Planning a topic cluster from one seed keyword
Research a seed, group the ideas into one broad hub term and the narrower questions under it with tags, give each planned page one group, record the pages as hub and spoke key pages in project context, and audit the cluster for orphan pages once it is live.
A topic cluster is one broad page, the hub, and the narrower pages that each answer one part of its topic, the spokes, all linked to each other. It gives a site one clear answer per question and a path between them, which is easier to rank and easier to read than many pages that overlap.
1. Research the seed
In Keyword research, enter the topic as a seed, such
as email deliverability, and fetch 200 ideas. One lookup holds up to
360 credits whatever the count, so the largest list costs
no more than the smallest.
Sort by Volume and read the Intent column. Informational ideas become spokes; commercial and transactional ones belong on product or comparison pages, not in the cluster.
2. Group the ideas into pages
Most ideas are variants of a few questions. Group them so that each group is one page:
| Group | Example ideas | Page |
|---|---|---|
| The broad term | email deliverability, what is email deliverability | hub |
| One sub-question | spf record, how to set up spf | spoke |
| Another sub-question | dkim vs dmarc, dmarc policy | spoke |
Save the ideas you keep and tag each one with its page, for example
cluster: deliverability / spf. Tags hold up to 60 characters, and the tag
filter on Saved keywords then shows one
page’s keywords at a time.
Check Difficulty per group. Write the easiest spokes first: they can rank while the hub is still new, and their links help the hub.
3. Record the pages and their roles
In the project’s context, add each page under Key
pages with its role: hub for the broad page, spoke for the others, and
the topic of its tag. The assistant and any agent
connected over MCP read this list, so a question such as “which spoke pages
have critical issues in the last audit?” is answered against the plan.
4. Link and audit
Every spoke links to the hub, and the hub links to every spoke. Once the pages are live, run a site audit from the hub’s URL:
- Orphan page means a spoke nothing links to.
- Page links nowhere means a page with no links to the rest of the site, so it passes nothing on to the hub.
- Duplicate title and Duplicate page content mean two spokes answer the same question; merge them.
5. Track one keyword per page
Add each page’s main keyword to a rank tracker. One keyword per page is enough to see the cluster move; the rest of the group follows it. A check at the default depth costs 40 credits per keyword per device.