Volcanic Creative - Authoritative Content Strategy

Volcanic Creative Authoritative Content Strategy

Summary

From an SEO perspective, generating blog content can be helpful in building site authority and therefore can increase overall rankings site-wide. In the case of Volcanic Creative, we suggest creating an informative web design pillar page that will answer frequently searched queries on Google. We have mapped a few blog topics that are related to the pillar page topic, and there are a few existing blogs related to web design that we will interlink to.

Goal

The goal of this authoritative content strategy is to build content that will increase the authority of the site. Site authority is when Google sees a website as a trusted source on a topic and will use excerpts and other information from that site to answer user search queries. This authority is a major ranking factor for a site and can greatly increase page rank site wide.

We have built out a strategy and generated a content plan with guidelines to increase the site’s authority by building structured and authoritative blog content.

Content Strategy

The content strategy has been developed around three aspects, pillar pages, sub topic pages and structured interlinking. The pillar page will link down to subtopic (blog) pages, that will in-turn either link further down to more specific subtopic pages or instead link back up to the pillar page.

First Step

Pillar Page

A pillar page will be the centre of the content strategy. The idea behind the pillar page is essentially to create a large blog page that encapsulates the entirety of a targeted topic. The pillar page will broadly cover the topic as a whole by addressing frequently asked questions/searches and other relevant information, which will then have links to more detailed information about the specific subtopic/question being covered. The page will be structured with a table of contents at the top that allows users to jump to the relevant information they are seeking on the page, and subheadings that indicate different subtopics. Interlinking will be performed within these subtopics to direct users to more in-depth information on the topic, as well as direct authority to where it needs to go.

Sub-topic/general blog pages

Additional pages will then be created to answer the questions in more depth. These pages will have more specific subtopics or general blog content that is relevant to the pillar page topic. For example, if ‘movies’ is the topic for your pillar page, ‘romance movies’ or ‘comedy movies’ would be subtopics that you could go into more depth about in separate blog articles.

URL/Site Structure

It is important to ensure that both the user and search engines can correctly navigate the site. We will look at how the current blog content is structured and make adjustments depending on URL structure and navigation.

For example, if /blog/movies is your pillar page,

then /blog/movies/romance and /blog/movies/top-movies-to-watch-in-2022 are subtopic or general blog pages

Second Step

Content Creation

Content will be created for the pillar and sub topic pages and will be done in such a way that it will appeal to search engines. We will provide a set of guidelines for the content and the structure of the content to ensure that it is seen as authoritative.

Page Audit & Interlinking

After the content has been created and the pillar page and subpages are ready to be published, we will audit the pages and interlink anchor text to ensure that all pages pass authority correctly.

Content Map

Pillar Page

The Initial pillar page that will be targeted will be web design.

We have compiled a list of topic questions that should be addressed in the page:

• What is meant by web design?
• Where do I start with web design
• What are the principles of web design?
• How do I become a good web designer?
• How do you brand a website?
• Is web designing easy?
• What does a web designer do?
• Can I design my own website?
• Can I learn web design on my own?
• How do I become a web designer?
• What is the difference between web design and web development?
• Do you need coding for web design?
• Can I learn web design on my own?
• What are the benefits of web design?
• When do I need to redesign my website?

This list isn’t definitive, and questions can be skipped or added as needed. It is also recommended that the client add any frequently asked questions around the topic that hasn’t been covered in the list.

Sub-topic/general blog pages

Here are recommended subtopic pages and blog pages that can be built out for the pillar page.

• The difference between web design and web development
• Choosing the right web designer for your website
• Designing your own website
• When to redesign your website
• A guide to website code

Existing pages can also be added into cluster, for example:

• https://volcaniccreative.com/why-you-need-a-new-website/
• https://volcaniccreative.com/how-to-create-a-website/

Current URL/Site Structure

The current blog structure is set up with /blog-thoughts-and-musings/ being the blog page and all other pages just using their title as the URL, e.g.https://volcaniccreative.com/how-to-create-a-website/

This type of structure is called a soft structure, where the link between pages are done with only the on page interlinking, rather than the URL. A hard structure for example would be: https://volcaniccreative.com/blog/web-design/why-you-need-a-new-website/

We recommend that the pillar page URL be:

https://volcaniccreative.com/blog/web-design

And any blog pages we would recommend being part of the harder structure:

https://volcaniccreative.com/blog/web-design/why-you-need-a-new-website/

Recommendations

In conclusion, we suggest that you:

• Build a blog/web-design URL
• Populate the page with information content answering the questions listed above
• Create at least one more blog related to the topic of web design
• We will interlink and adjust content according to our topic cluster model
• We recommend building a hard URL structure:

Similar to this: https://volcaniccreative.com/blog/web-design/why-you-need-a-new-website/

All pages that branch from the web design pillar page will have the /blog/web-design/ URL structure. This will help crawlers better understand the content of the pages.

Mapping Data and Analysis

The content data and information can be found here.

The content guidelines can be found here