I want to create a SEO friendly link structure on my site to achieve this:
[main]/pillar-page-1
[main]/pillar-page-1/cluster-page-blogpost-1
[main]/pillar-page-1/cluster-page-blogpost-2
[main]/pillar-page-2
[main]/pillar-page-2/cluster-page-blogpost-X
However, if i create Pillar Pages and Cluster Pages using CMS, I get an URL structure like this:
[main]/pillar-pages/pillar-page-1
[main]/cluster-pages/cluster-page-blogpost-1
Not ideal.
My workaround right now is creating the Pillar Pages with a static page , and for the Cluster Pages create a CMS Collection named as the Pillar Page.
Static Page:[main]/pillar-page-1
CMS Collection named “Pillar-Page-1” so the slug fits: [main]/pillar-page-1/cluster-page-blogpost-1
I know, a mess, and definitely a pain in the future if Im updating my CMS template, since I made a new collection for every Pillar Page.
Is there a way to achieve this link structure without the workarounds by just modyfing the CMS paths the way I want?
Unfortunately, no (not without a serious hack which you should avoid).
But there is a bright light at the end of this tunnel…
SEO best practices are hard to definitively comment on since nobody knows the true answers for sure, different folks (with different setups) experience different results, and what worked yesterday may not tomorrow.
But that said…
From my experience the URL paths are less relevant with Topic Clusters (what you’ve described) and more relevant are the on page backlinking structures.
So if you had a static page with the slug /blog and a CMS with the slug /blog and the following blog posts:
/blog/fish
/blog/big-fish
/blog/little-fish
/blog/cars
/blog/red-cars
/blog/yellow-cars
…and you clustered those by topic:
Fish Cluster
/blog/fish
/blog/big-fish
/blog/little-fish
Car Cluster
/blog/cars
/blog/red-cars
/blog/yellow-cars
…and you defined that cluster not through the URL paths but instead your on page backlinking:
You’re now telling Google that you have 2 distinct, topical content clusters, and that backlinking structure tells Google that your have authority to rank on those two topics.
These are just the very basics of what’s generally considered a working strategy with Topic Clusters. There’s a lot more that goes into it, of course.
But, now the only static page is /blog that lists all of your blog posts and you are not limited by some manual hack.
Getting into those nitty-gritty details is hard to comment on without doing a full review of what you’re doing. Better to hire a professional and have them audit your site. But generally speaking…
There are different approaches based on what you’re trying to do. But keeping backlinks targeted to the topic you want to rank for is usually the winning strategy.
Google is good at distinguishing between header / footer links and content links. You want to structure this with content links. There are ways to help Google better understand the difference between the two (search around, loads of info on it). I’m not sure about schema breadcrumbs to be honest.
Another thing to consider is how Webflow sets up their own property. They do really well on SEO.
They have:
/resources
/blog
/playlist
etc…
Take a peek at how they’ve structured their own property. Search google for some of their headlines. See how it ranks.
