What is Keyword Clustering?
Keyword clustering is the practice of including multiple keywords with similar search intent in a single piece of content. It is intended to improve SEO by addressing related search queries within one comprehensive piece of content.
For example, ‘homemade vanilla cake’ and ‘vanilla cake recipe’ are different keywords. However, they have the same search intent and are used by searchers who seek content on making vanilla cakes in their homes.
Google also understands this and even returns similar search results for both search queries:
So, a recipe blogger looking to rank for both keywords could create a single content and optimize it for ‘homemade vanilla cake’ and ‘vanilla cake recipe’. That way, their content can rank for both keywords.
Why Keyword Clustering Improves SEO
Keyword clustering takes advantage of BERT (short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), the artificial intelligence language model that Google uses to understand a user’s search intent.
Before BERT, Google analyzed the keywords in a search query and returned with content that closely matched that keyword. This typically resulted in Google displaying different webpages for searches with the same intent.
However, with BERT, Google now analyzes all the words in the search query to understand their context. This allows Google to uncover the visitor’s search intent.
In return, Google displays webpages that represent the searcher’s search intent rather than pages that just happen to contain the keywords the searcher searched for.
Benefits of Keyword Clustering
Keyword clustering is an effective strategy for getting organic traffic from search results pages. It is an important part of keyword research, and some even consider it the future of SEO. It provides SEOs and bloggers with a series of benefits, including:
1 Allows Content Rank for Multiple Keywords
Content created using keyword clustering can rank for hundreds or even thousands of keywords. The only condition is that it matches the user’s search intent.
This is good news for bloggers as it increases their chances of getting organic traffic to their content. It also saves them the effort of creating and managing multiple pieces of content, as they only create one and optimize it for multiple keywords.
2 Helps to Prevent Keyword Cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple webpages rank for the same keyword and search intent. This typically results in the affected content ranking poorly on search results pages.
Keyword clustering reduces the chances of keyword cannibalization, as a single piece of content will include the keywords that would have been used to create or optimize a similar piece of content.
3 Helps Uncover the Search Intent of a Content
Keyword clustering is done during the keyword research process. At this point, a blogger reviews their keywords and analyzes and merges those with the same search intent.
This guides the direction of the article. Bloggers also pay attention to understanding the intent of the content as it is the basis on which keyword clusters are formed.
4 Helps to Uncover Secondary Keywords for a Content
Keyword clustering allows bloggers to uncover secondary keywords, subtopics, headings, and frequently asked questions to include in their content.
Without keyword clustering, bloggers would either not have uncovered the keywords or may have included them in standalone content that may end up competing with other articles.
5 Increases the Search Volume of a Keyword
Search volume is one of the significant metrics bloggers consider when deciding what keyword to rank for. However, some keywords may not have sufficient search volume to justify dedicating an entire article to them.
In this case, a blogger could include multiple keywords with low search volume in a cluster. That way, they can end up with content with multiple keywords and considerable search volume.
6 Helps to Prevent Keyword Stuffing
Creating a thousand or two-thousand-word article targeting one or two single keywords can easily lead to keyword stuffing. This is a situation wherein you keep repeating keywords in content.
Keyword stuffing is a black hat SEO technique and can cause Google to demote your rankings. However, keyword clustering will allow you to uncover many other keywords to include in your article.
How to Perform Keyword Clustering
Keyword clustering is performed during the keyword research process. Instead of performing regular keyword research to find a few keywords to include in a piece of content, you will do some extra work to uncover related keywords.
These keywords are variations, synonyms, long-tail, medium-tail, and short-tail versions of the keywords you discovered during keyword research. Once done, you will include these keywords in the same content.
1 Generate a List of Keywords
The first step is to generate a list of keywords for which you want to rank. This is called keyword research, and if you are unfamiliar with it, you can follow this guide to understand how to perform keyword research.
You will require a dedicated keyword research tool for this step. Paid tools will give you more functionality. However, if you cannot access one, consider using these free keyword research tools. You can also use Rank Math and the Related Searches of Google search results to generate more keywords.
Your goal is to discover as many keywords as possible. So, it is perfectly normal if you end up with hundreds or even thousands of keywords in this process.
You should also pay attention to the keyword difficulty, search volume, and cost per click of the keywords you discover, as they are crucial to determining the most relevant keywords to rank for.
2 Group the Keywords by Their Search Intent
The next step is to categorize the keywords by their search intent. Some keyword research tools help bloggers categorize keywords by their search intent. However, even without a keyword clustering tool, you can enter the keywords into RankBot and instruct it to organize them by their search intent.
If you encounter keywords with unclear search intent, search for them on Google and review the top six to ten results returned for the page. The type of results returned will give you an idea about the sort of content searchers expect to find.
For example, a quick search for ‘image resizer’ returns multiple tools for resizing images.
In this case, searchers expect to find an image-resizing tool, not a blog post. If you create a blog post about resizing images, it will likely struggle to rank for that keyword.
3 Select a Primary Focus Keyword
At this point, you should have a series of keywords categorized by their search intent. These are your keyword clusters, and the keywords in each cluster will be used to create new content or optimize an existing one.
However, you will choose one of the keywords as the primary keyword while the rest will be secondary. This is where search volume and keyword difficulty come in. Unless you are a highly authoritative site, you want to rank for keywords with high search volume and medium difficulty.
So, select the keyword with the appropriate search volume and difficulty as your primary keyword and use the rest with moderate difficulty as your secondary keywords.
That said, the content you discover using keyword clustering will typically become pillar pages. They will be authoritative, provide in-depth insights into a topic, and link to other related content that provides in-depth information into specific parts of the topic.