Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical and multifaceted process that businesses in every industry need to practice. Without actively working to adapt your website to work with search engines, it becomes difficult to truly achieve success. And unfortunately, high-quality SEO strategies demand a great deal of thought and work across multiple fronts. Keyword clustering represents a valuable area that businesses pursuing SEO excellence should explore. However, it’s not enough to simply understand the concept. You also need to have a plan for exactly how you’ll approach the practice.
To that end, let’s explore keyword clustering tools and how they can help improve your SEO strategy.
TL;DR
- Keyword clustering is a process of grouping keywords based on search intent.
- Keyword clustering tools automate the process of grouping keywords.
- These tools use mostly natural language processing to cluster keywords.
- Keyword clustering tools save time and are scalable compared to manual clustering.
- The best keyword clustering tools include SEOwind, Keyword Cupid, Keyword Insights, and others.
What are keyword clustering tools?
Keyword clustering is the process by which a business identifies related keywords and separates them into groups based on search intent. Identifying these connections largely comes down to finding different queries that share common results. Effective keyword clustering can help build topical authority and determine how you build your website. Some keywords will require new content and pages while others can simply be added to existing content.
So, what is a keyword clustering tool exactly? These solutions fully automate the process of grouping your keywords based on supplied lists.
While there are different clustering tools and they all have their own unique approach, there are some common steps that can be found in their algorithms:
- In most cases, the keyword clustering tool uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to cluster keywords.
- NLP can be based on common Machine Learning (ML) libraries or can use AI tools like GPT to cluster the keywords. All of the tools are trained on large samples of data and are considered to be Language Models.
- When provided with a list of keywords, the tool will use the NLP solution to find closely related keywords that can be matched within a specific topic and divide them into clusters.
If two keywords do not share any results in common, they will be grouped separately.
How can keyword clustering tools help you?
At this point, you might be wondering why you would pay for this kind of keywording software. After all, we’ve already mentioned that keyword clustering can be done manually. So, why should you spend the money and time needed to get a tool set up?
While manual clustering does give you direct control over the process, it’s not a terribly scalable approach. You might be able to handle a list of 100 keywords, but what happens when you have to review 500 or more different keywords? What about a list of 1,000 keywords or more? The time investment quickly becomes untenable and outstrips the value you get out of it.
A keyword grouper tool doesn’t suffer from the same limitation. As with other automated solutions, it speeds up the process and frees you up to focus on other things. It can also handle much larger input volumes without drastically increasing the time involved. And even though using a topic cluster tool reduces your direct control, keep in mind that manual clustering exposes the process to human error.
Finally, keep in mind that manual clustering requires a high level of expertise. This is another barrier that cluster tools can get around.
Best keyword clustering tools
Now that we’ve established how keyword clustering tools work, let’s discuss some of the best options out there. Plenty of data clustering tools exist, but even the most well-regarded won’t fit every situation. Your business will need to consider the strengths of each and decide which most suits your objectives.
1. SEOwind – content briefing with keyword clustering
Summary
SEOwind is a briefing tool at its core. For now, it supports keyword clustering within a content brief. In the near future, it will also cover keyword clustering for a website.
Features and key strengths
It’s a great tool for writing content briefs for new content as well as content optimization. With keyword clustering, your content writer will have an easy job covering the keywords and topics they should to make the content stand out.
Here are some of the benefits you can expect from using keyword clustering while creating content:
- 🚀 Improved SEO strategy: Keyword clustering simplifies the process of writing and enhances your overall SEO strategy, boosting visibility and authority.
- 📝 Enhanced content creation: With grouped keywords, you can create more targeted, comprehensive, and organized content that resonates with your audience.
- 👌 Improved workflow: The feature streamlines your workflow, making it easier to manage your keywords and optimize your content for search engines.
- 🔍 Better user understanding: The feature makes it easier to understand user intent and clarify the content structure, leading to better engagement and higher conversions.
Keyword clustering within a content brief – example
Creating a content brief in SEOwind and adding secondary keywords from SERPs is all it takes for our AI to group the keywords and help you take the helm. Let’s take the content brief for “green tea benefits” as an example and see what keyword clustering may look like. You will find here keyword groups related to: the benefits of green tea (including its advantages), green tea nutrition facts, antioxidants, or phrases related to drinking green tea every day.
Keyword clustering – how it works?
Let’s see how keyword clustering works at SEOwind.
Pricing plan
SEOwind offers a free plan as well as three convenient pricing plans starting from 49$ per month. They are divided into the one suitable for small business owners, more advanced content teams, and the plan that covers producing content at scale.
2. Keyword Cupid
Summary
Keyword Cupid was one of the first keyword cluster tools out there. While on the more expensive side, the tool is easy to use and flexible enough to fit a large number of scenarios.
Features and key strengths
This word clustering tool uses real-time SERP data and key clustering machine learning to determine its groups. In addition, it provides a confidence rating so that you can see the strength of the connection between different keywords. Keyword Cupid supports a wide variety of keyword research tools in addition to a variety of unique features. These include topic siloes, a SERP scraper, and interactive mind-map visualizations.
Pricing plan
Keyword Cupid Pricing offers four paid plans based on the number of keywords you’re looking to review. This starts with the basic plan that costs $9.99 a month and covers up to 500 keywords. The largest plan costs $149.99 monthly and increases the capacity to 20,000 keywords.
Sample keyword clustering report
Source: Keyword Cupid Sample Clustering Report
3. Keyword Insights
Summary
This tool makes use of SERP data and NLP to identify ideal keyword grouping. In addition, using a Hub-and-Spoke analysis model, Keyword Insights identifies collections of resources that are thematically connected.
Features and key strengths
Unique to this keyword grouper is its search intent feature, which interprets search intent using machine learning. Based on this classification, Keyword Insights then sorts keywords into broad categories such as articles, videos, and product pages. As part of its reports, the tool also provides information on the top-ranked resource for each keyword and analyzes where your own content ranks.
Pricing plan
Keyword Insights Pricing offers a range of packages ranging from $9.99 per month for up to 750 keywords to $99.99 per month for 15,000 keywords.
Sample keyword clustering report
Source: Keyword Insights Clustering Sample Report
4. SEO Scout
Summary
The first free keyword grouping software on this list produces keyword lists for specific topics. A user enters a term or phrase, which the tool uses to identify and build groups of keywords. Rather than SERP data, SEO Scout’s solution relies on n-gram word similarities.
Features and key strengths
SEO Scout operates in a straightforward manner, accepting inputs and producing results in the same browser. While more manual effort is required to count the number of keywords per cluster, you get the results quickly and free of charge.
Pricing plan
SEO Scout Pricing offers three payment packages. The cheapest costs $49 monthly and includes SEO optimization for up to 10 articles as well as competitor research and keyword tracking. Meanwhile, the most expensive plan requires a monthly investment of $199 and introduces more advanced SEO testing tools, and expands optimization up to more than 60 pages in addition to other features.
Sample keyword clustering report
Source: SEO Scout Sample Keyword Clustering Report
5. SE Ranking Keyword Grouper
Summary
Similar to Ahrefs and SemRush, SE Ranking provides an all-in-one solution for SEO. However, this software sets itself apart by offering a potent group tool. It provides users with a great deal of flexibility and customization options.
Features and key strengths
By maximizing the customization options for keyword searches and comparisons, SE Ranking puts a great deal of control in the user’s hands. You can select the specific search engine, region, and language. On top of all of that, you can choose between hard and soft keyword reviews. While the former is standard, the latter enables the tool to group words that only share results with the primary phrase rather than each other.
Pricing plan
SE Ranking Pricing demands a fairly pricey entry point, with the cheapest package starting at around $42 per month. More expensive plans increase the number of projects that can be managed and keywords that can be analyzed. The most expensive plan comes in at around $203 per month.
Sample keyword clustering report
Source: SE Ranking Sample Keyword Clustering Report
6. Serpstat
Summary
Serpstat can create a semantic keyword grouping as well as take search intent into consideration. During this process, the tool reviews up to the top 30 search results for a query to ensure accuracy.
Features and key strengths
Like SE Ranking, Serpstat emphasizes customization. The keyword grouping software provides users with a number of settings that can be changed based on their objectives. One such option is altering the clustering level to alter the barrier for keywords to be matched together. On top of that, Serpstat can be used on existing content and build groups related to that page.
Pricing plan
Serpstat Pricing offers four price plans that range from $69-499 per month. As the price goes up, so does the keyword limit, which starts at 1,500 for the cheapest package.
Sample keyword clustering report
Source: Serpstat Sample Keyword Clustering Report
7. KeyWI
Summary
Though KeyWI started out as an organic traffic specialist software, the program has evolved over time. Now the solution can not only review the keywords relevant to your business but also identify opportunities for your business to expand in a given market. This tool not only determines how you should approach keywords but the search intent behind them.
Features and key strengths
KeyWI is the first smart digital marketing assistant that provides data-driven growth advice on a weekly basis. It generates tasks to be addressed every week that will guide growth while simultaneously helping to organize your keywords. This allows you to grow expertise in-house so that your team becomes more accustomed to the process over time.
Pricing plan
The KeyWI Pricing has three engagement levels for you to compare. The cheapest option is €34 monthly and offers basic analytics and three content briefings for a single user. The €74 and €156 monthly options expand the number of users that gain access to the solution as well as improve the quality of the analytics to go with some additional features.
KeyWI Sample keyword clustering report
KeyWI provides visible performance insights
8. KeyClusters
Summary
The KeyClusters online clustering tool places emphasis on the top ten search engine results when reviewing keywords. To ensure that no keyword is placed in multiple groups, the tool further analyzes the different match frequencies. Real-time SERP data provides the basis for these conclusions.
Features and key strengths
KeyClusters is quite intuitive and operates quickly, ensuring that results are easy to obtain. The word clusters generator enables users to group keywords based on device, geolocation, and language. With this tool, flexibility meets usability to deliver a complete and broadly satisfying experience. As a result, KeyClusters can fit the needs of a diverse selection of different businesses.
Pricing plan
KeyClusters Pricing is one of the more affordable options, starting at $4.97 as a monthly payment for 1,000 total keywords. Another option is to pay $9.99 per 1000 keywords to remove the limit. Regardless of your choice, you never have to worry about credits expiring and cancellations can happen anytime.
Sample keyword clustering report
9. Keyword Clarity
Summary
Keyword Clarity is the second free option on this list. It coordinates with the Google Search Console. Meanwhile, you also have the option to upload a list from another source. Keyword Clarity largely relies on an algorithm that determines the intended word meaning.
Features and key strengths
While most tools produce results in the form of a spreadsheet or written groups, this topic cluster generator delivers visual mind maps or spider diagrams. This splits queries into individual keywords which are then grouped to form nodes that visually clarify their connections. This is particularly useful if you would eventually like to silo your content.
Pricing plan
Keyword Clarity delivers this service completely free of charge.
Sample keyword clustering report
You can generate a sample keyword clustering report while playing with the demo on the website. Just go to this page and see for yourself.
10. Keyword Clustering by Zenbrief
Summary
Our final entry is another free service that accepts keyword lists produced by other tools. It will then analyze the submitted phrases to produce different keyword clusters related to an overarching topic.
Features and key strengths
Zenbrief makes keyword grouping a simple experience as the tool is notably easy to use. It includes the option to adjust minimum and maximum cluster size and covers the search intent in its analysis. The simplicity, flexible results, and lack of expense make the manual keyword entry worth it.
Pricing plan
Zenbrief Pricing includes three price points to choose from, starting from $79 a month and going as high as $295 a month. The amount you pay increases the number of briefs you can create, the number of users that can access your plan, and the number of templates to which you have access.
Sample keyword clustering report
Source: Zenbrief Sample Keyword Clustering Report
FAQ
What is the best keyword clustering tool?
There is no single keyword grouping tool that is the best fit for every situation. If you are looking for a keyword clustering tool to support your content creation process SEOwind will be a good option. If you have the keywords collected and you would like to cluster them, then Keyword Cupid might be a good choice.
How does keyword grouping software work?
The vast majority of keyword grouping software uses one of two primary approaches: NLP and SERP data analysis. The former plays a key role in identifying search intent behind different keywords to add an extra layer to the relationships between different queries. Real-time SERP data helps to recognize overlapping URLs and keywords.
