We all know that keywords are essential when it comes to optimizing your website for better rankings in search engines. It was once common practice to choose one keyword to optimize each piece of content for. But with newer, more complex search engine technology, optimizing for keywords clusters is a more standard SEO practice.
Google has gotten better at understanding content, so your keyword strategy also needs to get more advanced. Using a keyword cluster model to drive your overall content strategy can help bolster your search engine results and help you outrank competitors.
Here is a guide on everything you should know about keyword clustering.
What is a Keyword Cluster?
In short, keyword clusters are keywords that represent searches with similar consumer intent.
Also known as keyword groupings, these “bunches” of keywords are paired together because they represent the same, overarching intention.
Users don’t always search for products, services, or answers to their questions in the same way. For example, say your business is an e-commerce brand that sells women’s athletic shoes. An example of a possible ways that users might search for your products include:
All of the above search queries display the same intent, which is to purchase athletic shoes for women. If you only optimize your content for one of these terms, you’ll miss out on thousands of users who are looking for products and services like yours.
The reality is, Google usually ends up ranking our web pages for multiple keyword phrases. With a keyword clusters model, you can be more strategic in making sure Google ranks your web pages for the similar terms that your target audience is using.
How to Create a Keyword Cluster
Creating a keyword cluster involves being more thorough with your research and more strategic about keyword targeting. It requires a strong understanding of your audience and the types of terms they use to find products, services, or content like yours.
1. Do Your Keyword Research
Any SEO professional understands that before you start with any type of keyword targeting, you must do your research.
You not only need to see what keywords users are searching for surrounding your search term/ topic. You also need to know which of those terms are more valuable and display the greatest conversion potential.
Example of Keyword Research in Google Sheets
And when we say research, we don’t just mean finding a few keywords. Done correctly, extensive keyword research involves putting together a list of hundreds to even thousands of keywords that might bring potential customers to your website.
When thinking about what kinds of keywords to add to your list, ask yourself the following questions:
What products and services do I offer?
What problems can I solve for my customers?
Why would a consumer choose my company over my competitors?
If I was brand new to the industry, what words would I be searching to learn more?
What type of customers do I usually get?
Do I have any content currently that can answer users’ most common questions?
Once you have some ideas about what primary keywords and overarching topics you want to target, take your time to identify all the variations of the keyword and topic as possible.
This means all long-tail keyword phrases, pillar topics, synonyms, and related subtopics. While there is no perfect number to shoot for, when you finish your keyword research you should have a couple hundred keywords to work from. This will give you a good number to help you build out multiple keyword clusters.
2. Use a Keyword Tool
To find essential keyword metrics for the many keywords you’ll need in your list, you will want to use a tool like our keyword researcher. Features like “Suggested Keywords,” will help you find similar keywords quickly and then easily add them to a list that you can eventually export to a CSV file.
Our Keyword Researcher tool simplifies your keyword strategy by giving you all the data and insights you will need to create keyword clusters to improve your website’s content.
Our tool will provide the data for:
Monthly Search Volume: The average number of users who enter the keyword into the Google search bar every month.
Keyword Difficulty: The competitive landscape of the keyword on a 0-100 scale. Higher Keyword Difficulty scores mean more competition.
Search Volume by Country: If you need the search metrics for specific country or region, the tool can be filtered by country.
Cost-per-click: This is the price that digital advertisers are paying in Google Adwords to rank their website on the top of the SERPs. The higher the CPC, the higher the chances that this keyword will bring qualified traffic your way.
3. Identify Themes and Groupings
Once your list of keywords is complete, you’ll want to take your list and identify similar themes. Chances are, you may have already noticed some themes pop up while you were collecting your research.
The various patterns you might see will guide your keyword clusters. Some examples to look for are:
Relevance
This goes back to natural language processing. Are there certain groups of words that are synonyms and share the same search intent? The more similar the keywords, the easier it is for Google to crawl your landing page and gain insight on its subject matter.
Search Volume
The core keywords in your clusters need to have a reasonable search volume. This shows that users are actually searching for those terms.
While long-tail phrases will naturally have lower search volume due to their specificity, make sure any long-tail terms you include in your cluster still display strong conversion potential in their cost-per-click metrics.