If you're looking to increase your website's traffic, there are a few important things that can really help with that.
One of those is finding ways to use related keywords together in order to make sure people searching by phrase actually end up seeing what they were after.
This has always baffled me because everyone seems to do it differently (and sometimes without even knowing about each other) but here at UnderWP we will be covering keywords topic in detail using different paid and free tools in coming days. We have already started with this post What Is Keyword Research? A Simple Answer
In any case, if you want an easy way to see which groups of related terms you should be targeting with your content, just look no further than good old Google Search Console.
You may not realize it, but Google Search Console does such a fantastic job at showing you all kinds of information that it shouldn't be overlooked.
In fact, since we already cover quite a bit of functionality from within this tool itself, I think it deserves its own category under “hidden gems” of Google products.
What Is A Cluster Of Related Words?
When talking about websites, one thing most people understand is that certain pages tend to perform much better than others.
If you take a page containing information about dog training or something similar, chances are pretty high that you won't get nearly as many visitors from searches as say a product review about toys.
These sorts of topics might seem unrelated, but they aren't – dogs need toys too!
So instead of trying to come up with a unique title for every single page, try breaking down these different topic areas into their own clusters of related words.
So let's pretend that our hypothetical pet store sells everything from cute kitties to big posters. Instead of coming up with totally original titles for each individual page, break out some general categories.
For example, create separate sections called “Cats”, “Dogs”, “Toys” etc. Then put links to all relevant pages inside each section with the anchor as a relatable keyword.
In our example, we can use the anchor to be something like “summertime dog toys”.
Now, when somebody goes to your site, they might type in something like dogs toys in summer, and Google would know exactly where to send them based on which section they clicked on.
It doesn't matter whether or not they searched specifically for puppies – they'd still land on the Toys section, right? That's what makes it so powerful.
By taking advantage of Google's natural ability to group related items together, you could potentially increase clicks and overall time spent browsing your entire site.
Also, grouping related ideas together helps users who don't necessarily care about specifics and only want broad overviews of whatever subject they happen to be interested in.
Users like this probably wouldn't mind being redirected automatically to a more generalized version of your main page once they click on a link that lands them somewhere else on your site.
Using The Right Tool To Find Your Keyword Groups
Now that you know what kind of power keyword clusters can add to your online presence, you might start wondering where to begin.
Thankfully, Google offers a free webapp called Keyword Planner to help you figure out which phrases are getting used the most often across millions of sites around the Web.
We will here show you step by step of using Keyword Planner to create a simple keyword cluster.
1. Go to the Keyword Planner and sign in.
2. Click on the Discover Keywords box.
3. Select START WITH A WEBSITE tab.
4. Input your website address. Use the entire site option.
5. Press the Get Results button.
Now you will see the results page with all the related keywords for the URL you inputted.
In this page, you can see that Google has already did the job for you. For example, in the image above, the first three keywords are related and can be clustered under the main keyword like “digital marketing agency”
Here is the final overview of our simple example.
Keyword Planner is a very helpful SEO tool if you know how to use it. Advanced SEO pros use it to get information that other paid tools cannot. Start using it more often and you will see how powerful it is.
In our example, there are many other keywords that we did not talk about. Only for the main page, it showed keywords around 300.
Use this tool and scan your landing pages or posts that target a specific keyword. You will find related keywords to the seed keyword.
And then start writing content for other keywords in the cluster. Internal links from related to keywords will then help you boost the main keyword page on Google and other search engines.
Similar keyword clustering can be done using Google Search Console. But you need advanced technical knowledge to do so.
Finding Similar Phrases & Using Them As Groupings With Free Tool
Above we have seen the easiest way of creating keyword cluster for your main keyword. This is a good starting step towards learning keyword clustering.
But we won't leave you with just first step. Lets see an advanced way of clustering keywords using Google search console.
If you have Google search console associated with your website that you own, you will be seeing some amazing keywords that you did not know existed in next few steps.
1. Log in to your Google search console area.
2. On the left tab, select Search results.
4. Download the results as CSV.
5. You will get a zip file in your Downloads folder. Inside this ZIP file you will have 7 files.
6. Open the Queries.csv file.
7. Select the Top Queries column and select all the keywords that you want to be keyword clustered.
8. Go to a free keyword clustering tool like: https://www.pemavor.com/solution/keyword-grouping-tool/
9. Paste your keywords here in Pemavor free keyword tool.
10. Select the Delimeter as Comma.
11. Press the Group Keywords button.
Pemavor free keyword tool is free to cluster keywords upto 10,000 keywords. This is good enough for small to medium size websites.
But if you have more keywords that needs to be clustered in the right way, there is also another free tool in our SEO tools list here: https://underwp.com/free-seo-optimization-tools-google-loves/
Creating keyword cluster with the keywords that you get from Google search console is very helpful in building a strong content foundation for your website.
Google is directly giving you the keywords that it ranks your website for. Now you need to cluster them in the right and create interlinking content on the website.
It is also one of the least followed ways by many SEO experts in creating an authority website.
An authority website carries a lot of weight in the eyes of Google spiders when it comes to ranking. Because an authority website has got all the content covering every corner of the niche.
Effects of Keyword Clusters on SEO
As far as effects go, keyword clustering can work wonders for your SEO campaign. Not only does it provide searchers with easier navigation, but it also provides your search rank with a boost.
Because Google knows that related terms belong in the same area, it assumes that each page must be optimized for a specific subset of the clustered phrase.
And because of this assumption, it ranks each web page higher based upon how closely it matches the given query.
Basically, the more targeted your grouped phrases are, the more likely you are to achieve greater visibility among search result listings.
Of course, this isn't entirely true. Sometimes, you'll see that a highly optimized term appears lower than a non-optimized one despite the fact that they both represent the exact same concept.
Unfortunately, Google hasn't yet figured out how to determine the quality of a given piece of data, so sometimes it gets confused and puts less targeted terms ahead of more targeted ones. And there are other factors like backlinks from good link building services, Page Authority, etc.
But generally speaking, if you follow proper naming conventions along with keeping your code clean and tidy, keyword clustering works extremely well.
Final Words
Gathering the right keywords and creating optimized content is the most important ranking factor for any website.
Keyword clustering is an advanced way of gathering keywords and organizing them in the right way to show your authority in your niche.
So making an authority website should implement keyword clustering when planning for the keywords. This is a crucial step that should not be missed out.
Share this article with your SEO team and let them know the importance of keyword clustering.
Have you tried using keyword clusters yourself? What did you find worked well and didn't? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
