What Are Keywords Clustering

What is keywords clustering?

In Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), keywords clustering is the process of grouping words into semantically-related groups or “clusters”, and creating a hierarchy between a pillar page, which is focused on a core topic, and cluster pages, which are focused on specific subtopics. The topic for the pillar page is usually represented by a high search volume short-tail keyword, while the subtopics are represented by low search volume long-tail keywords.

How Do Search Engines View Keyword Clusters?

Search engines look very favorably upon websites using keyword clustering because it allows them to:

• Make connections between pages, or detect semantic relationships between pieces of content
• Recognize your content as a trusted authority, worthy of a top spot.

When you take the time to organize your keywords into clusters, it makes it easier for search engines to discover related content, too. This is because you improve your site architecture with clusters, which in turn allows you to boost your search engine visibility.

How Keywords Clustering Can Help You Grow Your Website’s Organic Traffic

Keywords clustering can be a powerful SEO technique to grow organic traffic. 

• It will help you improve your content planning by forcing you to think about how to structure your website based on the different keywords clusters you’ve identified and how relevant they are to your audience’s goals.
• you can also identify a less competitive keywords group related which can help you build authority. If you’re just getting started, instead of writing a pillar page about a highly competitive topic, start creating great content about niche subtopics that are related to your main topic. You will face less competition and it will therefore be easier for people to discover your content on search engines. Besides, your subtopic page is likely to be easier to digest for your audience looking for information about a subtopic.
• Make sure your subtopic pages covers most of the keywords it’s supposed to cover. Assuming your content fully covers the subtopic, Google will see your content as valuable, and will therefore pass on the SEO juice to other pages of your website which you’ve internally linked to.

There are several types of keywords clustering:

• lemma-based: these are the most basic types of keywords grouping. There are some free keywords grouping tools to do just that.
• SERP-based: this requires a keyword software and is based on the analysis of search engines results. To make it simple, this approach of keyword grouping assumes that words that are related would return some matching URLs when searched on Google. We are covering this type of keywords clustering in more details in the next paragraph.
• NLP-based: this type of approach is based on Natural Language Processing and overcomes the limitation that you’ll face if you only rely on a lemma-based approach. For example, a lemma-based approach would be able to tell that “World Cup Teams” and “World Cup Schedule” are related. However, it would not be able to tell that “World Cup” and “Football” are related. An NLP-based approach should be able to tell that these keywords are related. Check out our free keywords clustering tool based on NLP.

Levels of SERP-based clustering

SOFT Clustering

The Clustering Tool picks the most popular keyword and compares TOP 10 search results for this keyword with TOP 10 results for other keywords by the number of matching URLs in TOP 10. If the number of matching URLs matches the selected grouping level, these keywords are banded together. All keywords within a group will be related to the most popular keyword, but they will not necessarily be linked to each other (will not necessarily have matching URLs).

MODERATE Clustering

The Tool picks the most popular keyword and compares the TOP 10 search results for this keyword with TOP 10 results for other keywords by the number of matching URLs in TOP 10. At the same time, it compares all keywords to each other. If the number of matching URLs matches the selected grouping level, these keywords are banded together. Each keyword within a group will have a related keyword with matching URLs, but two different pairs of keywords will not necessarily have matching URLs.

HARD Clustering

The Tool picks the most popular keyword and compares TOP10 search results for this keyword with TOP10 results for other keywords by the number of matching URLs in TOP 10. At the same time, it compares all keywords to each other and all matching URLs in the related pairs. If the number of matching URLs matches the selected grouping level, these keywords are banded together. All keywords within a group will be related to each other and will have the same matching URLs.