with a visual element
 use bolding, infoboxes,bulleted lists, quotes, videos
 create custom images and illustrations
 use relevant links (both to your cluster content and quality external
resources)
Last but not least, make sure to have a clear and easy-to-use
navigation so that the reader doesn’t get lost in your post.
Use elements like:
 Table of contents
 Sticky sidebar navigation
 Back-to-the-top arrow button
Here’s an example of the top navigation from our SEO guide:

And the chapter intro with the sticky sidebar navigation:
Step 4: Write your topic cluster pages
Sure, your pillar page alone is a comprehensive resource. But it’s the
cluster of topics surrounding and supporting it that really makes the
content hub so valuable to your users.
There isn’t much to advise you on here as you’re going to write these
pages the way you would your regular blog posts.
Just remember to add internal links to your pillar content as well as
other relevantposts from the cluster.

These can be placed in various ways:
 Contextually (when the (sub)topic is mentioned in the post)
 At the bottom of the post (as a “further reading” section)
 Within the navigation
Or you can combine them. Look at this example of a contextual “further
reading” box from Impact:

The key is to make sure the reader can navigate through your content hub
easily and provide a seamless reading experience.

Wrap up
Content hubs are one of the key SEO strategies.
They shape the way you structure your content, provide a better
experiencefor your readers and improve the topicalauthority of your
most valuable pages.
That’s not to say that there isn’t value in writing about topics one-by-one
on your website – especially when your audience needs something timely
answered ASAP.
Also, you don’t have to create a new content hub just for the sake of it.
Especially if the topic is too narrow for multiple posts.
All you need to do is to look at the bigger topics you cover on your blog
and think about possible topic clusters you could create around them.
THE END

MANGOOLS IS THE BEST INVESTMENT WEBSITE

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