Summary: The Keyword Clustering Tool groups a list of up to 2,000 keywords into clusters that a single page can target. It compares the meaningful words of each keyword, ignores stop words and simple plurals, and gathers the variants around the shortest, most searched keyword. Add the volumes to sort the groups by potential, then export everything to CSV.
A keyword research export often lists hundreds of close variants: "seo tools", "best seo tools", "free seo tools", "seo tool". Writing one page per variant creates pages that compete with each other, a problem called keyword cannibalization. Grouping first tells you how many pages you really need and which keyword each one should lead with.
How the grouping works
- Each keyword is reduced to its roots: lowercase, accents removed, stop words and simple plurals ignored, character pairs for Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
- Similar keywords are gathered around a head keyword when their roots overlap enough, or when the head is fully contained in them.
- Three levels: broad groups by topic, balanced groups that fit one page, or strict groups of near-synonyms.
- Volumes optional: with a volume after a tab or a semicolon, groups are sorted by total searches.
From groups to pages
- One group becomes one page; its first keyword goes in the title and the H1.
- The other keywords of the group feed the subheadings and the FAQ.
- Single keywords are either long-tail questions for an existing page, or a sign that a topic is missing.
- Link the pages of related groups together to build a topic cluster.
To find more keywords to group, start with the keyword research tool. To understand what each group expects, read about search intent. Sorank picks the topics of your articles automatically and keeps one page per keyword group.
