Startup Founders, This is How to Do Content Marketing from Day 1

Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré
ThinkGrowth.org
Published in
13 min readSep 1, 2017

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Want your website to summit the search engine results page? You need a blog. Want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry? A blog can make your name. Need to provide content that nurtures leads and gives current customers what they need to be successful with your product? All of that can be done with a blog.

This isn’t news.

You know you need a blog. And, by now, you’ve probably figured out that just having a blog isn’t enough to get any of the above results. It has to be good.

Scratch that.

“Good, unique content. Problem is, almost everyone can get here. They really can. It’s not a high bar, a high barrier to entry to say you need good, unique content. . . . If you can’t consistently say, ‘We’re the best result that a searcher could find in the search results,’ well then, guess what? You’re not going to have an opportunity to rank.” Rand Fishkin, Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die — Whiteboard Friday

It has to be great.

But even Level-Great content is becoming saturated because the secret is out. Content is the key to:

  • Build brand recognition — 71% of all respondents who maintain blogs for a business report that they have increased their visibility within their industries through their blogs.
  • Establish leadership in your space — In 2016, 36% of Fortune 500 companies have a public blog.
  • Boost acquisition — 77% lift in median monthly leads occurs to businesses with over 51 blog articles.
  • Improve retention — “A business’ best protection against churn is a Customer Success team armed with a content marketing strategy.”

Unbounce figured this out almost immediately. In an interview, Unbounce Co-Founder Rick Perreault said, “We started marketing the day we started coding.” What did that marketing look like? One marketing employee who focused on creating high-ranking blog content that produced significant and consistent value to the reader.

You know all this. You’re sitting there thinking “Yeah, I know, content is king, quality is king, we’ve got a pair of kings and our content STILL isn’t getting us to Page 1.”

The problem is: You’re creating all of this quality content without a cohesive SEO strategy in place. A strategy that leverages your great, big body of content to achieve the most effect.

We’re not talking about a list of keywords here.

But to understand the kind of strategy we’re suggesting, you’re going to need a brief history lesson.

A Little Search Engine History Lesson

In the early 2000s, before “google” became an official Oxford English Dictionary verb, the search engine was based on PageRank, the technology Google uses to rank search results based on quality (rather than just on keywords). PageRank relied on the number of inbound links to pages as a way to measure quality. It wasn’t perfect. Blackhat link farms erupted and Google reacted with a series of algorithm changes that, as Sergey Brin said in a Charlie Rose interview, viewed “the web as a whole.”

It didn’t just use keywords or links, but also social media mentions, and even using searchers’ own browsing histories to make results more relevant.

With Panda and Penguin, content farms and content stuffed with off-topic hyperlinks, were duly punished for not serving the interests of the searcher. Then came Hummingbird, which could parse out entire phrases rather than just keywords (and many SEO pros think this is when the shift from keywords to topics began…).

But we’ll get back to that…

For the past several years, SEOs have told their clients that they don’t have to know all about Google’s many algorithm changes — as long as they’re publishing high quality, genuinely useful, interesting, relevant content. That is exactly the kind of content Google wants its users to find, after all.

Yes, quality content is King, but more like the King on a chessboard. You have to have him, or you lose the game. But to win the game, you need a few more pieces to support the King.

And that’s where the Topic Cluster Model (aka. Pillar/Cluster Model) content strategy comes in.

How Topic Clusters Help Your Content Get Found

Professional search engine optimizers have been advising clients to create content pieces that support each other, contributing to an internal content network, for years. It’s not exactly new.

But it’s had a recent resurgence because links are becoming increasingly important to how Google “sees” content in context.

“The strength of this strategy is the ability of the content (both pillar and cluster) to get links. That usually takes a ton of work/outreach to do well.” — Rob Marsh, Conversion Copywriter & Marketing Strategist at Brandstory

The topic cluster model is a way of linking related content in which a single “pillar” page acts as a main hub for a category, containing links to individual blog posts that fall under that topic.

Each individual post also links back to the pillar page and to each other, signaling to search engines that the pillar page is an authority on the topic.

“The topic cluster model, at its very essence, is a way of organizing a site’s content pages using a cleaner and more deliberate site architecture.” HubSpot

HubSpot’s Anum Hussain and Cambria Davies launched a series of experiments to test whether the topic cluster model actually impacted SERPs. What they found was this: The more internal links, the higher the placement on SERPs and the more views they had.

DO NOT LET THIS FOOL YOU.

This isn’t the clarion call to do with internal links what blackhat SEOs used to do with keywords. No stuffing. Don’t forget everything we just said about quality.

Use this with quality content.

It’s All About Engagement

Beth Carter, founder of Clariant Creative, and copywriter Krista Elliott shared their experiences putting the topic cluster model into practice for themselves and their clients.

“A couple years ago, SEO was all about inbound links and there was less conversation about engagement. Now, we’re hearing much more about engagement metrics.”

Moz has conducted independent studies of what metrics correlate to page ranking, and within the last two years, the top contenders are traffic, time on site, pageviews and bounce rate — aka. Engagement metrics.

As Beth Carter says, “On page SEO helps Google understand what the page is about. But Google’s purpose is to give searchers the highest quality pages. Inbound links used to be how they identified those, but engagement is a much more accurate sign of quality. Visitors stay longer, click around and watch the whole video, or read the whole post, only if the quality of the content is high.”

She hopes to significantly improve those engagement metrics by using topic clusters:

“Our goal is that this format will help increase traffic, improve bounce rate, session duration and other engagement metrics that have a role to play in SEO. If we can create a go-to destination for serious answers that pulls people in, that is also very findable by search engines, and get people to stick around and engage more, we will improve SEO placement and give readers enough information so they can take the next step, whatever that may be.”

The Topic Cluster model serves a number of purposes — not just as an SEO hack, but to provide a comprehensive resource for users.

So where can the SERP-climbing startup start?

Beth Carter’s advice for startups, especially those with limited resources, is to begin with a plan:

  1. Map out your strategy and what you want to be known for
  2. Find the keywords people are using to search for what you do (those keywords will become your pillar pages)
  3. Map out the blog posts you need to create in order to make that pillar page a complete resource on a given topic

Of course, there’s also another layer to consider — structuring the content you create around each pillar topic to address various stages of the buyer’s journey, and different buyer personas. Carter’s advice is to focus more on keywords for top-of-funnel posts, and as you move towards decision-stage content, SEO becomes less of a consideration (the closer the prospect is to purchasing, the more detailed information they need, which may not fit in with your SEO strategy, but does impact your conversions).

“There are a lot of layers to this,” says Carter.

What Goes on the Pillar Page (it’s more than just links)

A pillar page is more than just links. In fact, if you were to load a landing page with a dozen links and a few keywords, Google will ding you for it.

There are actually many ways to construct your pillar page:

  • You can use the pillar page to give an overview of your topic in a way that mentions the content you’ve created for your cluster, almost as if it were one very long post.
  • Other pillar pages are formatted more like a directory with brief introductory blurbs that link to content.
  • The pillar page Townsend Security uses is titled “The Definitive Guide to SQL Server Encryption & Key Management” and is exactly that — an e-book length page that is a one-stop resource for that topic. In fact, it’s so long, with so much high quality content, they also offer the page as a gated downloadable PDF.

Using the full-page approach comes with the additional benefit of allowing businesses to snag email and other information of interested parties and gain an SEO boost at the same time (and yes, Beth Carter says, people will fill out the form to get the download even if they can read it on the web page — it’s a convenience factor).

In addition to the question of what goes on a pillar page is the equally important question: Where do you put it?

Beth Carter says this minor detail can be a major sticking point for many businesses who wonder, “Where do you put this on the website? Mainline navigation? A link on a resources page? You don’t want to bury it in your blog, but it is kind of like a blog post on steroids. Where should this live on the website? We’re deciding this on a client by client basis, because every website is a little different.”

Forming Clusters

Each supporting piece of content is an individual part of your cluster. You’ll need to dig out your long-tail keyword tools and customer research again to create relevant content that is related to the pillar topic.

If you’ve struggled with coming up with ideas for what to write about, the Topic Cluster Model comes in very handy — it essentially gives you a roadmap to identify gaps and opportunities as you build out the “spokes” of your pillars.

As you begin adding posts, link each subtopic post back to the pillar page using the same anchor text for each one. That anchor text should, ideally, include your core topic keyword.

This is how search engines will recognize that the individual page is part of a cluster set. Let’s look at how HubSpot does this. The topic of “Content Marketing” is one of their central pillars. From there, they identified related keywords, like:

  • Content Marketing Strategy
  • Brainstorming Techniques
  • Blogging
  • Blogging Mistakes
  • Buyer Personas

These keywords are then used to create cluster content which not only includes blog posts, but also videos, e-books, courses, etc.

So what does this actually look like on the page?

Here’s how a HubSpot pillar page about content marketing reads — it’s high quality content in and of itself and links to dozens of articles on every aspect of the topic.

But that’s not the only way to do this.

Wootric, an NPS platform, has a beautiful topic/cluster style layout.

They have several categories listed under their Resources menu under headings like “Win customers for life” — which is a very clever use of benefits-driven copy. From there, they have pillars like Success, CX, Product, Marketing, C-Suite and Sales.

The Startup How-To for Customer-Centric Clusters

Startups have a few challenges more established companies don’t. Startups are often leaner, and frequently newer, which means they have limited resources and a limited backlog of content to work with.

Clariant Creative’s Beth Carter has a few words of wisdom for making the most out of what you have:

“Startups may not have a big marketing team yet. You might have a founder who is wearing many different hats, making things happen through sheer willpower, and who may not be able to hire a content agency to produce new content, or even have a library of existing content.”

The goal of the topic cluster model is to create this huge resource that dives deeper into individual areas. A company with 500 pre-existing blog posts already has those resources. They just have to create the pillar page and link them. But if you’re starting from scratch with a minimal team and a shoestring budget, it becomes very important to plan.

It’s a big undertaking. I would be worried that someone would think this is the latest shiny object, let’s do it, and realize it requires a lot more work than they thought it would be.”

Carter has also run into startup founders who aren’t very clear on what the topic cluster thing really entails. One client…

“wanted to create a pillar around each of the five key benefits her product delivers. She wanted to have a pillar around driving productivity, another around compliance, and so on. The way her mind was initially going had everything to do with her company’s messaging and nothing to do with SEO. There was not a clear keyword focus to any of it. So we had to dial back and think of how to translate those benefits into specific keywords, finding the SEO hook, the keyword pillar we can build around, the long-tail keyword to spin off of.”

The topic cluster model brings invaluable SEO structure to reader-centric content. So don’t forget the SEO part! Or as Carter puts it, “It’s not content for the sake of content; it’s content that people are searching for.”

Option A: Retrofit what you’ve got

If you’ve started a blog already, you may be familiar with this all-too-typical startup pitfall: You know you need a blog (everybody has to have a blog), so you start creating as much content as possible, as fast as possible, with little thought to strategy outside of a few target keywords. And then you realize, with some surprise, that no one is reading it (shocker).

The topic cluster model gives founders a replicable way to start gaining traction in their specific markets, which is a big change from creating content and hoping for the best.

But let’s say you have some good content, quality stuff that offers real value to your target audience, answers their questions and solves some of their problems. We can use that. Take a quick look at your analytics to see what types of posts have gotten the most attention. Make a list of those categories and main keyword phrases. Then use these to organize your existing content into appropriate clusters and supplement any gaps with fresh material.

Option B: Build from scratch

If you don’t have a blog and are starting from scratch, it pays to invest in customer research as well as keyword research, if you haven’t already. Conduct interviews and surveys with people who fall into your ideal customer profile and find out what their problems and pain points are, and what their ideal outcomes look like. Then you can cross-check those ideas with keywords people are searching for to create topics around the issues that are most relevant, most helpful, and most searched.

You can also take a look at your competitors’ blogs, or the blogs of businesses that attract the same target audience as your business to find their most popular posts and search terms (tools like SimilarWeb and SEMRush make this easy).

What you’re looking for in your own content and in the content of competitors are the subjects that draw the most attention from your target audience. What do your customers really want to know? What words are they using to search these subjects?

Look at the popularity, relevance and competition for these topics, and most importantly the relevance for your target customers, using a tool like Wordstream or Google Analytics. When you have a list of the most promising ones, they’ll become your pillars.

Some people have another term for pillars: “Topics you want to own.”

Whichever ones you choose, be sure the topics are broad enough to justify more than a dozen pages of content.

Yes, it’s a Lot of Content

Especially for startups just beginning their inbound marketing, the Topic Cluster Model can seem daunting. It’s a lot to ask for more than a dozen in-depth, high quality, original, thought-provoking, Rand Fishkin-level-of-greatness posts around every topic you want to “own.”

My advice: Keep the long-game in mind.

In the long-term, building your authority this way can only help you build a strong, sustainable company, but only if your content is genuinely helpful and adds to the conversation.

So get in there. Get your hands dirty (I’m talking to you Founder, CEO, CMO) and begin building out content that justifies your positions as innovative industry leaders. But do it strategically.

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B2B SaaS Consultant. Go-to-Market Strategist. Product Marketer. Community Manager. I help launch products. https://nicholeelizabethdemere.com