As a digital marketer, there’s no question that you know what SEO is and why it’s important to include it in your content planning.
Search engine optimization, abbreviated as SEO, is the set of rules and guidelines that help content get found organically online.
In order to optimize for SEO, marketers use keywords in their planning strategies.
Keywords are the exact words and phrases that searchers will type into a search engine to find results.
When your content has keywords, it can appear in a search, and, when done right, can help your content jump to the top of the results page.
However, as Google and other search engines continue to optimize and improve their algorithms, using keywords becomes more complicated.
Keyword clustering is a technique that can help you boost your content and gear your content towards specific search intents.
In this article, we’ll help you understand keyword clustering and topic clusters while showing you how to do keyword clustering the right way and giving you some tools you can use to complete your keyword clustering strategy planning.
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What is Keyword Clustering?
Keyword clusters, also known as topic clusters, are groups of related content keywords that collectively can cover a broad subject area or search intent.
These clusters provide context and support to the pages within a group, like multiple blogs or product pages.
They also are a great way to help format your internal linking structure within your blogs, making it easier to improve multiple parts of your overall SEO strategy.
For example, if you have a blog with the keywords “decorative vases”, “glass decorative vases”, and “blue decorative vases” in it, you are using multiple different keywords in your strategy, but they all relate to the same search intention of someone looking to purchase a decorative vase.
Rather than only using one single keyword and losing out on valuable online market share, you can create keyword clusters for the different topics that you want your blogs to address.
That allows you to rank for primary keywords, short-tail keywords, and long-tail keywords within the same blog and strengthen your position in the search engine algorithm for the search intention.
Why are Topic Clusters Important?
Creating a topic cluster is important for modern SEO.
When you just work towards a single keyword, you aren’t covering enough ground in order to rank high for the topics you want to appear high on the search engine results for.
Keyword clusters also help you make your content more user-friendly, as readers are more likely to find the content they want to read when you are optimized for the search intention topic.
Here are just a few of the benefits that come from using topic clusters:
Improve Rankings for Short and Long-Tailed Keywords
When you use a topic cluster, you have a better chance of ranking for long and short-tailed keywords that can be difficult to capture alone.
Increase Your Organic Traffic
When you optimize for search intention rather than a singular keyword, you can increase your rate of organic traffic.
Get Faster Results for SEO
Topic clustering can help you improve your SEO strategies faster and start to rise up the rankings quicker than other methods of SEO.
Create More Internal Linking Opportunities
When you create topic clusters, you can start to plan out your internal linking structure with more accuracy and strengthen the connections between your different content pieces.
Build Authority in Your Industry Niche
Focusing on topic clusters helps you build your authority in the eyes of search engine algorithms and become a thought leader in your industry niche.
Enhance the Context and Relevance of Your Content
Targeting multiple, related keywords helps you optimize for search intent, which offers readers more context and improves the relevance of your content.
Better Keyword Research Habits
In order to know how to do keyword clustering the right way, you’ll need to improve your keyword research skills and create better keyword research habits.
How to Do Keyword Clustering the Right Way
Now that you understand more about what keyword clustering is and why it’s important for your business, let’s take a look at some of the best tips on how to do keyword clustering the right way and create your topic clusters.
1. Make Your Keyword List
To begin, you first need to pull together the keywords that your competitor’s content is currently ranking for.
That helps you find related keywords that can be used in your strategies and see what your industry keywords are that will matter to you moving forward.
2. Segment Your Keywords Into Groups
After you pull your initial keyword data, you can then start to organize your keywords into groups based on what the search intent behind each keyword is.
3. Create & Optimize Pillar Pages for Your Keyword Clusters
The organized keyword lists you have help you create plans for your content moving forward.
Groups of keyword clusters, or pillar pages, help you organize your topic clusters and optimize for best SEO practices.
4. Identify Content Gaps and Create a Strategy
Use your keyword research to find out if there are content gaps within your competitor’s content that you can use in order to take up more online market space.
This can help you find a niche and create a strategy that sets you apart.
5. Reinforce Your Keyword Clusters with Blog Content
Now that you have your keyword clusters, you can go ahead and start to build out blog content that supports those keyword clusters and reinforces your primary keyword.
This is the actual creation of content that uses a keyword cluster and captures the search intent you want to rank for.
5 Best Keyword Clustering Tools to Create Topic Groups
Keyword research requires the assistance of online tools and platforms, and keyword clustering also relies on the support of different tools.
Here are some of the best keyword clustering tools that you can use to optimize your research and create topic groups for your content creation and SEO strategies.
1. Cluster AI
No matter where you are in the world, Cluster AI is a great option with a straightforward interface that is easy to use and provides useful results.
However, there aren’t a lot of different features, and there is no additional data provided for any of the keywords you generate.
It’s a nice, simple tool to get started with, but you might want to find another solution to explore more keyword research options.
2. WriterZen Keyword Explorer
The WriterZen Keyword Explorer offers fast, accurate results with a clean and easy-to-use interface that users enjoy. It’s also a very affordable option, which gives you great value for your investment.
There are a lot of different keyword research tools you can use for your keyword clustering, and you also get rich data for the keywords you generate.
3. Surfer SEO Content Planner
Surfer SEO is one of the easiest content planners and keyword cluster tools to use.
It has no hidden fees and keyword clustering integrates with the other tools on the platform really well. It also has a high rate of accurate results for both search intent and search volume, and can create clusters faster than many of the other tools on this list.
4. Serpstat
Serpstat helps you gather data for the different search queries that your audiences are searching for, and analyzes published posts to find the best and most relevant topic clusters.
It can also help you with custom keyword grouping and takes both semantics and user intent into account when generating keyword groups. And best of all, the keyword clustering features are included in the regular plans rather than as an extra cost.
5. SE Ranking Keyword Grouper
The SE Ranking keyword grouper tool offers keyword clustering along with many other useful features.
It is a reliable, easy-to-use platform with advanced keyword tools that help you create lists of related keywords that can be used in your cluster and find the best options for your keyword clusters that will help you rise up the search engine results page rankings.
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Wrap Up
SEO is a continually developing and evolving part of digital marketing and online business.
In order to keep up with the changes, your strategies need to adapt so your content can be found by search engines and searchers.
Knowing how to do keyword clustering and topic clustering is a way to help rank for specific search intentions with multiple different keywords. Using them in your SEO strategies can help you improve your rankings and boost your content.
If you are looking for more ways to improve your SEO planning and create a strong content strategy, then check out our interactive SEO maturity assessment!
There you’ll be able to map your SEO on the maturity scale and see where you can improve and what you are doing right.
