4 Reasons Why You Should Implement Keyword Clusters in Your SEO Strategy

Simply put, keyword clusters/topics (also known as keyword groupings) are a group of similar queries and keywords representing searches with similar consumer intent. These terms or phrases have similar or almost similar meanings and intent.

For instance, “security camera,” “security camera for home,” and “security camera system” are nothing but similar keyphrases with similar intent used by Google searchers who want to buy a security camera.

You can think of keyword clusters as multiple keys on one keyring where the keyring is your content, and the keywords/phrases are your keys.

Users rarely search for products, services, or answers to their questions using the same terms. So, assuming that your brand deals with security cameras, ranking for the first keyword only will limit your market share for the other keywords in the cluster.

Google typically ranks your web pages for multiple keywords anyway. Using a keyword cluster model is a great way to strategically ensure that Google ranks your pages for the most relevant industry keywords and the terms your target audience uses most frequently when searching.

To maximize the benefits of keyword clustering, you should first realize that it takes a lot of time and resources, and it’s not an overnight success approach for your marketing strategy. To be successful, you’ll need to do detailed keyword research, publish tons of content and invest more in your SEO efforts.

It’s also crucial to have an experienced marketing team and use high-quality project management and collaboration software to run your SEO campaigns. In addition to collaboration tools, the software must come with features such as keyword research and keyword clustering recommendations so you can develop a comprehensive keyword strategy.

With that said, here are some of the key benefits of keyword clustering:

Gone are the days when on-page SEO techniques comprised optimizing each landing page of your website for a single focus keyword. Today, optimizing for a single keyword will limit your website’s potential to generate organic traffic.

With keyword clustering, you can target multiple related long-tail and short-tail keywords instead of just one, increasing the number of appearances in search engine page results (SERP). This will make the search engine perceive your pages as more relevant, which will help your website rank higher.

Additionally, it allows you to supercharge your content planning. This is because it forces you to think of better ways to structure your website around your keyword clusters and their relevance to your audience. In the long run, this makes it easier to identify the less competitive, high-conversion keywords which you can focus on to help strengthen your site’s authority and draw in more traffic.

It’s harder to gain momentum with a highly competitive keyword, especially if you are just starting. It’s better to start by focusing on creating content on subtopics that a closely related to your main topic — you will face less competition with these — to help establish your site on the search engine.

Another way to improve organic traffic to your website is by encouraging your clients to leave reviews about their experiences on your Google Business Profile. Google reviews play a huge role in local SEO, building customer trust and helping to attract more visitors and drive more traffic to your business. Since over 70% of customers would leave a review only if asked directly, you must be proactive to get buyers to take action.

In 2007, Google classified at least 25% of all searches entered into its search box as ‘new’ and never seen before. This number has consequently reduced, and from 2013 to date, 15% of all the queries entered on the search engine’s search box are considered ‘new’ and never seen before by Google.

Using keyword clusters diversifies your search potential and makes it easier for the search engine to understand your content and show it on SERPs for all the potential new keywords.

Let’s look at the security cameras example again. If you only optimize for the keyword “security cameras,” you lose the chances of cashing in for the keywords “security camera for home” and “security camera system.”

Your website is like a big mansion, with rooms and spaces interconnected to each other. And just like a house, your website’s internal design and architecture are very important. Internal links are like doorways from one page to another.

Google loves when there are enough doorways and when the doorways are logical and easy to follow. This is because both readers and search engine crawlers can have an easier time finding your content.

Google’s algorithm continually improves to provide searchers with the most relevant results. Among these modifications are penalizing excessively irrelevant internal connections and interpreting conversational requests as thoughts rather than literal keywords.

A pillar page is an extensive resource page that provides in-depth coverage of a primary topic and links to high-quality information developed for supporting subtopics. This makes it easier for consumers to find the relevant and correct content they require and simplifies the process for web crawlers to comprehend and relate themes on your website.

Using keyword clusters creates limitless opportunities for internal linking. And this comes with unlimited benefits that include:

To achieve topical authority, a piece of content must be able to influence the audience’s opinion or thought, which is achieved only if the content shares convincing arguments and strong evidence.

For a site to achieve topical authority, it must have some authority over a group of ideas or a niche rather than having actual influence over a single idea or area. According to this relatively new notion, websites with valuable and relevant material are ranked higher in Google’s search results than those with irrelevant content.

For example, let’s say you have a page on pink Barbie dolls on a website that discusses everything related to Barbie dolls. At the same time, another brand has a similar page for pink Barbie dolls, but the page is on a website about beauty products.

Assuming that you are marketing Barbie dolls and not pink-colored products, your website has higher topical authority.

That’s because although the beauty products site might have a great page on pink Barbie dolls, there is nothing to signal the search engine or the readers that they have a vast knowledge of these dolls. On the other hand, your website has topical authority on Barbie dolls, and it could easily be a one-stop shop for all things dolls, whether the reader wants to learn about pink or orange Barbie dolls.

In short, keyword clusters can help you generate high-quality content on your specific topic. So whenever readers search for information or relevant sites to link to, you will be where they go.

Standalone keyword marketing strategies belong to the past. Using keyword clusters with a good mix of long-tail and short-tail keywords increases your chances of ranking for keywords that can be hard to manage alone.

For example, as time passes, long-tail keyword techniques are becoming more and more crucial for SEO. This results from Google’s emphasis on user experience and intent, the rise of conversational search, and the advent of applications such as voice search.

With clusters, you can rank for various long-tail and short-tail keywords instead of targeting a few search queries separately, consequently increasing conversions and revenue for your company.

For example, here’s a business that is probably targeting multiple keywords with this piece of content. It ranks first for both “content brief” and “what is a content brief” keyphrases.

Here is how you can increase your chances of ranking higher for both long-tail and short-tail keywords:

Developing a keyword cluster requires extensive keyword research and being strategic about how you target your chosen keywords. You must understand your target audience and the types of search phrases they use to search for similar answers, services, or products.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on carrying out keyword clustering and successfully building a content strategy around the clusters:

Before you can start targeting keywords, you must do keyword research first - lots of it.

To start, think of the main keyword you want your site to rank for. For example, let’s say your business is an e-commerce brand that sells women’s running shoes. An example of the primary keyword you can rank for would be “running shoes for women.”

Once you have identified the main keyword, identify all the possible subtopics, long-tail phrases, pillar topics, synonyms, and variations around this keyword.

Also, consider checking which keywords your competitors are ranking for to see which are most popular in your industry. The idea is to find which terms are more valuable and possess the highest conversion potential.

To get you started, here are questions you should ask yourself when doing keyword research:

Once you have a quick list of the main keywords to target, you can use a keyword tool to identify more potential keywords.

Next, use a reliable keyword research tool to find out which of the keywords you have listed are valuable and have the potential to bring traffic to your website.

There are many ways to record your research results. Depending on your keyword research tool, the easiest is to download the data as a spreadsheet.

Here is an example:

If done correctly, extensive keyword research can give you a list of hundreds or even thousands of keywords that have the potential to bring more traffic to your website. This data will help you identify which keywords your target audience uses more when searching for products and services like yours so that you can prioritize them as “core” keywords in your clusters.

Once your keyword list is ready, you will quickly notice similar themes and patterns. In fact, you may have already started noticing various similarities while doing your research. These patterns are what will help you form keyword clusters.

Here are some criteria you can use to segment your keyword list into clusters.

Once you have figured out the commonalities, organize the keywords into groups of about 3-5 — more than this might be troublesome to optimize. You can rely on any reputable SEO tools like to carry out this process.

Ensure that every cluster has got a core keyword and several complementary keywords. For instance, you can include a lower-difficulty, high-search volume keyword with a few long-tail, low-search keywords.

In such a case, the core keyword might be slightly more competitive to rank for, but you have paired it with lower-difficulty keywords with slightly higher conversion potential.

Also, remember that not all keywords on your list should end up in a cluster. Only pick out the ones with high CPCs, substantial search volume, and relevant search intent, and use only these to make your keyword clusters.

Now that you have your keyword clusters, they will work as the roadmap to your highly optimized pages. Use the clusters to create, optimize and generally organize the content on your website.

Typically, each keyword cluster represents one core topic, or what is known as a pillar page. You must have a landing page for each keyword cluster to optimize properly. You can also use a content optimization tool to help you better optimize your content.

Ideally, you should analyze the keywords that form each cluster to see what information you need to share and how you can help ease your audience’s pain points.

After creating your initial web pages, you will need to extend your content to strengthen your keyword clustering efforts. You should not only consider the material you publish today; instead, you should concentrate on developing a sustainable content strategy that supports your website’s long-term SEO.

Prioritize the following areas to increase pillar page rankings:

Building blog content around your pillar pages helps reinforce your keyword clusters, thus increasing the ranking and content authority of the pillar pages. Each blog post can focus on one of the supporting keywords — subtopics or keywords related to the core keyword. This will help you to form topic clusters for your website automatically.

However, the internal linking strategy between these pages also plays a big role in helping them rank well on Google. Typically, the subtopic pages should link back to the pillar pages with the core keyword to help increase the chances of ranking higher for these keywords.

Building topic clusters on your website allows you to add more internal links, increasing the time users spend on your pages. It also helps Google crawlers quickly identify which pages are most important.

The truth is, it’s easier to repurpose existing content and attract more traffic than to rank for new content.

So to rank more quickly for the keyword clusters, you should:

Once you have finished keyword clustering and published optimized content around these clusters, it’s also important to track the keywords to see how they rank.

Here are the key things to track to find out if your new SEO strategy is working:

Keyword clustering might be a long game, but it’s all worth it in the long run. It’s part of an advanced SEO strategy that can give you an edge against Google’s two main superpowers (natural language processing and indexing), so you can win some verticals.

When you base your website around keyword clusters, you are telling Google that your site is an authority in your niche and contains a huge breadth and depth of content. Thus, keyword clustering is not only beneficial to your current SEO strategy, but it is also the future of SEO in general. Utilizing this technique now will put your website ahead of the park and set it to rank for the long term.

As you can see, a lot goes into creating a winning SEO strategy. Google is continually evolving and developing itself, so you need to keep evolving to stay relevant too. Keyword clustering is one of Google’s greatest inventions that allows you to create, optimize, and organize your content by diversifying your language to rank higher and quicker.

Keyword clusters make your content look more in-depth and show your audience and the search engine that you understand your niche. Additionally, in-depth content aids in covering all possible user intent and helping your audience get all the answers they seek from one source, which builds your site’s authority.