Using keyword clusters to improve your SEO content strategy will help you make your site more Google-friendly and your content more relevant.
How to Improve Your SEO Content Strategy Using Keyword Clusters
Google’s engineering team has shifted its attention in recent years to natural language processing and a better understanding of how on-page information interacts.
Google was able to comprehend synonyms thanks to neural matching. BERT aided Google in deciphering those perplexing prepositions.
Google becomes more literary with each core upgrade.
Despite the fact that Google is becoming more intelligent, many website owners continue to optimise their sites with just a few keyword objectives in mind.
This is an antiquated strategy, particularly given the fact that our landing pages often rank for hundreds of keywords.
This seems like a wild new world for on-page SEO for those of us who have been watching Google from the beginning.
As Google’s natural language processing skills increase, our on-page SEO approach must adapt to reflect these developments in search.
So, how can we match Google’s technology with our on-page optimizations?
The solution is to use keyword clustering.
What Are Keyword Clusters and How Do They Work?
Keyword clusters are collections of terms that indicate buyers with similar needs.
“Linen curtains,” “linen window curtains,” and “white linen curtains,” for example, are all various keyword phrases that indicate people looking to purchase linen curtains.
Assume your company offers linen curtains. You restrict your market share if you simply strive to rank for the first keyword.
Instead, if you get your web page to rank for your major keyword, as well as long-tail versions and relevant subtopics, your website will frequently rank for 10-20 times the number of keywords and get substantially more traffic.
How to Make Keyword and Topic Groups
It’s vital to keep in mind that using the potential of keyword clusters requires a lot more time and effort than a one-and-done approach to website optimization.
More keyword research, content production, and effort for your SEO and marketing teams are required.
However, creating subject clusters on your website will make it more Google- and user-friendly in the end. The following are some of the advantages of keyword clustering:
- Long-tail keyword ranks are strong.
- Short-tail keyword ranks have improved.
- Increased organic traffic.
- Improved SERP rankings more quickly.
- There are many possibilities for internal connecting.
- In your sector specialisation, develop knowledge and content authority.
Here’s a quick rundown of how to conduct keyword clustering and create a content strategy based on those clusters.
Step 1: Make a keyword list.
The process of keyword clustering begins with keyword research. There is a lot of it.
Consider the principal term for which you want your website to rank.
Then, find all of the variants, long-tail phrases, and subtopics that people are searching for with that term.
Finishing tasks will no longer be a source of aggravation.
To get started, look at what keywords your rivals are presently ranking for.
Then, using a keyword tool, look for comparable keywords, autocompletes, subtopics, or queries that people are searching for while looking for items and services similar to yours.
There are a number various methods to keep track of your keyword research, but spreadsheets are the most straightforward.
Include organic difficulty, search volume, and cost-per-click numbers for each term in your list.
These metrics will assist you choose which keywords in your clusters have the highest economic value and should be the “core” keywords.
Thousands of keywords are identified by certain SEO specialists throughout their investigation. However, if you’re just starting started with this method, a hundred keyword phrases should plenty to uncover many potential subject clusters that you may expand on your website.
Keep in mind the significance of relevancy and search intent when you create your keyword list.
You only want to choose keywords that will attract the proper people to your website, people who are interested in the goods or services you provide and are likely to convert.
Step 2: Divide your keywords into categories.
Once you’ve compiled a large keyword list, you’ll begin to see trends in your terms.
You may observe that visitors utilise the same terms, phrases, synonyms, or subtopics in their search searches. These patterns demonstrate the many ways you may organise keywords and cluster them.
The criteria you should use to group these keywords into clusters are as follows.
Relevance in terms of semantics
It’s critical that your clusters’ keywords have identical search intent.
If you attempt to optimise a landing page for keywords that are too different, the text will become less legible and Google will get confused about what the page is truly about.
CPC And Search Volume
Your clusters’ primary keywords should have a decent search traffic (otherwise you optimise for nobody).
They should also be able to convert (CPCs speak to their economic value).
Difficulty in Organics
Whether or not you add keywords with a greater organic difficulty depends on your website’s authority, backlink profile, and age.
Only include keywords in your clusters that your site has a chance of ranking for.
A Look at Two Keyword Clusters in More Depth
Pair the cluster’s core term with complimentary keywords once you’ve found it.
For example, by giving enough information about them on the landing page, you may include those that are long-tail, lesser difficulty, or lower search traffic, or those that would be an easy victory.
Let’s apply these keyword clustering concepts to our software platform’s keywords. Here’s an example of a possible keyword cluster:
Why is this an excellent cluster of keywords?
Because they have a conceptual connection. All of these people are seeking for a tool that can help them schedule interviews.
The most valuable keyword is “interview scheduling software,” which we’ve matched with complimentary phrases with lesser search volume and a good CPC.
These terms suggest a somewhat distinct search purpose semantically, and hence belong in their own cluster. These people are looking for a technology that would help them conduct virtual interviews.
Although our main keyword is significantly more harder to rank for, we have filled out the cluster with keywords that are easier to rank for and have a high conversion potential.
You may manually classify your keywords into groups if you are sure in your niche and understand the keyword metrics and the intricacies of search intent (just like I illustrated above).
Keyword grouping programmes are also available to help automate the process. They can group together your keywords for you.
Remember that not all of the terms in your list have to wind up in your clusters when you segment.
The most crucial keywords to add are those with the greatest value.
A keyword is useful to your brand if it has a high CPC, a large search volume, and appropriate search intent.
Step 3: Make Pillar Pages for Your Keyword Clusters and Optimize Them
They give a blueprint for how to develop, optimise, and arrange content on your website after you’ve categorised your keywords into clusters.
Essentially, your keyword clusters indicate your website’s main subjects.
These pages are often known as “pillar pages.”
We found two significant keyword clusters for our software platform in the previous example.
To successfully carry out our keyword clustering, we must develop landing pages for each of the term clusters.
The platform’s interview scheduling tool should have its own main page. The virtual interviewing tool should be the centrepiece of the other landing page.
On-page SEO recommended practises should be used on the pillar pages for your keyword clusters. Using a content optimization tool to help you improve your material more successfully is one of my favourite tactics.
Prioritize the following areas to boost the ranking potential of your pillar pages:
- Topical Depth: Write long-form material that delves deeply into the subject.
- Have a clear framework and incorporate your keyword phrases in your h2s and h3s in your information architecture.
- Improve the user’s page experience by using interactive on-page components such as movies, jump links, and carousels.
Step 4: Use blog content to reinforce your keyword clusters.
Build up blog material that reinforces your major keyword clusters to boost the ranking and content authority of your pillar sites.
Longer-tail keyword phrases, subtopics, or issues connected to your main keywords may all be targeted with these blogs.
The internal linking profile of this material will have a significant impact on how your website’s landing pages rank in Google.
To improve your chances of ranking for those higher-value keywords, your blog entries should link back to their respective pillar page.
You’ll be able to create additional clusters on your website if your company has many items or areas of expertise.
Your website content will ultimately look like this if it’s planned out:
The amount of keyword clusters you find will be less if you simply offer one primary product or service. Nonetheless, focusing on your main subject areas and creating a lot of helpful material will help you outrank your competition in less time.
Adding internal connections to your website becomes easier as you expand your clusters.
Internal links distribute around your PageRank and help Google realise which pages of your website are the most essential. This not only boosts the amount of time consumers spend on your website, but it also helps Google understand which parts of your website are the most important.
Is Keyword Clustering Worth the Time and Effort?
Keyword clusters are a more sophisticated SEO technique that may help you get the competitive advantage you need in competitive sectors.
This is due to Google’s two most powerful superpowers: natural language processing and unrivalled indexing.
Consider that for a moment. Google is aware of the millions of keyword phrases used by searchers in a variety of businesses. It also recognises even little variances in those questions and how they connect to one another.
Google has spent years developing NLP models to calculate content quality signals and forecast which web pages will provide the searcher with the most relevant information.
When you use keyword clustering on your landing pages, you show Google that your website is an authority in your field and that your material has a lot of breadth and depth.
You also provide the rich content clusters that Google’s content signals have been taught to recognise and boost in search results.
Site owners must think larger about their content while using keyword clustering. It’s also the way SEO will go in the future.
It’s time for your on-page approach to catch up to Google if you want your web pages to rank for the long haul.
Source: SEO Agency Malaysia, SEO Malaysia
