TL;DR
After planning the structure of my website, I chose a small number of destinations to focus on first. Instead of covering everything, I built early content around clusters to create depth and make future growth easier.
Choosing the First Content Clusters for a New Website
Once the structure of the website was in place, the next step was deciding what to actually write about.
At this stage, it would have been easy to jump between different destinations and topics. But instead of spreading content too broadly, I chose to focus on a small number of destinations and build around them.
This is where the idea of content clusters became important.
Why I Didn’t Start Broad
Travel is a huge topic, and there’s always the temptation to cover as many places as possible early on.
But doing that can lead to scattered content with very little depth.
Instead, I wanted the site to begin by building stronger coverage around a few destinations rather than shallow coverage across many.
This made it easier to:
• create more connected articles
• build internal links naturally
• give each destination more context
Choosing the First Destinations
The first clusters were based on destinations I had already experienced and could write about with some level of depth.
Rather than researching completely new locations, I focused on places where I already had:
• personal experience
• photos and content ideas
• a sense of the “layers” I wanted to explore
This made the writing process more natural and helped shape the tone of the site early on.
Thinking in Clusters, Not Articles
Instead of thinking about individual posts, I started thinking in groups of related content.
For example, a single destination could include:
• cultural observations
• practical travel advice
• food experiences
• neighbourhood insights
Each article becomes part of a larger picture.
This approach also makes it easier to expand later, because new ideas naturally fit into existing clusters.
What Comes Next
With the first content clusters defined, the next step was deciding exactly which articles to write first.
Rather than jumping straight into writing, I spent some time planning the first set of posts to make sure they aligned with both the structure of the site and the overall strategy.
Next article:
→ Planning My First Blog Posts (Before I Started Writing)