Topic Clusters DEBUNKED! It's MUCH More Simple!

[@npsbritten918]

8 months in, 107 articles, and 12K sessions by following your videos!

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Nice work! Glad to hear it!

[@iahmed92]

Do you use any tool for keywords research? Or just google autocomplete

[@clubgel]

12k sessions monthly or total

[@NicheCampus]

Nice one keeping it SIMPLE. "Topic clusters" and "Silos" get confusing as hell for the new niche builder. Let's just call it a category in Wordpress of highly related posts for which you interlink between those posts. Job done!

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Thanks, that's exactly what I thought too :D

[@Nico-hc9wm]

Very good point about the 'tags', I also noticed on Google search console that they don't really get indexed. I think it should be enough to just stick to categories at a higher level. Google is clever enough to figure out what the page content is about anyway.

[@ona90]

I have a question: Is it okay to interlink between the clusters? Suppose if I link from 1 article to another article to a different cluster where it makes sense, is that going to confuse Google and hurt SEO?

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

You can absolutely link between articles whenever it makes sense. You should do so, in fact, it's encouraged to help users navigate your site and read more stuff (= see more ads)

[@josephmarino9659]

Is it okay to interlink from a post in topic cluster A to a post in topic cluster B?

[@AndreyDraganov]

If it's natural, why not

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Absolutely, link whenever it makes sense 👍

[@josephmarino9659]

@@PassiveIncomeGeek Thank you Andrey and Morten

[@markuselias6017]

Good video! Maybe I'm overthinking, but if you don't create a pillar page and use a category archive page where you list cluster articles instead, how do people find the most relevant content if there are so many articles listed? I mean, some pages probably need to stand out from the rest in order to get more attention on them. If people land on an archive page, it might be hard for them to navigate to the right content?

[@Osys91]

Awesome video, I'm just completely against your point with the importance of tags and I think many are ignoring their importance UX-wise. Imagine you wrote about coffee machine and then you tagged for example the relevant sub keywords like: philips (the type of the coffee machine) now many visitors will see the tags at the end and most likely something will catch their attention and say "Oh, I would like to know more about X" so they will click it and end up in an archive page should articles with similar keywords. I'm still with you on the importance of not indexing tags pages but had another angle of looking at tags.

[@AriellePhoenix]

Awesome, thanks for this! I’ve seen some super mathematically structured silos/clusters and explanations that made me question my own. The explanations put me off making them for a while, too. Now I enjoy them!

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Glad it was helpful!

[@imerimran8644]

Hi Morten, Imer here, what if the topic is underserved & have a lot of est. search vol. but I did not find much realated topic on it, should I write it. Let's say there is only 10 article that is related. Just to clarify more on your thought on 10:22 min onwards.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

well, if it’s underserved and you think there’s lots of searches I’d always write it and you will almost always rank well - just faster if you find more similar topics. I’ve also had very succesfull “mini-clusters” with just 10-15 articles.

[@imerimran8644]

@@PassiveIncomeGeek nice advise, thanks Morten

[@abidrahman1099]

how much budget should u think one must have to start niche site ?

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Just $30-40 to cover domain and hosting if you write yourself 👍

[@abidrahman1099]

@@PassiveIncomeGeek including writing as i am an indian ... not native ok how much post it may need on an average...

[@Ossymedia]

Hi Morten, I have been following your channel since mid last year. And I have learned a lot from you. I started a blog in February of last year, and by January I was getting over 3000 pageviews from 68 articles published on the website. Unfortunately, my website went down in mid February this year, due to my failure to renew it. I just renewed it last week, but traffic has been significantly down. I barely average 3 pageviews per day compared to the the 100 pageviews I got the previous month. My question is how do I bounce back from this setback. Additionally, would it take much time for website to get things going again since it's been over year I started the blog. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions. Thank you.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

you might have gotten deindexed as Google saw the content was gone. Go to Search Console and manually ask them to index each URL. Then traffic should come back over a few months.

[@Ossymedia]

@@PassiveIncomeGeek my site was automatically removed from the search console. However I have connected it again to the search console. Would submitting sitemap help?

[@costantineedward7277]

Thanks for the inspiration 😊 1st Milestone --- Done 100 Blog Post in 30 days As a freelancer, I'm committed to writing 1 million words equivalent to 500 blog posts with an average of 2000 words each to help freelancers and those who want to transition from office jobs to freelancing succeed easily. Got 4 more months to accomplish this.

[@toscachannel3884]

What u get after post 100 articles with 2000 words each in 30 days? Is the traffic good?

[@goodfellabeats]

Did you hit your goal?

[@moneyessays]

once you've written the underserved topics, if you see a specific topic getting traffic should you complete writing the higher competition ones?

[@Andrew-C-Witham]

Thanks you. This is very clear. To the point about not writing about everything possible in the hope of building topical relevancy... Google are repeatedly telling us that the pages that don't get traffic are not worth indexing and may or will be dropped. So writing about every obscure topic won't get noticed anyway if Google isn't looking.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

That's true! good point I should have mentioned in the video!

[@benno8699]

Really helpful. I've been doing SEO for years and have gotten good results, but all this talk and all the different opinions about topic clusters and silos definitely confused the sht out of me, so I don't even want to know what it feels like for the new guys.

[@FernandoOrtegaJimenez]

My trading journey was a matriculation of highs and lows, literally just like the market. you up, you down. Now I'm constantly up>

[@Mack697]

Over the past 5 years, buying Bitcoin every week performed better than timing the market 86% of the time.

[@Doctorbale_]

This is so informative. Thanks Man

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Thanks!

[@baz914]

Great video as usual Morten. How many internal links do you tend to put on each page please? Thanks. 👍

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

normally between 1-3

[@viktorivanov6624]

I know that this needs to be addressed in a manner that beginners understand the topic, but I don't think this is a beginner topic. Internal links, topical authority, and anchors are the foundation of advanced SEO. This is where you make or break your strategy. I respect that you try to simplify it for people to understand and go further in their own research but I think that this is oversimplified. Anyways, keep doing what you do, best of luck!

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

I don’t think it needs to be very advanced and calculated.. I really just use common sense for internal linking and I use anchors that describe what the link points to… but I also mostly stay away from competitive stuff these days - I see much more success with digging up stuff (topics) that ranks easily.

[@asifferdous7218]

Thank you for this Video. I have a question om Keyword research. If my niche is shoes, can I write articles on different nike Models/styles query that have search volume? Are they considered as evergreen content or I should just write on shoes in general instead of specific brands?

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

I'm no expert on shoes, but if you believe the shoes are popular in a few years from now you it would be evergreen. I'd built out categories about many types of shoes to see what works best in terms of traffic and earnings.

[@asifferdous7218]

@@PassiveIncomeGeek Basically I am writing on fashion brands items(shoe was an example) which have consistent search volume for their different models. These brands have been in the field for more than 20/50 years. I did make categories of different fashion brands. My site is just below seven month, last 30 days I got 4000 page views(70% us visitor) with 100+ articles. This is my first blog. Not sure I am doing right or not.

[@iahmed92]

Thanks Morten, You are taking long breaks. Make any weakly or Fortnight schedule please.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

hehe I don’t play fortnite but we’re in the middle of moving to an apartment

[@iahmed92]

@@PassiveIncomeGeek haha thanks for correction. Ok best wishes for new apartment

[@socialvideoplaza]

thanks, great information

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Thanks a lot!

[@jonathanrice2568]

Very helpful, thank you!

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Thanks, Jonathan!

[@graisammaantony7762]

Can you make video about content writing

[@saidahmed6000]

Awesome video. Thanks

[@jonm6834]

Really? Topic clusters and silos aren't a silver bullet? I happened upon this town the other day where there was a large gathering of folk. I was weary and decided to get off my horse, head into the saloon and order a glass of water. I could hear the piano playing from a distance, and the cheers and applause from the drunker crowd surely directed at the female entertainment... but the wondering merchant caught my eye, and said something that made my ears prick up: a bottle of holy water brought straight from the Vatican itself, for a mere nickel, was guarantee to cure all my ailments, but that's not all! Drink it at midnight on the night of the wavering moon, with a sprinkle of rosemary, and it will bring me great wealth also! I couldn't resist. So I mortgaged the house and bought all his wares. It was everything I ever wanted, and it was easy! All I had to do was buy his product and follow his formula. Long way of saying: I'm both amazed and shocked these tactics still work, nowadays, when there is so much information out there. Nice to see not everyone is praying on the ignorant, despite the obvious business opportunity. EDIT: Also, topic clusters and silos is old news, in my opinion. It was self evident a few years ago that this "topic", indirectly, would become more and more important. Nowadays, it's something else we ought to be paying attention to to stay ahead of the curve. If you don't have foresight you'll always be playing catch up!

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

It's definitely a very old content like most SEO stuff - and I understand why people get confused about the many names for the same things and the wide range of tips and strategies people have.

[@jonm6834]

@@PassiveIncomeGeek I remember when I first started out: it was all about urls, headings, subheadings and links, all about having the right keywords... then link building. Easy to game, easy to cheat, so Google wizened up. Then it became clear to me: Google would incorporate into its algorithm signals that cannot be gamed - user metrics being a particularly good on at that. That's where I see silos and clusters come in: internal links, time on page (or on site), click through, a better experience and hence better signals. No magic, just common sense. If you were to look at their updates, and everything we know about that, you'd probably discern a great deal about future updates and the direction they'll take... Not a bad idea for a playlist, in my opinion, even if it deals with old updates, just to have a timeline, discern intent, and project into the future. Bottomline: it's a cat and mouse game. If the SEO community is taking about it, and it works, Google's working to better their algorithm so that alone doesn't work. In a way, if SEOs are taking about it, it's time to move on. That's a bad signal - we find a pro to use and abuse and they see a con to improve upon. It's a cat and mouse game, but ultimately they're God in this space: they make the rules, so they will win out in time. Focus on the user, first and foremost.

[@Techation]

Always watching your videos and implementing the methods. Already getting results.... thx mate.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Great to hear!

[@silverbackag9790]

I use the shit out of tags. 3 million monthly pageviews on my biggest site. You just gotta know how to use them correctly…which also requires taking control of your categories. If you just got a blogroll going, yeah, probably not needed.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Wow those are good numbers! Glad there are exceptions and happy to be proved wrong sometimes :D

[@JeremyDeighan]

Hey do you use category and tags to structure a site? Can you give an example?

[@thepupguy]

Thanks for helpful video. I am already doing same thing that you addressed in this video. I am happy I am at right track.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Thanks, sounds good!

[@BBZM]

Fuldstændig rigtigt! Folk gør tingene mere kompliceret end de behøver. Jeg tror at det er bare en sales-pitch..

[@georgeloutaif3147]

Is dog accessories a cluster or, let's say, dog collars is one cluster, or dog crates?

[@chamindagunasekara97]

Thank you super lesson

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Thanks a lot 😉

[@thomaswalsh7154]

Have you ever thought about doing a video regarding google Discover? Recently the majority of my views and impressions are from Discover results. Although, traffic from Discover seems to be rather hot or not. Some days it sends thousands, other days nothing. There are surprisingly very few videos covering it.

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

Yeah, that might come. I have only recently started to test it as I've always relied on normal organic traffic.

[@jmjm-ko9uk]

Your math of 10,000 visitors adds up. But it totally misses the whole point of this topic, which is NOT (yet) about monthly revenue. But rather, about gaining Google's trust in your site's authority, which ultimately we hope to lead to good revenue. If a page gains that trust, a 10,000/mo pagevisit is but one of so much more possible outcomes, including numbers way above that. Btw, I also saw that exact example as a comment on Lori Ballen's KZbin video about Topic Clusters. Eeriely similar to user darndarn99. Just interesting to stumble into your video after that one.

[@averagebeing_com]

Hello Morten, Recently I have my eyes on a super competitive keyword which has a volume of over 100k per month. For all the top results, I’ve seen one thing in common. They all write 10-15 blog posts surrounding the main keyword and they just rank for it. My question is can I replicate the same and hopefully rank in the top 3 for this topic? (Btw sometimes, Our site ranks about The Washington Post and other bigger sites which is insane but not sure why it isn’t happening regularly. Anyway, I learnt a lot from you and it could help bloggers like me if you do a regular Q&A.)

[@mehrabhossainapo8420]

Love your video. Hope I can meet you

[@PassiveIncomeGeek]

I hope so! You could join the AffiliateGathering.com if you're able to make it to York in U.K ;)

[@brotendo]

You should offer some evidence for your beliefs and theories because you use the phrases "I think" and "that's stupid" a lot in this video with ZERO evidence.

[@Thefattyfatt]

Why are you against adding lots of content to a website? You’re the first person I’ve heard say this.

[@goldenrays522]

Very helpful, thanks!