Websites put together with intention are insanely powerful.
The problem with most small businesses is that they whip one together and hope the search engines show them in the results.
But that’s not how it works, especially with the newest updates in algorithms like Google’s PageRank.
That’s not saying you won’t start showing up, all it takes is a little planning, and here’s how!
Planning your website ahead of time
First, you need to have a clear idea of the value your new site will add to a potential visitor’s life.
Do you make a cotton-alternative clothing line?
If so, let’s make sure your first CTAs (call-to-action) get a user to your shop within 1 click.
From there, all your content will be VERY specific to cotton-alternatives (this is called niching down). You won’t be writing about anything other than cotton-alternatives until your site starts ranking in Google.
Are you trying to put together an eco community?
If so, let’s make sure your first CTAs get a user to your blog posts containing relevant info within 1 click.
From there, all your content will be VERY specific to that one aspect of the community you are building. We need to show Google that your site can be a trusted resource on this one topic before it considers a resource for other topics.
You get the point, ya?
If you know what you want to do, but aren’t sure how to structure your site, schedule a (free) call with our CEO, he’ll walk you through 🙂
Once you know what you want your website to do, we can start planning out the content that brings users in.
Topic clusters for eco websites
When Google updated its algorithm to align with search intent rather than the number of keywords in an article, it changed how a website competes for the top search results.
This is a really really good thing for the smaller websites like the one you’re building.
If Google starts to recognize your website as an authority, meaning the content you’re writing is exactly what users are searching for, it becomes easier to outrank websites with massive marketing budgets that just write fluffy content just because they want to rank for a certain keyword.
The key here is discovering a user’s intent and only writing content that answers questions those users may have or is helpful to them in some way, this is also called niching down.
A topic cluster consists of three components:
A pillar page on a core topic. This page should cover a wide range of user intents. That will give readers enough value to make them click through to the appropriate next piece of content for them no matter where they are in their buyer’s journey.
- Here’s our pillar page on Starting an Eco-Friendly Business
“Cluster” or supporting pages that cover related topics in more depth. A cluster page tends to have a narrower focus on a specific user intent. This approach isn’t just “find a long-tail keyword and write about it.” It’s about going deep on a particular topic.
- The page your reading right now, this is a “cluster page”
Internal linking between all of the pages.
- Links from the cluster pages to the pillar pages are a signal to search engines that the pillar page is the most important in the group (thus the link in the pillar page paragraph above).
- Links from an authoritative pillar to cluster content pass authority to the rest of the cluster. (the pillar page links to this page among many others).
- Each link should also have an appropriately descriptive anchor text (see how the pillar page link in the pillar page section above is the title of the pillar page).
- This description helps search engines better understand what each page and link is.
All of that sounds great, but how do you figure out what your pillar and cluster page content should be? That’s what keyword research [LINK TO] is for.
Eco-friendly business tips
Now that you have a good idea of what your website is going to do for your future customers, let’s show you how to get the site on fleek!
Here’s how to customize your eco-friendly website [LINK TO]
Or jump around to different articles in this topic cluster series (see what we did there 😉 )
- Building an eco-friendly website in 10 minutes
- Create high-value blog content [LINK TO]
- Promote your eco blog [LINK TO]
- Monetize your eco blog [LINK TO]
Stuck trying to set up your website? Need help with your marketing strategy?
Book a call here and our CEO using the link below (it’s all free 😉 )
Or subscribe to our newsletter for bi-weekly tips n’ tricks on growing an eco-friendly business (right hand side)!
*psst, let’s tie it all together for you.
- Our topic cluster is Eco-Friendly business
- Our pillar page contains all the info relevant to building an eco-friendly business.
- The page you’re currently reading, and all other cluster pages, go into greater detail about the topics highlighted in the pillar page
- We link the pillar and cluster pages through internal links that help you navigate through this series, they also help Google understand what we’re trying to do.
- Within each of these articles are CTAs (our CTAs are “Book a call with our CEO” and “subscribe to our newsletter”
- Once you’ve done one of these actions, we know you’re interested in what we do at Econus and introduce you to more helpful resources, as well as our main tool, our mobile app Econus.
