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If you are struggling to seek your content rank, you may need to change your keyword strategy. Quality research and carefully crafted practice area pages and blogs are not always enough to ensure you are getting visitors to your website. One popular SEO strategy you can consider implementing into your marketing plan is keyword clustering. Keep reading to learn how keyword clustering works and how it can improve your law firm’s marketing.
What Are Keyword Clusters?
Keyword clusters are groups of keywords that potential clients are likely to search in order to retrain your services. In order to understand keyword clusters, you first need to be aware of the different types of keywords.
- Short-tail keywords are made up of three words or fewer. They typically have a high search volume and difficulty rating.
- Long-tail keywords consist of three or more specific words that focus on user intent.
- Short-term keywords are phrases that are popular for a limited amount of time.
- Long-term evergreen keywords are keywords that hold their value for long periods of time.
- Product-defining keywords explain or define your legal services.
- Customer-defining keywords identify a specific target audience.
- Geo-targeting keywords focus on clients in a specific location.
- LSI keywords are related to your main keywords.
- Intent keywords inform search intent and are typically based on queries.
Depending on the area of law you practice, its complexity, and the level of competition, you may find keyword clustering takes significant keyword research and content creation. However, a strong keyword cluster strategy can result in numerous benefits, including increased visibility, rankings, website traffic, and more.
How To Create Keyword Clusters
In general terms, keyword clustering is the process of segmenting search terms into groups that are relevant for different sections of your website. Creating keyword clusters is a multi-step process, starting with research. Once you conduct the keyword research, you can begin grouping your query terms and determining how to optimize your content to include those words and phrases.
Research Keywords
Keyword research helps you target a topic that is of interest to potential clients. However, instead of writing what you assume potential clients are interested in, you can conduct specific keyword research to inform your content. Some of the most popular keyword research tools include the following:
- Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. This tool allows you to plug in a keyword or query to get a list of related keywords. Along with that list, you will also have access to ranking difficulty.
- Google Ads Keyword Planner. With Keyword Planner, you can use a keyword or query to find new keywords, search volume estimates for specific phrases, and keyword variations.
- SEMrush. SEMrush is a favorite among digital marketing professionals. Not only can you research keywords, but you can access yearly keyword trends, keyword difficulty analyses, longtail keywords, and ad group ideas.
- Google Trends. Google Trends is a free tool that lets you see keywords’ search trends and popularity over time.
- Google Suggest. With Google Suggest, you can collect information on real-time, organic queries users are typing in from all over the world.
You may find the research tool that fulfills all of your keyword needs. If, however, that does not happen, you can try different platforms until you find the right one for your law firm’s content marketing strategy. Remember that your keyword research does not have to start and stop with online tools. In addition to using keyword research tools, you can also evaluate your competitors’ keywords, consider autocomplete suggestions and “Search related to” from Google, and brainstorm your own ideas. It is best to have a comprehensive research strategy, particularly when keyword clustering, to ensure you find the best possible phrases and words to answer potential clients’ queries as quickly as possible.
Grouping Keywords
Once you have an extensive keyword list, it is time to group them. Start by looking for certain patterns, like the same words, phrases, and synonyms that users include in their searches. Patterns represent potential ways for you to cluster your keywords. In addition to looking for patterns, there are also other criteria you can consider when segmenting your keywords, including:
- Semantic relevance. Evaluate search intent when grouping keywords. If you ignore search intent and your keywords are not closely related, you may be unable to optimize a landing page or other webpage.
- Search volume. Consider how many clusters you are looking to form and make sure that each cluster has keywords with reasonable search volumes.
- Organic difficulty. The organic difficulty of keywords is another factor to consider. Whether or not you use phrases with greater organic difficulty depends on how established your website is, your backlink profile, and your website’s overall authority.
Once you have clusters, you can start adding complementary keywords, also known as latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords. Consider mixing incorporating long-tail keywords and keywords with lower difficulty or lower search volume into your content to improve rankings and visibility.
Optimize Content for Keyword Clusters
Once you have grouped your keywords into clusters, it is time to create and optimize your website content for those groups. In terms of website content, you will want to focus on areas like pillar pages and blogs.
Pillar Pages
Your clusters should represent the core practice areas on your website. When translated into web pages, they are known as pillar pages. There are a number of factors to consider when building pillar pages, including topical depth, page experience, and content structure.
In terms of topical depth, you generally want your pillar pages to include long-form content that explores a specific practice area in detail. Remember that interactive page elements like videos and carousels can improve user experience. For the structure of your content, you want to include your most important keywords in your headings.
Blogs
To supplement your pillar pages and content authority, you should build out blog content that highlights your primary keyword clusters. Internally linking your blogs to those pillar pages is crucial, as it will aid in building out your clusters and improve your website’s visibility.
How Can Keyword Clusters Improve SEO?
When done correctly, keyword clustering can improve your website’s SEO and your overall content marketing performance. In terms of benefits, successful keyword clustering could result in increased rankings, more organic traffic, improved PPC campaigns, efficient content planning, and thought leadership establishment.
No matter what keyword strategies you have used in the past, it is likely your goal has been to improve your rankings. After submitting a query to Google, most users will not go past the handful of results, let alone the first page. You want your content to rank as high as possible for as many keywords as possible. When you group your keywords, the search engine is more likely to recognize how your services answer searchers’ questions.
When you rank higher for specific queries, it is only natural that you will receive more organic traffic. Organic traffic is optimal because and means your website is not only visible but viewed as credible. Once you have a steady stream of organic traffic, you can start monitoring webpage usage, clickthrough rates, and bounce rates to determine where you need to make content improvements.
If you incorporate the keywords you grouped on your content into your PPC campaigns, there is an increased chance Google will make the connection. You will also lead your target audience to their answers faster.
Planning content can take up a significant amount of time. From determining what is relevant to your target audience, crafting the content, and monitoring its progress, a considerable amount of time and money can go into content planning and production. When you have access to keyword clusters, you will be able to more easily determine which topics to write about. You will also know which keywords to target in those pieces, which can reduce the time it takes to write them.
Finally, keyword clustering gives you the potential to establish strong thought leadership in your practice areas. Thought leadership is the demonstration of expertise in a particular field or topic. For law firms, establishing thought leadership in niche practice areas is key–especially considering how competitive the market is. When you cluster your keywords in a way that makes your content accessible and informative, you will show potential clients that you could have the answers to their questions and legal issues.
How Law Quill Can Help With Keyword Strategies
As a more advanced SEO strategy, keyword clustering can seem intimidating. However, it can give your content and overall website the edge it needs to beat out the competition. If you are looking to reduce the time you spend on your content marketing, consider outsourcing your needs to Law Quill.
We are here to help and would welcome the opportunity to visit with you for free regarding your law firm website’s content and how we can take these tasks off your plate! Schedule a free visit with us by scheduling a quick phone or zoom call at your convenience on our calendar today. You can also email us at support@lawquill.com.
