You will be able to plan a group of related pages that link around one main page.
Priya runs a tuition business teaching upper primary maths, and her website has a guide to PSLE heuristics. A parent reads the guide and reaches the model method section. She then wants to know three more things: what mistakes children make with the model method, how her child should time herself in the exam, and whether her child should already be doing practice papers.
If the guide links to pages that answer those questions, the parent stays on Priya's site. If it doesn't, she goes back to Google and finds the answers somewhere else. A topic cluster is a way of planning pages so that the reader's next question always has an answer nearby.
A topic cluster is a group of pages on one subject. It has one broad main page and several detailed pages, each on a subtopic, and all of them link to each other. The main page gives an overview of the whole subject and links out to each detailed page. Each detailed page goes deep on its subtopic and links back to the main page. Where it helps, it also links to its sibling pages, which are the other detailed pages in the same cluster.
Priya's cluster subject is PSLE maths. Her main page is a guide to PSLE maths for parents. It covers what the exam tests, how it is structured and how children can prepare, all at overview level. Her detailed pages could be the heuristics guide from Lesson 5.1, "Match the format and depth the searcher needs", a page on exam timing, a page on the most common errors in Paper 2, and a page on how to use practice papers at home.
A topic cluster is different from a keyword cluster. In Lesson 2.4, "Choose and group keywords by business value", a keyword cluster was a set of searches that one page can win. A topic cluster is a set of pages that together cover a subject, and each of those pages wins its own keyword cluster.
For readers, each page answers one question well and gives a clear route to the next question. Say a parent lands on Priya's exam timing page from Google. They can see straight away that a heuristics guide and an overview exist, and they don't have to search again.
Lesson 3.3, "Internal links, images and URLs", explained that Google uses internal links and their anchor text to discover pages and understand how they relate. Suppose a main page links to four detailed pages with clear anchor text, and those four pages link back. That gives Google a clear picture of what each page covers and how the subject fits together. A new detailed page also gets found quickly, because it is linked from a page Google already crawls.
Google does not describe "topic clusters" as a ranking system. The benefit comes from things Google does document: helpful pages that answer the searcher's question, descriptive internal links, and a site structure that makes sense.
Links should read naturally inside the text. On the main page, each section that touches a subtopic links to that subtopic's detailed page. For example, Priya's overview might say that most children lose marks in Paper 2 through a handful of avoidable errors. That sentence would link to her guide to common Paper 2 mistakes.
On a detailed page, link back to the overview in an early sentence. Further down, link sideways to sibling pages at the points where the reader would want them.
Link to your service pages where it fits. Priya's heuristics guide can end with a short note that her P5 and P6 classes practise these strategies every week, with a link to the class pages. In Lesson 2.1, "Search intent: what the searcher is trying to do", you mapped the journey from informational searches at the awareness stage to commercial searches at the consideration stage. A link like this one connects the two stages. It takes a reader from an informational search to the page where they can consider buying.
Keyword tools will suggest dozens of subtopics for any subject. For "PSLE maths", a tool could suggest pages on every syllabus topic, every school's preliminary paper, study timetables, stationery lists and more. Building all of them would take months and produce many thin pages. Lesson 1.4, "What gets a site demoted or removed", warned you about thin pages.
Pick a subject where you can write every page from real experience. Priya teaches upper primary maths, so PSLE maths is a natural cluster for her. A cluster on secondary school science would be guesswork for her. Mei Ling makes custom cakes (also an invented example). Her natural cluster is custom cakes, with pages on ordering timelines, flavours and fillings, storing and transporting cakes, and the dietary needs she can actually meet. A cluster on wedding catering would take her far from what she knows.
Within your subject, pick the subtopics your customers actually ask about, and ignore the long tail of tool suggestions. Start small. One main page and four detailed pages is a good first cluster. It is better to build a small cluster well than to sketch twenty pages you will never finish.
Draw your cluster on paper or in a simple diagram, like this:
Put the main page in the middle and write its main search beneath it. Place four detailed pages around it, each with its own main search written underneath. Draw a line for every link: from the main page to each detailed page, from each detailed page back to the main page, and any sideways links between siblings that make sense. Mark which pages already exist and which still need writing. Check each page against your keyword map so that no two pages aim at the same search.
The activity below asks you to sketch one cluster for your own site in exactly this way. Choose a subject you know from real experience, then sketch one main page and four detailed pages with every link and target search marked.
Sketch one topic cluster for your site: a main page, four supporting pages and the links between them.
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