5 Best SEO Keyword Clustering Tools to Boost Your Rankings

Most SEO professionals continue to perform keyword clustering through traditional, manual methods. Here’s the typical sequence they adhere to:

1. They initiate the process by compiling keywords using tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush.
2. Following that, they construct a spreadsheet to arrange these keywords systematically.
3. Each keyword is manually examined within the search engine results pages (SERP) to categorize them according to search intent.
4. Subsequently, these categorized keywords are meticulously inspected to uncover potential content themes, SEO tactics, or optimization opportunities.

However, there are certain issues with implementing things in this manner:

• It requires lots of time.
• It doesn’t provide data-based insights to find hidden content ideas and chances for improvement.
• It could be better for dealing with extensive lists of keywords.

So, how can you do keyword clustering better, faster, and more innovatively?

Let’s talk about keyword grouping tools. But before we dive into the list of the best ones, let’s first understand what keyword clustering means, see why it’s useful, and figure out how these tools work.

What Does Keyword Clustering Mean?

Keyword clustering in SEO is like putting similar keywords together because they mean the same thing or people similarly search for them.

Instead of trying to make one page perfect for just one keyword, you make it suitable for many similar keywords. It’s like showing search engines that your page knows much about a specific topic using many related words.

Benefits of Keyword Clustering

Keyword grouping matters in SEO because people often use different words to look for the same stuff.

When you figure out all the right words for your content, you can make your content better by including those words. This makes your content cover more topics and become of higher quality, which helps it rank better.

Here are some benefits of keyword grouping:

1. Get a Higher Ranking for Many Keywords
2. Make Research and Ideas for Content Easier
3. Avoid Keyword Cannibalization 
4. Become an Expert on Your Topic
5. Make Your Website Links Work Better

How does keyword grouping software do its thing?

Well, it’s like a computer program that’s smart at sorting keywords. Here’s how it works:

1. You give it your list of keywords.
2. It looks at them closely to see which ones are like twins.
3. It uses special math tricks, like “centroid” and “agglomerative” stuff, to figure out why these keywords are similar.
4. Then, it shows you the groups it made in a neat and easy-to-understand way, like a table or a map. This helps you see how your keywords are connected.

Best Keyword Grouping Software

Keyword clustering software makes it easy to put similar keywords together automatically. These tools can handle extensive lists of keywords and find patterns or things they have in common to create groups or clusters.

In this part, we’re going to check out the top keyword clustering tools and see how they compare when it comes to:

1. How easy they are to use
2. How much they cost
3. What cool stuff they can do

Let’s get started!

1. Keyword Insights

Keyword Insights is at the top of our list of excellent keyword grouping tools, and there’s a good reason why. It’s super intelligent and uses AI (like a computer brain) to help you develop keyword ideas, group them together, and even make or improve your content based on those groups.

What makes Keyword Insights stand out is how it works. Instead of relying on fancy language stuff (NLP), it looks at what’s ranking on Google for each search. Then, it puts keywords together if they’re related to the same websites.

This way is more precise, and you can even change how strict it is. You can decide how much the websites need to be identical (URL overlap), pick from two ways to group keywords (centroid and agglomerative) and control how tight the groups are with the algorithm. So, it gives you much flexibility to make things right for you.

Keyword Insights Pricing

Pros:

• Uses advanced keyword grouping with NLP and SERP analysis (that’s super smart)
• The pricing is flexible and customizable
• You can tweak the settings for grouping keywords the way you want
• It helps you find new keywords
• You can upload a ton of keywords (up to a million)
• It even enables you to make content plans

Cons:

• There’s no free trial to try it out
• It could do a bit better in finding new keywords
• It doesn’t connect with the Google Search Console

2. Semrush Keyword Clustering

Semrush is famous for its SEO tools that help people find good keywords, check out the competition, and ensure their websites are in tip-top shape.

Recently, they made their SEO toolkit even better, and now they have something called Keyword Manager. This tool is great because it can put keywords into groups automatically.

You can begin without any preparation with only a couple of keywords or use it with your current rundown. Furthermore, you could take a look at what your competitors are doing. You put in their website, and the tool finds keywords they’re using but need a better job. It’s like picking the easy targets to beat them.

When the tool makes groups of keywords for you, it enlightens you about some significant stuff concerning them, similar to the number of individuals that quest for them, that it is so difficult to rank for them, and what individuals are searching for when they type them in.

It even says which groups have a decent possibility of getting you to the top of the search results faster. That means better SEO and higher rankings for your website.

Rather than sorting out the value of each keyword in turn, this assists you with knowing how significant every topic is. Then, at that point, you can decide to do one of these things with your selected group:

1. Use the SEO Writing Assistant to make and improve content.
2. Monitor essential stats for each keyword and group with Position Tracking to see if your keyword plan is doing well.
3. Check on your paid ads with the PPC Keyword Tool.

Semrush Pricing

Pros:

• Makes it easy to see keyword groups in mind maps and tables
• Has fantastic tools for finding new keywords
• Helps you create content better with the SEO writing helper
• Shows you what’s happening in search results right now
• Lets you tweak and adjust your keyword groups 

Cons:

• Costs a bit more
• There are not as many options to customize keyword groups
• You can only upload up to 2,000 keywords at a time

3. SE Ranking’s Keyword Grouper

The SE Ranking tool has something cool called the Keyword Grouper. It’s like Keyword Insights because it uses search result data to put similar keywords in groups.

What’s super interesting about the Keyword Grouper is how flexible it is. You can choose how you want it to be on a scale from 1 to 9. This scale tells the tool how many websites two keywords need to have in common on the search results page to be in the same group. Plus, you can make it do a strict or more relaxed analysis, depending on your needs.

When inputting your keyword list into the tool, you have two options: either manually enter them or upload a CSV file. If you aim to optimize for a local business, you can further refine your keyword clusters by specifying your country, location, and language.

Once you’ve organized your keywords into clusters, you’ll gain access to comprehensive information about each group, including search volume, keyword matches, and the top 10 ranking competitors.

Additionally, each cluster provides a list of prominently featured keywords commonly found in search results, serving as valuable LSI keywords that can boost your content’s SEO performance.

After completing your analysis, you can export the results as a CSV file for sharing with your team or clients or seamlessly integrate the selected clusters into one of your ongoing projects.

SE Keyword Grouper PricingPros:

• User-friendly and sleek interface
• Capability to group non-English keywords
• Includes rank tracking functionality
• Offers flexibility in customizing keyword clusters

Cons:

• High cost
• Limited cluster visualization options

4. Surfer SEO’s Keyword Research Tool

Surfer SEO stands out as a highly regarded tool for content research and optimization, and one of its standout features is the Keyword Research function, which simplifies the process of uncovering keyword and topic clusters.

What sets it apart from most keyword clustering tools is that there’s no need to upload your list of keywords for grouping. Enter your seed keyword into its keyword research tool, and the device will automatically generate clusters based on the provided keyword. These clusters are then presented in a user-friendly format as individual tiles.

Furthermore, you can filter the cluster results based on criteria such as search intent, search volume, and keyword range per group. This allows you to narrow your clusters to smaller, more relevant groups.

In addition to its clustering capabilities, Surfer SEO streamlines the content creation process. You can easily incorporate any of your clusters into the Content Editor, which leverages AI to assist with content outlining, creation, and SEO optimization.

Surfer SEO Pricing

Pros:

• Inclusion of an integrated content optimization tool
• Precise clustering through NLP and SERP analysis
• Seamless integration with Google Docs and WordPress, enhancing the content creation process
• Remarkable speed

Cons:

• Room for improvement in the keyword research tools
• Inability to upload custom keyword lists

5. SEO Scout Keyword Grouping

SEO Scout Keyword Grouping is an excellent choice if you’re on a tight budget and searching for a free keyword grouping tool.

What’s incredibly convenient is its user-friendly interface. You can effortlessly upload your keyword list, select a language, and click the ‘Group keywords’ button without registering for an account.

The keyword grouping tool will then analyze your keywords and present them as tiles, employing a similar approach to Surfer SEO Content Planner. Additionally, you can export your cluster list as a CSV file for further manipulation as needed.

While it lacks individual cluster and keyword metrics like search volume, intent, and difficulty, it swiftly groups keywords.

Pricing

SEO Scout Keyword Grouping tool is free to use.

Pros:

• Completely free to use
• Rapid analysis and clustering capabilities
• Reasonably accurate keyword grouping
• Provides an option to export results as a spreadsheet

Cons:

• Lacks cluster metrics
• Not suitable for handling large keyword lists

Conclusion

In conclusion, keyword clustering is an essential aspect of SEO, but traditional manual methods can be time-consuming and need more data-driven insights. Thankfully, innovative keyword grouping tools are available to make this process faster and more efficient.

These tools, such as Keyword Insights, Semrush Keyword Clustering, SE Ranking’s Keyword Grouper, Surfer SEO’s Keyword Research Tool, and SEO Scout Keyword Grouping, offer various features and capabilities to cater to different needs and budgets.