These days traffic generation needs to be a multidisciplinary activity. It’s no longer enough to achieve good rankings for a handful of priority landing pages in Organic Search. The businesses who flourish and outstrip their competitors in the digital market are those who can fish in multiple online pools.
With this in mind, many traditional SEO agencies are evolving into content marketing agents, using multiple forms of content to generate traffic from multiple online platforms.
Our approach to this shifting landscape has been to refine and develop the tactic that is usually known as the Content Cluster, a versatile and effective means to achieve traffic generation opportunities that get businesses more than just top Organic Search positions.
Outranking TripAdvisor
The Content Cluster tactic has provided a solution for a company that faces a challenge that is not uncommon in the travel industry.
WalkaboutFlorence is a tour company that provides day trips from Florence. Their tours are always full, and they have stellar reviews.
So why do they need a digital marketing solution? Because nearly all their bookings come from Tripadvisor and Viator, booking engines that take a hefty commission. They are looking to content marketing as a means to get more direct bookings for their tours.
In this case the keyword research showed a healthy crop of informational phrases and transactional phrases. The latter are the sorts of phrases that the Tripadvisor and Viator websites naturally outrank any individual company.
However, the former are far less competitive and readers searching for them will often find blog posts, infographics and video content occupying the top positions in Google. In addition they are perfect for the sort of content that can generate direct traffic from social platforms.
| Informational Phrase | Transactional Phrase |
| Things to do in Tuscany | Tuscany tours |
| Wineries in Chianti | Chianti tours |
| Best places to visit in Italy | Italy tours |
| Tuscany vineyards | Italy wine tours |
After selecting a basket of informational phrases, a series of long-form blog posts (1,000-1,500 words) have been written and optimized. The URLs of these blog posts are the targets of an off-site link building campaign to get the posts to rank for the chosen phrases.
The editorial strategy that drives the program includes peppering the blog posts with CTAs as well as overt advertising of the client’s tours in the margins of the pages. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram content are the final elements in this Content Cluster: to increase the exposure opportunities for the onsite blog posts and to generate traffic directly from these social platforms.
Achieving Multiple Rankings for a Logistics Exchange
The client runs two logistics exchange platforms, Courier Exchange and Haulage Exchange. Both brands are membership-based online boards where freight forwarders, fleet managers and owner-drivers are provided with digital solutions to manage the buying and selling of freight capacity.
In this case, the client has a more traditional agenda: to outrank their competitors in the digital environment. However, the industry is becoming increasingly competitive, and the Content Cluster approach has been adapted to achieve multiple positions in Page 1 of the Google Search Results for each of their priority key phrases.
By creating a range of content that was optimized for an individual phrase and customized for multiple platforms, the client’s website, blog, YouTube videos and infographics commanded several positions in Page 1.
For example, one of the important phrases for this business is courier jobs. The following types of content optimized for this phrase included:
- 2 Landing Pages overtly pushing the sales message
- 1 Onsite Case Study
- 2 Blog Posts with informational content relevant to the market demographic
- 2 Infographics with optimized introductions
- 1 Youtube video with an optimised description
- Facebook and Twitter posts pointing followers to the blog posts, videos, and infographics
This Content Cluster was mapped out in advance, and the company occupied Positions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the Google Search Results for a period of 24 months.
Content Cluster Mapping for the Phrase Courier Jobs
What Makes the Content Cluster so Effective
The power of the Content Cluster tactic lies in the results it achieves and the money it saves for the client.
Strategy & Results
A properly executed Content Cluster is a tactic that is mapped out in advance before anything is written. It requires a thorough preliminary keyword discovery followed by a carefully planned campaign of content types.
Mapping a Content Cluster for LowerHire
The act of strategizing in advance guarantees that a business will deliver an integrated marketing message across all its digital platforms and that all elements of the Cluster will work in tandem to achieve maximum exposure and traffic generating opportunities for the website.
Budget & Sustainability
Content Marketing requires the production of vast quantities of content for onsite and offsite platforms: including search engines, corporate blogs, a multitude of social media platforms, newsletters, online and offline news and press sites, article directories, and guest posts, etc.
For businesses, this is a big concern: each element seems to require its own expert to generate appropriate and effective content. Not only is this very expensive, it can also result in a disjointed marketing program as different messages are offered to different readers on different online platforms.
The Content Cluster approach begins with a central, keyphrase enhanced message that is deployed across the content that is produced for all online platforms. That message only needs to be researched once – it can then be repurposed for multiple channels: sales copy, social media posts, blog posts, newsletters, etc. Much time and valuable resources are saved by synchronizing the content marketing of a business.
The rise of content marketing is not a new phenomenon, but its practice as a strategic tool to generate traffic and to offer businesses a multidimensional digital presence is one that continues to be refined by the more dynamic digital marketing agencies.
About the Author: Laura Bolick is Head of Content Marketing at LeadGeneratorsDigital, a boutique online marketing agency specializing in the travel industry.