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d-centralize handbook

Keyword Research & Content Clusters Guide

Keyword Research with SERanking

Project Organization

  • Create separate projects for each language to maintain clear organization and accurate tracking
  • Structure your keywords hierarchically:
    • Use the main keyword (or content cluster name) as a folder
    • Add all related and similar keywords within that folder
    • Assign a target URL to each keyword for precise tracking
    • Use tags in SERanking once you changed something a page. This way, a keywords history of changes can be tracked

Tracking Changes

Use tags in SERanking whenever you update a page. This creates a keyword history that allows you to track performance changes over time and correlate them with specific optimizations.

Content Clusters Strategy

Overview

A content cluster is a group of interrelated content pieces organized around a central pillar page. This structure helps establish topical authority and improves rankings for both high-competition and long-tail keywords.

Building a Content Cluster

1. Topic Selection & Keyword Research

Prerequisite: You should have defined the Unique Selling Points (USPs) of your project.

  • Choose a topic from USPs list
  • Perform competitor keyword research on that topic
  • Identify all relevant keywords you want to rank for within this topic
  • The more related keywords your cluster covers, the stronger it will perform
  • Important: All keywords must be genuinely relevant to the cluster topic

Resource: Conducting a competitive keyword analysis for more (quality) traffic

2. Create Your Pillar Page

  • Identify the main keyword—typically the highest search volume keyword in your cluster
  • Build a comprehensive pillar page targeting this keyword
  • Goal: Achieve page one rankings for the main keyword, which will help boost rankings for related, less competitive keywords in the cluster

3. Develop Supporting Content

Create diverse content types that support and link to your pillar page:

  • Blog posts
  • How-to guides
  • Comparison articles
  • Technical documentation
  • Best practices guides

Key principle: Supporting pages build authority for the pillar page. Smaller, focused pages help larger pillar pages rank for high-competition keywords.

Example Content Cluster

Main Keyword: Address Validation API

Pillar Page: Complete Guide to Address Validation APIs

Supporting Content:

  • How Address Validation Works
  • Real-time vs Batch Address Validation
  • Address Standardization Best Practices
  • Geocoding vs Address Validation
  • API Response Codes Explained
  • International Address Formats Guide

All supporting articles should link back to the pillar page and be shown or referenced within it.

Step-by-Step Implementation

  1. Identify competitor pages

    • Find tool/feature pages from your main competitors

  2. Analyze competitor keywords

    • Use SERanking’s URL competitor functionality ()
    • See which keywords competitors rank for with specific pages

  3. Select target keywords

    • Choose interesting keywords from competitor analysis
    • Filter for relevance and opportunity

  4. Expand keyword research

    • Find similar and related keywords
    • Look for keyword variations and long-tail opportunities

  5. Evaluate cluster potential

    • Ask: Can I create multiple supporting content pages for this topic?
    • If yes, you’ve identified a content cluster opportunity

Implementation Decision

  • New cluster: Create a comprehensive new pillar page with strong, focused content
  • Existing content: If a pillar page already exists with good content, optimize it with targeted improvements rather than starting from scratch

Find Keywords from Competitors Using SERanking

NOTE: Considering that you’ve identified your competitors and the URLs for the feature that you want to apply competitive research for, follow the steps below using SERanking:

  • Research Menu -> Competitive Research -> Enter competitor’s URL -> Analyze
  • In the report, we can check the Organic keywords of our competitor’s from the URL
  • Find keywords that’d suit our content cluster
  • Click on that keyword, and start the keyword research NOTE: The first goal is to find a keyword with high search volume that would be used in the pillar page. Then, from there we can find the rest of the keywords still with a good search volume but with an easier difficulty.
  • For one keyword in SERanking we can find Similar keywords and also Related keywords. We can view detailed reports for each category. This is how we pick and then organize the keywords, and based on them create the content cluster.
  • Add the keyword using Add keywords to the project -> Select project -> Select/Create group -> Add keywords
  • After all keywords have been added, you can check the group by going to Projects -> Rankings -> Detailed

Double-check the resource for detailed explanation.