The Breakout Page Strategy: The Easiest Way To Fill Content Gaps

Last modified

January 3, 2023

Hub

Strategy

Created by

Erki All

Your blog structure needs constant updating as you gather more data about its performance. Most blogs will go into too much detail on some topics and stay too broad on others. When you produce pages too broadly, you leave content gaps.

Breakout pages are a type of content gap where:

• you actually already have the necessary content on some pages;
• you also get impressions with relevant search terms;
• but you could improve your rankings by addressing the search terms on a dedicated URL.

Breakout pages are the easiest and fastest way to increase organic search traffic for an existing blog.

How to find them?

Let’s start by getting some context through content gaps.

What are content gaps in SEO?

Content gaps in SEO refer to topics or areas related to your business that your website needs to address in its content.

These are topics that your target audience is interested in, but for which your website does not provide a good answer.

You can find content gaps in three ways:

1. Competitive analysis — use SEMrush or Ahrefs to find pages on your competitor websites that you haven’t produced.
2. Keyword research — use keyword research tools to find keywords relevant to your audience that you don’t get any impressions for.
3. Content audit — audit your own content and your Search Console data to reveal topics or sections of your website where you are underperforming.

The first two methods are great when you are just starting out.

You don’t have any data on your website yet, so it’s good to analyze the market and your competitors and try to emulate them.

If you have an existing website, though, the biggest opportunities lie in auditing your own content and data.

This is where you discover breakout pages.

What are breakout pages?

Breakout pages refer to keyword clusters that your website ranks for but does not have a specific landing page for.

Having separate pages for these keyword clusters is important because they can otherwise cannibalize existing pages on your site.

By creating separate pages for them, you can improve your SEO and make it easier for users to find the information they need.

How to find breakout pages?

Finding breakout pages is difficult because it means analyzing a lot of data.

ContentGecko makes it a lot easier.

And once you’ve found these ideas, the fix is extremely fast and easy — you just cut and paste existing content to a new page with minimal additions.

To find breakout pages, we start by looking at all the keywords that your website is already ranking for.

If you execute it in a large industry, it might be hundreds of thousands of keywords.

You get this information from Search Console, but the web interface heavily limits the data you see, so you need ContentGecko to extract all of it.

Inside ContentGecko, you create a content strategy that matches each keyword combination with a specific page on your website.

Each page should be dedicated to a specific keyword cluster and vice-versa. This is the foundation of an effective SEO content strategy.

Once we've clustered all the keywords and matched each of your existing pages with a target cluster, it’s inevitable that some clusters will be left without a match.

These leftover clusters are what we refer to as breakout pages.

What makes breakout pages so powerful?

The keywords in these leftover clusters are already driving impressions for your domain.

Therefore Google is already considering your domain authority on this subject. Google has probably discovered that some section on your page answers these questions well.

However, Google needs a URL to send this traffic to.

If an existing URL also contains a bunch of other information that does not provide value to the user, then it is less likely to do so.

Scrolling through many sections to get an answer to a specific question is not considered a good user experience. Especially if there are other websites out there that are more concise with their answers.

Creating this new URL means making very small changes to your website and requires very little new content creation.

Because of the existing authority, breakout pages also make a very quick impact on rankings. You can see significant improvements in days rather than weeks or months.

By constantly updating your blog structure and handling breakout pages as you discover them you can dramatically improve your website's SEO and enhance the user's experience by providing them with more relevant information.

How can I find my breakout pages with ContentGecko?

Once you have analyzed or relevant keyword for you, follow this workflow:

Final thoughts

In conclusion, identifying and addressing content gaps is a vital component of an effective SEO strategy.

By doing so, you can improve your website's relevance, engagement, and conversion rates. However, identifying breakout pages can take your SEO strategy to the next level, as they represent untapped opportunities to attract more traffic and win new market share.

By creating dedicated landing pages for these keyword clusters, you can better meet the needs of your audience and enhance their experience on your website.

With the help of ContentGecko, businesses can easily identify and leverage these breakout pages to gain a competitive advantage in their industry.

So, if you want to stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing digital landscape, it's time to start focusing on identifying and addressing content gaps and breakout pages on your website.