The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Make your reviews do more for you.
Sometimes, even the best local business owners and marketers can fall into the habit of seeing reviews as a mere numbers game, a ratings game, a neck-and-neck race with competitors.
Ninety percent of respondents to Moz’s State of the Local SEO Industry 2020[1] survey agree that aspects of reviews impact local search rankings. Local pack visibility is certainly important to any local brand, but if we focus too narrowly on rankings alone, we can miss two critical insights:
-
What reviews mean to customers
-
The exciting, varied uses for review content
Let’s seize an opportunity for you today that hinges on these two factors, greatly expanding on what you might think reviews can do for the local businesses you market. Moz’s own Cyrus Shepard[2] handed us a key when he recommended embracing topic clusters[3] as one of the smartest SEO tactics for 2021. We’re going to use that key to unlock an advanced local business content and conversion strategy that could become a genuine competitive difference-maker for you in the years ahead.
What is a topic cluster?
Briefly, a topic cluster consists of:
-
A main topic you want to thoroughly cover with a cluster of pages
-
A pillar page that sets the theme of the cluster and acts as central navigation
-
Subtopic pages devoted to various aspects of the cluster’s theme
-
A strong internal link structure that directs the website visitor to relevant pages within the cluster
-
A URL structure that ties the cluster together
There’s nothing especially complex about this concept. Its structure calls to mind