If you’re still creating a single page for each keyword you want to target, you’re doing SEO the hard way. Keyword clustering flips this approach on its head by grouping related keywords so you can rank for dozens of terms with a single, well-optimized page.
In this guide, we’ll break down real keyword clustering examples that show exactly how it works and how to use it to drive more traffic, faster.
Ready? Let’s roll!
What is Keyword Clustering?
Keyword clustering is the process of grouping related search terms to target multiple keywords with a single piece of content. This keyword methodology is designed to improve your website visibility on search engines by optimizing one single blog post or webpage for a cluster of similar keywords, as opposed to just one keyword. By focusing on keyword clusters, you improve the relevance of each page on your website, helping all the pages rank higher on Google.
For example, let’s say we are doing keyword research for “best mouse trackpads”.
The old and outdated approach is to generate a list of 1000+ keywords that are related to a main term and pick a keyword to target, the end product of such an exercise might look something like this:
A more efficient method for doing keyword research is to sort your keywords into separate buckets by clustering, or grouping, similar terms together.
You will discover that you can rank on Google for most of the keywords in this huge list of 1,000 keywords with just 30 blog posts or articles (instead of 1,000 separate pages!).
Why is this so simple? Because many of the keywords in this list share the same or similar meaning. Therefore, by grouping them together and targeting the terms with one piece of content you’re “keyword clustering” and improving your efficiency to rank on Google.
Let’s look at an example. Here is a clustering example for “best mouse trackpads”
General & Informational Focused Blog Post
- best mouse trackpad
- mousepad vs trackpad
- what is a trackpad?
- trackpad benefits
- trackpad alternatives
- how to clean a trackpad
Features & Attributes Focused Blog Post
- best large trackpad
- best small trackpad
- best ergonomic trackpad
- best portable trackpad
- best trackpad for travel
- best wireless trackpad
- best wired trackpad
- best trackpad with wrist rest
- smooth trackpad surface
- durable trackpad
Intended Use Focused Blog Post
- best trackpad for gaming
- best trackpad for graphic design
- best trackpad for CAD
- best trackpad for video editing
- best trackpad for programming
- best trackpad for office work
- best trackpad for home use
Materials & Construction Focused Blog Post
- best glass trackpad
- best aluminum trackpad
- best fabric trackpad
- best plastic trackpad
- hard surface trackpad
- soft surface trackpad
Brands & Budget Focused Blog Post
- best trackpad under $20
- best trackpad under $50
- best trackpad under $100
- razer trackpad
- apple magic trackpad alternative
- best trackpad brand
- top rated trackpads
- best value trackpad
Related Peripherals Focused Blog Post
- trackpad with keyboard
- trackpad for laptop
- trackpad for desktop
- trackpad for mac
- trackpad for PC
- trackpad gestures
- trackpad settings
- trackpad drivers
Keyword clustering is most effective when done with specialized software tools. These tools automate the process, saving you time and ensuring accuracy by quickly grouping keywords. For example SemRush keyword strategy tool does this automatically, here is an example of a keyword clustering report:
Tools like SemRush can handle large keyword sets, making clustering a much simpler process vs. doing this manually.
How Useful is Keyword Clustering?
Humans appreciate original thought as opposed to rehashed ideas, especially half-baked thoughts that don’t add value in the way of information, insights, or data. We’re all getting much wiser to the inconsistencies and robotic undertones of AI-generated content.
Yes, much (most?) blog posts veer into promotional territory, and even the best educational-leaning pieces contain some degree of sales-y-ness. The benefit of keyword clustering; however, is that a certain level of depth is required. It’s just the nature of this technique.
When done right, keyword clustering will turbocharge your SEO strategy. Content that effectively uses keyword clustering often ranks higher. Search engine algorithms favor better articulated, cleanly-structured writing. Look at the top-ranking brands and leaders in any field: the most-trusted voices are usually the most articulate.
Here are some of the main benefits of keyword clustering strategy:
- Faster SEO Rankings: When you target a group of keywords vs. one singular keyword you end up creating a much more detailed and thorough piece of content. This improves the ranking of your content because it’s just more thorough and covers all the subtopics at length.
- More Efficient Content Creation: Writing a new piece of content targeting just one keyword can get expensive and challenging. Keyword clustering enables you to focus on an entire group of keywords with just one piece of content which saves you time, effort and money.
- Overall Better Organization: Keyword clustering helps create a more organized and user-friendly site structure. For example each keyword cluster can serve as a main category or subcategory of the topic on your website in turn guiding visitors to other related content they care about and making navigation easier.
If you’ve ever noticed that high-ranking sites with mediocre writing are pulling in decent traffic, a few things are going on. First of all, even I admit to hitting ‘publish’ just to crank out a less-than-wonderful piece in a crunch to communicate something crucial to my readers. A perfectionist, I am not. Over time, I amend and improve posts, fixing my bottomless cup of typos along the way. That’s ok with me. How do you expect me to carry the moniker Criminally Prolific?
Second, sometimes a niche industry just doesn’t have the same competition that exists in other spaces that are crowded with plenty of wisdom, opinions, and lengthy posts created, because it doesn’t matter if real people aren’t absorbing every word. Enough people are clicking on these popular sites, they’ve had authority and relevance for a while, so marketing activities are heavily focused on SEO-driven methods.
Third, this is an opportunity. If you’re wondering how to outrank your competition and a quick analysis of what’s on page one covers a topic that you could structure and describe better with some thought and keyword clustering, go for it! I’m always looking for weaknesses or gaps in understanding or how to pull more real world examples into my pieces. Honing your approach to keyword clustering is the answer to your ranking troubles if you’ve tried everything else I’ve recommended up until this point.
Remember: Search engine algorithms are constantly changing and developing new abilities to more efficiently sniff out exact results for users. Whether you’ve personally felt the accuracy of algorithmic improvements or you’ve given up and just find the answers you’re actually looking for on Reddit like everyone seems to be doing nowadays, don’t lose hope. Because tomorrow it might be better. Life isn’t static, your content shouldn’t be either. As AI-enabled systems refine our search patterns, maintaining and refreshing content is necessary. That includes making sure the phrases that you’ve grouped together for keyword clustering also stay fresh.
What’s better than targeting a single long tail keyword within your content?
Having a flawless, airtight, all encompassing keyword clustering strategy that informs the upward trajectory of your entire SEO strategy.
Semantic vs. SERP Keyword Clustering
There are two ways to cluster keywords: semantic analysis (grouping by meaning) and SERP analysis (grouping by what ranks together in Google). The best method depends on your topic, time, and experience.
Let’s break this down so you understand this right away.
Semantic analysis – Grouping keywords by meaning or intent.
Here is keyword clustering example: “best SEO tools” and “top SEO software” would be clustered together because they both have the same intent (finding SEO tools).
SERP analysis: Grouping keywords based on the results they trigger in Google.
Here is keyword clustering example: the terms “buy running shoes” and “best running shoes” have 70% of the same pages ranking in top 10 positions on Google search results so they would be clustered together.
Let’s dive a bit deeper…
Semantic Keyword Clustering
Semantic analysis is the process of selecting a list of sub-topics related to your main keyword based on their meanings – i.e. your knowledge of how the terms are related.
You really need a good understanding of the meaning of the words you’re hoping to target on the periphery. You will also need to find the search volume for each term to see if the list of sub-topics is something that people are searching for and if it will round out your authority and visibility on the broader topic overall. By targeting a specific keyword, you influence how you rank for a whole set of related terms, or sub-topics. Having this information gives you the ability to make better decisions within your SEO and content strategy.
Let’s look at a basic example:
Keyword Cluster: Secondhand Books
Buying Options
- Used books near me
- Buy cheap books online
- Discount books
- Online used bookstores
- Secondhand bookshop
- Pre owned books
- Used book websites
Specific Genres & Types
- Amazon secondhand books
- Secondhand books online
- Used textbooks
- Secondhand novels
- Rare books for sale
- Vintage books online
- Out of print books
- Used cookbooks
- Secondhand children’s books
Selling & Value
- Sell used books online
- Where to sell used books
- Used book value
- Book buyback
- Donate used books
- Used book price guide
Condition & Quality
- Good condition used books
- Acceptable used books
- Used books like new
- Quality used books
- Used books grading
- Used books condition guide
Local & Regional
- Secondhand book stores
- Used bookstores [city]
- Secondhand books [state]
- Local used book store
- Used book sale near me
- Bookstores that buy used books
- Used book store [zip code]
There are a number of great keyword clustering tools as well as APIs out there which can generate a quick list of keywords which mean the same thing and even group them for you. A good friend of ours Ryan Robinson has a great simple tool called Keyword Cluster Tool which simply generates a great breakdown of keywords related to the main term you type in.
One quick warning as you use this methodology is that you need to pull the search volumes, keyword difficulty metrics for all these of these keywords as well as check the SERPs to see how competitive they are before deciding to focus on any given keyword cluster.
If you want to dive deeper into this work, you can use a specific prompt for an LLM to help you determine a list of sub-topics for your keyword. I play around with refining the prompts quite a bit.
Here is an example of a prompt I would use to have an LLM such as ChatGPT or Llama do some of the more time-consuming work for me:
“Give me a list of 50 terms that would be considered to have same meaning and be a sub-keyword of the term “______”.
For purposes of this exercise, I am referring to SEO keywords.
From the list provided, next I would enter another prompt to make the list even more useful.
“From the list of words provided above, which words on this list have a similar meaning, i.e. are semantically related to the main keyword for SEO purposes? Leave out all the other terms.”
Now you review this list and track down the search volume for each sub-keyword. If this is a good list of terms that you would like to additionally rank for, you are on the right track! If the search volume is too high for a term, you will need to come up with a more specific main keyword. The more specific a keyword is, chances are the less someone is searching for it.
SERP Keyword Clustering
SERP analysis for keyword clustering is the process of grouping keywords based on whether they trigger the same or very similar search results in Google. If two keywords return overlapping top-ranking pages, it signals that Google sees them as having the same intent—so you can target both with one page.
Example:
If the top 10 results for “best hiking boots” and “top boots for hiking” are nearly identical, they belong in the same cluster.
This method helps you align with how Google understands and groups search intent.
Let’s look at some SERP keyword clustering examples:
Same results in top 10 ranking on Google means these terms should be in same cluster
The following three keywords all show nearly identical search results on Google and can be clustered together:
“how to start a podcast”
“starting a podcast guide”
“steps to launch a podcast”
The following three keywords all have at least the same 6-7 search results in top 10 on Google and can be clustered together:
“best email marketing tools”
“top email marketing software”
“email automation platforms”
Different results on SERPs means Different Keyword Clusters
The following two search terms have different intent (strategy vs. tools), different results on Google which means these should be separate clusters.
“email marketing strategy”
vs.
“email marketing software”
Here is another example where the results on Google are different so these should be different clusters:
“SEO audit checklist”
vs.
“SEO audit tool”
When using SERP analysis for keyword clustering, the general rule is: if 3-5 or more of the top 10 results on Google are the same (or very similar) between two keywords, they likely belong in the same cluster. The more overlapping results, the stronger the signal that Google sees those keywords as having the same search intent.
For us at TopicRanker we like to see at least 5-7 of the top 10 results on Google to be the same between two keywords to consider the keywords in same cluster.
Quick guidelines:
-
7+ matching results on SERP → Strong cluster match.
-
4–6 matching results on SERP → Likely a match, but double-check intent.
-
1–3 matching results on SERP → Possibly different intent—use caution.
-
0 overlapping results on SERP → Don’t cluster. Different topics or intent.
Also consider type of results, not just URLs. If both SERPs show blog posts, listicles, or product pages even if from different domains, that’s another strong signal of shared intent.
As you can see analyzing SERPs for 1000+ keywords is not match for a manual task, you need a software platform to do this.
The folks at KeywordInsights are masters at keyword clustering and have built their entire platform specialized and focused primarily on keyword clustering.
The Keyword Clustering Process
Here’s my tried and true method for writing content that’s enhanced by keyword clustering and ranks even better than basic keyword targeting.
- Determine the main keyword you want to rank for.
- Determine the sub topics related to the keyword, either using a tool or based purely on semantics.
- Select a list of 20-50 sub-topics to focus on and evaluate the data.
- Write your blog post, product page, article, or other piece of written content. Keep the list of sub-topics in mind in terms of the depth and the breadth of your content.
- You will begin to rank for your keyword as well as gain authority and relevance on many related terms.
Examples of Keyword Clustering
Below are a few examples of keyword clusters, some with search volume information, some without. These examples show the nuances of semantics, the possibility for reaching more narrow or wider audiences, and how the use of keyword clustering can be a powerful way to harness more depth and relevance regardless of the type of website you have.
| Keyword Cluster | Search Volume |
| “tax day 2025” | 6600 |
| first day to file taxes 2025 | 3600 |
| last day to file taxes 2025 | 1600 |
| when is tax day 2025 | 1300 |
| first day to file taxes 2025 usa | 1000 |
| when is the first day to file taxes 2025 | 880 |
| when is the last day to file taxes 2025 | 720 |
| 2025 tax day | 390 |
| what day can you file taxes 2025 | 390 |
| first day of tax season 2025 | 320 |
| what days are tax refunds deposited 2025 | 320 |
| earliest day to file taxes 2025 | 260 |
| when is last day to file taxes 2025 | 260 |
| 1st day to file taxes 2025 | 210 |
| what is the first day to file taxes 2025 | 210 |
| first day you can file taxes 2025 | 170 |
| last day for taxes 2025 | 170 |
| Keyword Cluster |
| “keyword clustering” |
| Keyword clustering Examples |
| Keyword clustering examples for e-commerce |
| Keyword clustering examples for Amazon sellers |
| Keyword Cluster | |
| “Best coffee for moka pot” | 1000 |
| best coffee for a moka pot | 110 |
| best coffee grinder for moka pot | 110 |
| best coffee beans for moka pot | 70 |
| best coffee grind for moka pot | 70 |
| best ground coffee for moka pot | 50 |
| best coffee for moka pot reddit | 40 |
| best pre ground coffee for moka pot | 40 |
| best coffee blend for moka pot | 20 |
| best coffee brand for moka pot | 20 |
| best coffee for italian moka pot | 20 |
| best coffee for moka pot espresso | 20 |
| best coffee grind size for moka pot | 20 |
| Keyword Cluster |
| “sustainable living” |
| Sustainable lifestyle tips |
| How to reduce plastic waste |
| Eco-friendly home products |
| Green energy solutions |
| Sustainable transportation options |
| Composting at home |
| Zero-waste living |
| Sustainable fashion |
| How to grow your own food |
| Ethical consumerism |
| Sustainable shopping habits |
| How to recycle effectively |
| Keyword Cluster |
| “personal finance” |
| Budgeting tips for beginners |
| How to save money |
| Personal finance for millennials |
| Personal finance for retirees |
| Best ways to invest money |
| Credit score improvement |
| Emergency fund essentials |
| Managing student loans |
| How to reduce debt |
| Tax-saving strategies |
| Money management for couples |
Common Mistakes to Avoid
There are a few things to keep in mind when keyword clustering. First and foremost, let’s keep in mind that humans are more reliable than AI when it comes to judging semantics, writing, and keyword relevance.
If you lean on any LLMs to create content – whether it’s a list or a blog outline – take the time to read it. Read it aloud, that’s the best way to see if it will make sense to readers.
So, it’s important to confirm the search intent of a cluster is aligned with whatever concept or product you’re offering. Watch out for any words that have double meanings or terms that are so broad you’re not effectively reaching your audience.
| Keyword Cluster |
| “grass” |
| Grass care |
| Lawn fertilizer |
| Grass maintenance |
| Weed |
| Grass cutting tips |
| Sod |
| Grass seed |
| Grass removal |
One of these things is not like the other.
Chances are you have a growing body of content on your site. It may also be true that you have some overlapping keywords across different pages or within a piece of content. If you aren’t differentiating between search intents for visitors to your site, both your audience and the search algorithm will be left feeling confused. Stick to your topic and if you have a page that is serving more than one clear purpose, you’ll have a better chance of reaching your audience.
Focus on the value of the long tail keyword. When you’re creating your keyword clusters, keep in mind that broad keywords don’t yield conversion rates as high as more specific phrases.
If you decide to go the semantic route to skip the time consuming SERP analytics, I strongly recommend you verify the search volume for _______ sub-keywords. Understanding at least some level of the competitiveness of the keyword cluster that you’re aiming to rank for will keep you on the good side of relevance.
Finally, remember that algorithm updates are constantly transforming search engines. It’s similar to what Mark Twain said: “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a few minutes.” Search engine performance isn’t static and the updates will impact clustering and keyword relevance over time.
Advanced Keyword Clustering Strategies
-
Additional Tools for Clustering Like a Pro
In addition to using LLMs to help you brainstorm lists of potential sub-keywords, there are lots of other tools out there that can support your keyword clustering. These tools enhance your content and make sure it covers a range of related sub-keywords.
- Surfer SEO
- Clearscope
- Ahrefs
- SEMrush
- Yoast SEO
-
Cluster for Featured Snippets
Did you know that you can optimize keyword clusters to target position zero on SERPs? Also known as the featured snippet or ‘P0’ – this spot is revered because it appears above organic search results. It directs users to an answer, rather than expecting them to click on a search link. By improving your SEO strategy results with keyword clustering, you automatically increase the chances of gaining the featured snippet status.
-
If Applicable, Localize it!
Following best practices for localizing your keyword clustering can help refine visibility for a specific geographic audience. So, if you have the advantage of having a website for your local business, why not target your keyword clustering to attract a greater number of people in your community?
Measuring the Effectiveness of Keyword Clustering
In the words of Peter Drucker: “If you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it.” This holds true for keyword clustering; with a bit of insights you can tweak your approach and improve how your content ranks on the SERP. That’s why I can’t stress enough how crucial it is to constantly adjust and update the pages you create for your audience.
Using Google Search Console you can easily track keyword cluster performance. It’s not only full of data that you can slice any which way, it’s also free. Once you have a handle on performance you can experiment with adjusting your clusters based on conversion rates, rankings, and traffic.
Don’t neglect data on your competitors. Plenty of SEO tools provide competitive analysis of companies doing it better (or worse) than you. Changing up your keyword clusters based on what your competitors are focused on can impact your rankings.
Wrapping up and Next Steps
Why limit your reach to a single term when you could cast a wider net and rank for a group of related words or phrases? Hopefully by now you can appreciate the advantages of having a keyword cluster strategy. By targeting both main keywords and their sub-topics, businesses can boost their content relevance and rankings across a wider array of search queries. This process also lends you more authority in related topics, allowing you to approach SEO more effectively and comprehensively.
Understanding both the semantic and competitive keyword landscape is necessary to successfully apply this technique. Whether you rely on tools like Keyword Insights AI or semantic analysis, it’s essential to monitor keyword performance and make changes along the way. Search engine algorithms are always developing new perspectives on intent and relevance, so keeping up with these changes within your content is fundamental to maintaining high rankings over time. Also, avoiding common mistakes such as keyword cannibalization and ensuring that your clusters match actual user intent will optimize the overall strategy.
Ultimately, keyword clustering isn’t merely about finding the right group of related terms to target, but crafting in-depth, authoritative content that resonates with readers and search engines. Adopting advanced keyword clustering strategies and having some flexibility with all the anticipated and unanticipated changes on the SERP, you can refine your SEO strategy and have a clear position ahead of the competition.