Hey Reader,

I just closed out my first 1:1 coaching in a year - it went SO well! - and I noticed a common issue: bloggers don’t know how to structure and cluster their content.

It’s such a common issue that I did a full live on it earlier this year with real life audits of sites. You can check it out here.​

But I know not everyone learns best via video, so I’m going to walk y’all through it in text form here.

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First, let’s define the terms I’m going to use:

• Niche: Overall theme of the website/business. I.e. solo female travel
• Content Silos = The main topics you cover within your niche. I.e. solo female travel (yes, it can be the same as the niche), India, Italy - (At least 20 posts)
• Topic Clusters = The clusters of content within a content silos. I.e. Solo female travel might have clusters on safety, budget, and destinations. Italy might be clustered by region or type of activity, or not at all. - (At least 10 posts)

Honestly, what you call them doesn’t matter that much. Some people refer to silos as pillars or just “categories” (which I find confusing, because they’re different than Wordpress categories).

The important thing is the structure, not the semantics.

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Most sites, especially in travel, start because you’re interested in the topic.

So you write some posts about random elements of that topic you enjoy - and, in travel, often just 1 post on the individual location before moving onto another one.

But that’s not helpful to your audience.

When I was a new solo traveler, I’d go to so many blogs trying to figure out what to do in different countries.

I was on a blog about solo female travel in Prague and thought “great, I’ll be able to get all the info I need to book my 2 weeks in Prague in one spot!”

Nope.

The blog had 1 singular post on Prague that was a brief overview of the city.

I even searched their site - something most people won’t do - to see if they had any extra Prague content lurking about that wasn’t immediately obvious. Nope, none.

So, I left the site and went to find others, which lost that person my pageviews and my trust.

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SEO - and most traffic sources - are all about the first pageview to your site.

But we want to capture people’s attention, help them, and then bring them into our community. A strong site structure and content plan can do that - and get you HEAPS more income.

This isn’t just some theory email. Let’s get to the actionable steps!

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Step 1: Clearly define your niche.

We can’t start until you know what your site is about and who you’re talking to.

We’ll use solo female travel as an example.

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Step 2: Plan 1-3 content silos.

I’d love to say “just pick one to start”, but we’re only human. We need to talk about more than 1 thing or we’ll get bored. I did 2 during my 6 months to 50k sessions push.

These should be general buckets that you’ll create content in.

Here, it’ll be Solo Female Travel, India Travel, and Italy Travel.

The names don’t matter really. It’s all about the content inside them.

Every silo should have a category on Wordpress AND a page. The page will be the “silo page”.

Think of it like a table of contents for the whole silo so people can find the posts super easily.

I’d make a category called “solo female travel”, and I’d make a page called “solo female travel guide”.

I add “guide” or something else because I once broke my whole site with an open ended redirect, but it’s not strictly necessary.

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Step 3: Plan topic clusters for your audience.

What are the most common pain points for your audience?

For solo female travelers, it’s typically safety, figuring out where to go, and then conquering fears of doing it alone.

If you’re not sure, join some Facebook groups in your niche and see the most common questions coming up.

In the Solo Female Travel silo, I’d plan topic clusters for Planning, Safety Tips, Overcoming Fears, Destinations.

There is no maximum number of topic clusters to have, so you can keep adding over time.

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Step 4: Define your topic clusters

Topic clusters don’t really get “defined” to Google the way that silos do. We don’t make a page for them, typically, and we don’t make a category.

The way we define them is by internal linking the content.

You need to be intentional with the content early on, long before you start writing or even finding keywords.

I think of a topic cluster like a lesson plan for a course, with each post being 1 lesson.

Every topic cluster should have some sort of transformation as you move through it.

For example, the “safety” topic cluster would have them start from a point of fear over safety concerns and end with them feeling confident in going on their trip.

I plan 10 posts - without keywords - around this:

• General safety tips for solo female travel
• Is solo female travel dangerous?
• Protecting against pickpocketing (+ other posts on protecting against common solo female safety concerns)
• How to dress to avoid unwanted male attention
• Is X location safe for women? (you’ll want to write a few of these to connect to each location content silo on the site. In this case, at least India and Italy, but maybe even specific cities, too)
• Staying safe in hotel rooms
• Solo female travel safety essential items
• Travel insurance for solo female travel

Once I’ve planned the content, I then find keywords to associate with it. And I’ll write on things I can’t rank for if I know it’ll help my audience. They can still find it when I internal link all the content.

​I use Keysearch (get 30% off with code “sheknowsseo”) to find the keyword structure my audience are actually searching for.

Then I write my posts one at a time.

By planning ahead, you know to reference these other topics as you write. Then I use Link Whisper to add internal links (you can limit it to tags and categories. I use “tags” for clusters so I can do this).

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Step 5: Audit topic clusters

When you’re doing your content audit of your site (I recommend every 6 months), don’t forget to audit your site structure.

Look at your topic clusters under each silo and ask yourself:

• Is anything missing that would be essential to my audience?
• Do these posts all make sense connected to each other, or do they belong in other topic clusters?
• Does this topic cluster completely solve an individual pain point for my audience?
• Does this topic cluster move through the AIDA funnel (stay tuned for next week’s email where I’ll cover this more!)?

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I’m pretty far on the aphasia scale so I can’t picture things in my head. I find writing out my site architecture helps heaps, so I keep it organized in my SEO Spreadsheets.

>> You can grab them here for $9 and get 2 different topic cluster maps, on top of my keyword organizer, content audit plan, and more!​

The topic cluster 2.0 sheet is my favourite because it organizes the content by niche, silo, cluster, and tracks internal links to/from each post.

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Or want custom help?

I did a content silo video a few months back and y’all voted that you wanted $27 Custom Content Silo Audits - so here they are for a limited time!

Until Saturday, July 13th at 11:59pm EST I’ll be offering custom silo audits - and topic cluster organization.

I’m only opening 50 spots for the silo audits and 20 spots for the topic cluster audits.

​>> Check out how they work here!​

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See you next week for a detailed guide to the AIDA funnel, and the essential role it plays in my algorithm-proof affiliate strategy.

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Cheers,

Nina

P.S. Skipped to the end? I’m offering custom content silo audits for this week ONLY. Get a custom review of your site architecture for just $27 from me, while supplies last.

​>> Get your audit here! ​

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P.P.S. We had a tech glitch occur today and you might receive this email twice, so we apologize in advance if that does happen!

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• ​The email marketing membership that taught me everything I know about newsletters
• ​The speediest theme for bloggers​
• ​My favourite tool for scaling your affiliate income​
• ​The quiz platform I use to get thousands of subscribers monthly
• ​My favourite blogging site host​

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