Deciphering language used in search is a complex task.

As humans, we have the benefit of understanding not just what people say, but the context that surrounds it. Often, we can say a word or phrase, but offer an implied meaning that’s never stated. Nevertheless, we automatically understand the intention.

It’s this type of intelligence that Google continuously tries to provide in its search algorithms. It’s no longer enough to just do a keyword match. It needs to understand the relevance of what’s being said so that it can accurately serve that content to the right audience.

All of this is why Semantic SEO is now a critical part of your organic marketing.

In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through:

• What is Semantics?
• What is Semantic Search?
• What is Semantic SEO?
• How to Use Semantic SEO for Your Website

What is Semantics?

There are two primary components to linguistics and communication: lexicon and semantics.

Lexicon is defined as the actual units used in communication, otherwise known as words.

Semantics is the aspect of language that focuses on using logic to infer the true meaning and intention behind the words. It’s how we as people can communicate something with words, but mean several different things based upon a variety of internal and external factors.

For example, the word “monitor” has at least three meanings. One, it can be a verb that means to watch or observe. It can also be a noun that refers to someone who supervises. Finally, it can refer to the display you use when using a computer device.

The way we determine which “monitor” is right is through semantics. That is, we can logically deduce the meaning based on semantic clues like surrounding words, previous statements, or physical observation.

It is the process of matching the correct meaning to the act of communicating.

What is Semantic Search?

Understanding the meaning of semantics is essential for determining how it applies to search.

As search engine algorithms continue to evolve, they improve their ability to better understand the meaning behind our queries.

Therefore, semantic search is the idea of helping search engine algorithms understand the intention behind a search and the relevancy of the possible results. Google no longer just wants to match the query to on-page keywords, it wants to find the true meaning through the same logic means that we do.

How Search Results Used to Be?

In the early days of the internet, search engines used a fast, lean way to help users find content.

Any time you entered a keyword, you would receive hundreds of results featuring pages that included the keywords in your query. It was a guarantee that every found result mentioned your words at multiple points throughout the page. Because the lexicon matches, those pages were determined to be the best results.

How Search Results Are Evolving?

Thanks to our established understanding of semantics, we already begin to see the flaws with old SEO practices.

When sites wanted to improve their rankings, they would write a quick page to publish on the internet. This might be a quick list of tips about a subject with the primary intention being to use a keyword with high search volume.

The problem with taking keyword usage at face value is that it ignores the semantic aspects of communication. When someone enters a search into Google, the algorithm would not be able to interpret one meaning versus another.

For example, a user searches for “cheap compact disks.” Google previously had no way of interpreting the actual meaning.

Do they want to learn about which compact disk build quality? Do they want to find a cheap CD dealer? Or is there another intention that’s being obscured due to poor communication? Everyday internet users expect search engines to automatically understand their intentions.

Introducing the Knowledge Graph

Google understands that users want information fast. They want to learn all that they can about a particular query in as few clicks as possible to have a positive experience.

The company recognized that it had the advantage of processing and indexing an incredible amount of content daily. In this content lies important facts and answers to everyday questions that their users had.

As a result, it set out to create a database that collected accurate information about a particular topic. It would then be able to provide all of this information to a search user anytime their search query included a reference to the topic.

The Knowledge Graph is now present on every Google SERP. If you want to know last night’s football scores, you’ll find the information immediately without ever clicking a URL. If you wish to know to learn more about Google, you’ll find critical details such as a company description, founding members, current SEO, and location.

The knowledge graph includes virtually every important idea, place, company, or figure. The graphic is also able to provide direct links to related topics that are also found within this web of information.

It showed Google’s desire to provide users with answers to every possible question they might have regarding their query. They did this by utilizing previously established semantic connections based on content around the web. They would go on to take these new aspects of semantic search and apply them to the next big update.

The Hummingbird Update

Just a year later in 2013, Google launched the Hummingbird update. This allowed their search engine to better process different types of search queries based upon a variety of semantic factors.

Let’s revisit our prior example “cheap compact disks.” With Hummingbird, the search algorithm understands the true intention of the vague query. “Compact disks” is the primary keyword, but “cheap” provides the critical semantic context. It now knows that cheap refers to cost, implying that the user is looking to purchase low-cost CDs.

Because it can make this connection, it will no longer waste the user’s time by yielding guides or informational results. Instead, you now get results from sellers like Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart linking to their music and audio sections.

It also had a tremendous impact on local SEO. When a user enters certain queries into Google, it can also derive semantic meaning from the person’s location. For example, if they search for “best Chinese food,” Google knows that the most relevant results are the ones physically closest to their location.

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BERT and Voice Input

While the changes to the SEO made a huge impact on semantic search, there was still work to be done.

The way people search continues to grow alongside technology. In the time it took to see the previous update, users began utilizing their mobile phones more than ever to input searches. We also saw a rise in hands-free devices like Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa among everyday consumers.

The promise of these devices meant that you no longer needed to enter your search with a keyboard. The on-the-go nature of new technology meant that users needed to be able to search for suggestions using their voices. This demonstrated continued issues with Google’s ability to understand more complex queries, especially those that were more conversational.

When typing, we tend to use as few words as possible, especially on a phone. We’ve also been trained in the old ways of SEO to focus on keywords and omit unnecessary fluff.

Those that use voice search revert to their traditional way of speaking. Instead of typing “semantic SEO,” someone may ask, “What is Semantic SEO and its purpose in content?” It’s easy for us to infer the meaning, but it can be tricky for the algorithm to understand the exact meaning of a longer query.

BERT, Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, is a technology that is designed to solve complex queries. It’s able to understand complex queries by looking not just at the keyword, but at all of the surrounding words as well as the sequence in which they appear.

BERT was also created to continuously learn from search users. The more that Google receives different types of searches, it takes steps closer to understanding the various ways humans communicate. It’s automatically gathering data and improving how it evaluates our efforts to learn new information.

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It may even be able to predict the next word in your query based on the words already entered. You can try entering a query into Google yourself and observe how quickly it generates an auto-filled response that matches your needs or comes close.

Google's SMITH Algorithm

Though it's still experimental, Google is currently testing its new SMITH technology, which stands for Siamese Multi-Depth Transformer-Based Hierarchical Encoder.

However, SEO experts know that this search advancement exists and promises to outperform BERT. While BERT is capable of predicting a few words based on user input, SMITH may be able to predict entire passages of text within a longer piece of content.

The full published study is available on Google's Research website. It explores Google's latest testing results, which seem to indicate that SMITH has its shortcomings. Currently, it seems that SMITH is not meant to replace BERT. Instead, both may be able to supplement the other's shortcomings.

While BERT focuses on short-form content, SMITH may be able to rapidly process entire documents. Together, they may be able to rapidly process the semantical meaning of the content of any web URL, regardless of length or size.

Now that you understand the purpose and history of semantic search, let's take a look at how it's impacting your SEO strategies.

What is Semantic SEO?

Semantic SEO is the process of optimizing your content to provide depth and meaning around a certain topic. Keywords still play a critical role, but the focus is on providing authoritative, complete responses to a user's search query.

Based on our previous discoveries in this article, we understand how this applies to our content creation efforts moving forward. Writing 500 words and including the keyword in your title and headlines does not lead to meaningful content.

Instead, Google's algorithm heavily favors pages that go into greater detail. High-ranking pages also make use of opportunities to link to relevant content both on and off-site for additional context. It's not just looking at keywords, but it's also reviewing the supporting text and links to derive the semantic meaning behind it.

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A. Search Intent and Relevance

You can optimize your website for semantic SEO by first considering the user's search intent behind a query.

Site owners can do this by considering the implied intention behind a keyword before selecting it. If the goal of your content is to provide information, you'll want to avoid transactional keywords and focus on informational ones. You can also help Google understand the intention and relevance of your content by utilizing semantic keywords.

B. What Are Semantic Keywords?

Semantic keywords are keywords that are closely related to primary keywords but have a slightly different, deeper meaning.

Let’s use “search engine optimization” as our keyword. Examples of semantic keywords are:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Search engine optimization techniques
• Search engine optimization example
• Search engine optimization specialist
• Search engine optimization course

All of these keywords are directly related to the primary keyword. However, the additional words provide context to derive a slightly different meaning.

These semantic keywords serve to strengthen our primary keyword when used effectively.

If a user was to search “how to do search engine optimization,” our result will be more likely to rank high if:

• We utilize semantic keywords appropriately
• We fully answer the user’s query (including techniques and examples as seen in the LSI keywords)
• We link to other SEO-related content available on the site where applicable
• We avoid overusing primary or semantic keywords to boost visibility

Next, we’ll explain the best strategies for using semantic SEO when developing content for your website.

How to Use Semantic SEO Throughout Your Website?

Implementing effective semantic SEO tactics begins as early as designing your website.

Some of the best strategies involve structuring your content in a way that naturally groups semantically-relevant content alongside one another. This reverberates throughout your entire content creation strategy and futureproofs your site when making additions or changes.

1. Plan Content Using Keyword Clustering

Keyword clustering lends itself beautifully to everything we've discussed in this article.

Previously, SEOs would generate a list of keywords with high search volume. Then, they’d plan pages or articles around making generous use of that keyword.

Today, SEOs take their list of keywords and cluster them into groups by their shared relevance. You can do this by sorting your keywords by common words and the frequency in which they appear.

Let’s revert to a previous example. A digital marketing agency is using “search engine optimization” as a target keyword. Other relevant keywords that we can use are terms like “search engine optimization techniques” and “search engine optimization specialist.” We cluster these terms into one group due to their relevancy.

We can use these cluster keywords to support the content on our core “search engine optimization” page. You could speak about the SEO service, what a specialist does, and some techniques site owners can use. From there, you should build out pillar pages that dive into your cluster keywords in greater depth.

When you create and organize content this way, you help Google understand the relationships. As Google’s understanding improves, it becomes more confident in the type of content you’re providing, so that it can better match a user’s search intentions.

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2. Address Longer User Queries

Long-tail keywords are a mixed bag for many SEOs.

On one hand, they often get skipped due to their lower search volume. When a brand is eager to boost traffic, it doesn't seem worthwhile to create pages around these keywords.

On the flip side, longtail keywords tend to exhibit high levels of engagement. When fewer results are taking the time to answer a question, users are more likely to engage with content that matches their needs.

You don't necessarily need to create an entire article focusing on a longtail keyword. Instead, you can address them within the body of pillar content established during keyword clustering. While your pillar page will cover a host of material, you can capitalize on longer queries by answering important questions throughout your article.

A great place to find longtail keywords is by checking out Google's People Also Ask section on SERPs. These questions are actual search queries and feature the best available response from available content.

Answering these questions in your core content is an excellent way to pull in additional traffic without diminishing your results. You'll pull in clicks for those lower search volume keywords, while simultaneously strengthening the quality of your core content. You get more eyes on your website and Google rewards you for helping out its users.

3. Always Utilize HTML Markup

Every content creator and SEO should already be doing this.

When you organize and upload content, you must tag sections of your content correctly. This HTML markup language explicitly tells Google's crawler what is on your page. Everything on the page should feature a tag including the type of text, buttons, videos, images, or forms.

Regarding the text, there are rules for tagging each section.

• Titles are indicated by H1
• H2 are commonly used as sub-headers to flag important topics/keywords
• H3-H6 flag topics or questions that belong underneath other headers
• Paragraph text is marked with <p>

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A modern CMS will automatically update the HTML accordingly so that you don't have to code your website. However, you need to know how to markup your text correctly to ensure that Google can index your content correctly.

If you're interested in the various HTML markup tags you can use, check out a full library along with tutorials here.

4. Make Use of Internal Linking

The benefit of designing your content around keyword clustering is how it lends itself to internal linking.

As we've learned, Google processes all of the content on a page to determine the meaning as it applies to search intent. However, it also crawls the entire site when performing the indexing process. That means that it will follow links from page to page to understand the navigation and how each page relates to one another.

When you cluster your keywords, your content in each group shares a relationship. When content is closely related, there are more sensible opportunities to add internal links to other pages. Just like with semantic keywords, Google will follow these links and use the content to define a shared meaning.

Be sure to only link to content whenever relevant. Anything that's out of context will likely be seen as unreliable or spammy, hurting your SEO efforts in the long run.

5. Utilize Structured Data

Structured data, also known as schema markup, is a language used to help search engines understand your website content.

While other semantic SEO techniques reinforce relationships, this markup language tags and define sections of the webpage. It not only allows for better indexing and ranking but grants the possibility of using that information on the SERP.

Sites that utilize structured data enhance their search result by building a rich snippet. Search results with rich snippets get increased visibility by showing you important details such as:

• Product availability
• Pricing
• Ratings
• Authors/directors/creators
• Release dates
• Company

Those examples simply scratch the surface. There are over one thousand schema properties you can use whenever appropriate.

The recommended format for implementing structured data is JSON-LD, a JavaScript notation. You can either implement the code directly via JavaScript or by using built-in features found within your CMS.

There are also tools available online that can help you generate structured data based on the type of page you want to create.Ā  Check out Schema.dev's schema builder with a browser plugin option available. You can also test your new structured data before publishing it for indexing.

Semantic SEO is the Key to Higher Rankings

Search engine optimization has changed substantially in the last ten years.

Site owners can no longer ad fluff to their website that simply mentions keywords. Thanks to several Google updates, search algorithms can now understand the content, but can discern the significance and relevance of the material within.

Content creators must invest time in creating pages with depth. You may need two to five thousand words to effectively answer every reader's needs. The more authoritative your content, the more likely Google is to trust it.

But, you may also proactively aid search engines. Make sure to utilize semantic keywords, apply the proper HTML markup, and make use of structured data. Instead of counting on the algorithm to get it right, give it a push in the right direction to get better rankings.

If understanding SEO practices seem complex, you're not alone. That's why DashClicks offers a free platform to help you get started. You can select which keywords you want to track and monitor your progress over a given period. Set your goals and see how you stack up against the top competitors. Give us a try today!

“Success isn’t always about greatness. It’s about consistency. Consistent hard work leads to success. Greatness will come.” Dwayne Johnson.

Brand consistency is the ultimate objective of any business because of its enormous benefits. It is the positioning that showcases a brand’s values and identity. It’s crucial because if you practice brand consistency, your audience can recognize your brand’s characteristics through your brand’s messaging.

What brand elements do the companies want to engrain in the minds of consumers, so they can remember their brand? These elements are as follows:

• The tone of messaging
• Logo
• Visual brand elements, such as colors and themes.

Together these elements help people easily recognize your brand across different marketing channels.

It’s crucial to differentiate your brand by practicing brand consistency, so it stays top of mind even amid growing competition. It will also boost customer loyalty and brand authority.

So let’s discuss how to practice brand consistency.

Is it as simple as that sounds? No way, it can be quite challenging!

What Is Brand Consistency?

Brand consistency is maintaining communication and marketing positioning according to your business values. It also involves the elements that create its identity.

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What if a Coca-Cola ad looks like this?

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Does it even look like a Coca-Cola ad? It seems more like a Pepsi ad and can confuse its loyal customers. That’s what makes brand consistency so crucial.

Now, look at the following ads for Nescafe. Look at the brand colors, themes, and tone in their messaging:

• Recharge yourself
• Charge your brain
• Warm up to the rains with Nescafe
• Enjoy a cup before the chaos

All the ads point to its basic appeal “To recharge and refresh yourselves for important occasions.“

The target audience is tired people looking for a little caffeine to refresh them.

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Importance of Brand Consistency

Coke and Pepsi have been arch-rivals for more than a century, but Coke dominates the soft drink market. Many people think Coke is an older brand, but that's not true. Pharmacists launched both brands in the US in the late 19th century. And you'll be surprised to know that even though Pepsi tastes better, the brand value of Coke is $33 billion against Pepsico's $18 billion.

Coke's market domination can be attributed to its ability to weave its way into our lives. Look at the way the brand communicates with consumers and the way the brand stays true to its values and mission. Their logo and brand color instantly create a feeling of warmth, feeling better, revived, and energized.

The secret to their success is brand consistency. Coke has kept its brand identity and product consistent for over 130 years.

How DashClicks Helps You Manage Brand Consistency?

DashClicks' white label dashboard allows you to customize your reports, websites, emails, and communications with your clients. And we are not talking about the logo or the brand name; you can customize virtually anything, including the background colors, fonts, messaging, and reports, through various tools and templates.

What's DashClicks?

DashClicks offers a white label platform and software to help agencies conduct their day-to-day operations faster and better.

DashClicks' marketing agency software and ecosystem can make life easier for agency owners. It simplifies and streamlines everything, including marketing, selling, fulfilling, and servicing. The built-in apps will help you structure, create and automate. The biggest advantage of using the DashClicks platform is that it enables you to scale your business.

Here are the four ways we can maintain brand consistency using DashClicks -

1. Dashboard App

Our reporting dashboard is the one source of truth for all your data. It allows you to use dozens of pre-built widgets across all your apps and pull your data into one unified client dashboard software.

The Dashboard application acts as the home page for your entire platform experience. This is a fully customizable page so that users can personalize their page view.

Watch this video to learn how you can customize everything on the Dashboard as an agency owner to maintain brand consistency while sharing reports and data.

2. Sites App

The strongest armor DashClicks white-label platform offers you is their Sites App. The App gives you the freedom to create the website of your dreams. Create and manage your websites using our white-label drag-and-drop website builder for agencies. It means you can fully customize it as per your branding needs. The website builder allows you to take control of your website without any coding knowledge and change the background colors, fonts, images, messages, content, headers, and footers, whenever you want. Our custom content management system (CMS) makes editing your website a breeze.

Watch this video to learn how to use Sites Apps -

3. Analytics App

DashClicks' Analytics App brings real-time marketing reporting software to your fingertips. With this App, you can monitor and report on all of your marketing campaigns in one place.

Apart from that, it's also a powerful branding tool that allows you to customize your reports with your logo, brand name, colors, and fonts. With this App, you can easily share reports with your clients highlighting your branding elements and keeping your agency top of mind.

4. Templates App

It is another powerful app from DashClicks that helps you manage brand consistency. With the Templates App, you can stack your templates and unify communication.

It allows you to create custom email and SMS templates and start unifying your messaging across your entire organization. To manage brand consistency, you can use custom SMS templates throughout the agency ecosystem.

Final Words

DashClicks ecosystem offers many apps that helps you manage brand consistency. We have already discussed how crucial brand consistency is for business growth and customer loyalty.

The templates app allows you to keep your communications consistent across the entire agency ecosystem. So, if you want to keep your agency top of mind, and manage brand consistency, use DashClicks' white label platform. Moreover, it comes with powerful automation tools.

Social media is one of the cornerstones of digital marketing.

Over the years, we've experienced the rise of platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Each has had a significant impact on how we deliver content, advertisements, and news to our followers.

TikTok is on a rapid growth path that could see it overtaking every other platform above it.

Its focus on video content, powerful content delivery algorithm, and the digestible format make it ideal for any age group to use. The New York Times even posted a recent article explaining how TikTok usurps even Google as a search engine among Generation Z.

Adapting to the latest trends is key for marketers, which is why your agency should be utilizing TikTok influencers.

The Power of TikTok Advertising

TikTok is currently home to over one billion active users.

It ranks sixth globally beneath platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. However, its growth rate year-over-year has been explosive. Experts expect it to reach nearly two billion users by the end of this year. It also reached the record of having the most app downloads in 2021 and 2022.

It's easily the most popular among Gen Z, specifically 16-24-year-olds, but still sees consistent use among older demographics. It beats out Twitter and falls only short of several Meta-owned apps.

The massive success of the user-generated content platform is giving rise to TikTok influencers. These creators have achieved celebrity in their way, building audiences of hundreds to thousands of people that regularly visit to view their content.

The power of influencer marketing is no secret. You're unlikely to watch a YouTube channel or listen to your favorite podcast without hearing a few ads from popular brands. That's because 93% of marketers use influencers and the number of yearly influencer expenses is expected to increase.

Marketers have everything to gain by utilizing TikTok. The social platform shows no signs of slowing down, and its predominant focus on video content promises generally higher engagement rates and ROI than competing platforms.

In short, your agency cannot afford to ignore TikTok as a marketing tool any longer.

What Are TikTok Influencers?

TikTok influencers are professional or semi-professional content creators on the platform. They create followings by providing unique content that caters to a specific interest or niche.

Brands recognize that these influencers have this consistent power over their following. They then sell advertisements or product placements with these influencers, knowing that prospects are listening and that the engagement rate will be high.

The bigger the following a TikTok influencer has, the more valuable they are to companies and marketers. They have the power to guarantee you exposure among their reliable, daily audience.

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Why Brands Are Hiring TikTok Influencers?

The TikTok platform is famous for its scarily-accurate algorithm. That means that users have a significantly easier time finding content created by influencers that match their tastes. It takes very little time for users to start receiving the ideal videos, making them highly addictive and difficult to click away from.

Brands crave this kind of activity and retention when deploying marketing initiatives. Traditional paid marketing requires experts to experiment with different audiences, curate their content, and continuously spend to earn more clicks.

Hiring TikTok influencers save brands both time and money in this regard. You can discover TikTok influencers that share an audience with your company for mutual gain. Brands also leave the task of content creation to the influencer, saving the team time and resources.

The TikTok influencer benefits by earning income from partnerships like these. It's not uncommon to find influencers promoting a product as either a one-time gig or sporting longer promotions over multiple video uploads.

The cost always weighs heavily in favor of the brand. Employing an influencer temporarily generally costs far less than employing and tasking your team to find audiences, create content, conduct tests, and so on.

The larger the following an influencer has, the more they will charge per sponsorship deal. However, even small to mid-sized TikTok creators command loyal followings. Even with smaller follower numbers, studies have shown that as much as 80% of consumers make purchases based on social media content.

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Your audience is more likely to trust a down-to-earth content creator versus a for-profit company like yours. Consumers seem confident that influencers will only promote or use products that they actually believe are quality. That audience goodwill extends to every brand that partners with that consumer.

How to Find TikTok Influencers?

Now that you know how powerful TikTok influencers can be, it's time to determine how to ally ourselves with the right ones.

Some solutions are as simple as becoming a Tiktok user yourself. However, there are also other platforms you can use to expedite your search.

1. Start Browsing Related Categories on TikTok

This is the most intuitive way to start finding TikTok influencers. It's beneficial for agencies to familiarize themselves with the platform they will advertise on regardless.

Brainstorm a list of content categories that fit well with your brand. Start by searching for any content that relates to your industry. If you sell a marketing service, look for other marketers or business leaders. If you're a technology merchant, check out some of the tech and software enthusiasts online.

You can also turn to your company's buyer persona. Look for the common interests shared among your audience, and consider exploring content in those areas as well. It helps to know your audience so that you can reach them even when they're outside of your usual territory.

Start browsing content and make a list of any creators you like. You can also filter TikTok results to find the content with the highest engagement rates. Typically, those creators sport those high numbers thanks to an already existing following.

2. Check Out Trending Hashtags, Too

The purpose of a hashtag is to categorize content by topic or subject matter. People using a certain hashtag and browsing those threads share the same interests as everyone else involved.

You can use this to your advantage by looking for hashtags that pertain to your area of expertise.

Browsing hashtags also helps you gain an understanding of what's hot and trendy among the average user base. If you can make a connection with creators using certain hashtags, you may be able to boost your voice even further than under normal circumstances.

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Just like with category browsing, stick to topics that are in your brand's wheelhouse. Stick to working with creators that share your brand's passion and values.

3. Check Out Other Social Media Platforms

Sticking to just one platform isn't as lucrative as it can be for influencers. They're like active elsewhere online even if just for content promotion.

Don't limit your TikTok influencer search to just TikTok. Check out the social media platforms you use personally or professionally and visit content creators there. More often than not, their profiles will feature a list of the usernames and aliases they use on every platform.

Content creators that primarily use sites like Twitter, YouTube, or Twitch are also branching out into the TikTok space. Smart content marketing encourages us to repurpose existing content for extended results. Those creators take that advice and regularly cut and edit content to build their discoverability in new areas like TikTok.

In short, if an influencer has a following on one platform, chances are, they're on TikTok. Knowing that they have a presence on multiple platforms may also make working with them a better choice than someone restricted to one service.

4. Create a List from Search Results

A fairly routine way of finding TikTok influencers is to let others do the work for you.

You can type in “(any industry or category) TikTok influencers” into Google search and find reliable results. Many of these are business and marketing sites compiling useful lists for SEO purposes.

Check out as many of these lists as necessary and compile your list of who to research. You should never take a site's word for it, especially if the content is somewhat dated. You still need to get searching and learn more about these influencers for yourself.

Then, look up these names online and start exploring their content style. Also, be sure to check that the influencer is still active and showing worthwhile follower numbers.

5. Utilize Third-Party Influencer Platforms

Finally, you can take advantage of the various influencer marketing platforms available online.

These services track influencer activity across a variety of social media websites. All you need to do is build your brand profile, select some choice keywords, set your criteria, and automatically get results.

Some of these platforms like Upfluence can even identify influencers within your customer records. Upload your historical customer contact data and find out if any current or past customers already have a following online. If they're already shopping with you, it won't be a hard sell to strike up a partnership deal.

An added benefit of utilizing these services is the ability to manage your influencer campaigns directly within the same platform. It's a perfect way for both parties to monitor results 24/7 with full transparency. You'll know which influencers are making an impact and which ones you'll want to continue working with moving forward.

Examples of these platforms include:

• Mavrck
• Upfluence
• Traackr
• BuzzSumo

Things to Consider When Selecting TikTok Influencers

When researching TikTok influencers, know that there's more to consider than reach and engagement.

Even though influencer partnerships can be brief, some risks come with bringing someone outside into your brand. How the public perceives that person directly influences how they view your company.

As you check out some of the top preferred influencers in your field, keep these key points in mind:

1. Check the Person's Online History

What you see from a person's recent content may not tell their whole story. In our world of being always online, it seems almost inevitable that public figures and influencers find themselves in trouble at some point.

This generally happens due to some past action, behavior, or statement that the public discovers. Murky details sometimes come up after a person achieves notoriety as they did not have an online presence prior.

Many creators can sufficiently navigate these scenarios and maintain an active following. However, it's a judgment call for your brand to determine who to avoid when considering its history. Some of your audience may be quick to judge a brand that associates with an influencer that does not share their values.

2. Language, Tone, and Delivery

The reason for avoiding an influencer partnership doesn't have to be wrapped up in their closet's skeletons. Content creators may utilize certain language or deliver their messages in a way that differs from your brand.

They don't have to match your voice one for one. However, it's important to aim for consistency to not alienate your existing audience or undermine your values.

As an example, family-friendly companies have an expected way of speaking. The tone can range from professional to conversational, but the verbiage is clean and acceptable for all ages.

That company might choose to avoid working with influencers that use colorful language, harsh delivery, or produce explicit content. They may have a passion for your brand and industry expertise, but associating with certain traits might have the opposite effect as desired.

There isn't a strict rule on this as exceptions can always be made. There's a line to walk when allowing influencers to appear human versus following a pre-written and branded script. You may even need to take risks, experiment, and measure the audience response for future campaigns.

3. High Follower Count Isn't Always the Answer

It's sensible for brands to filter influencers by follower count. The bigger their audience, the more bang you'll get for your buck. However, engagement rates generally matter more than overall reach, especially if your goal is to drive sales.

Thanks to this social media age, there are more communities of all sizes. As long as there is a passion for it, you'll find groups ranging from one hundred members to one hundred thousand. The secret is that smaller communities can also provide excellent returns when utilized correctly.

Data shows that engagement rates are higher when an influencer's audience is smaller. A study of Instagram showed a 5% engagement rate when the audience was no more than 5K. The engagement rate drops to under 2% when the community grows larger.

TikTok, of course, throws us a bit of a loop as engagement rates tend to stay consistent no matter the follower count. Influencers with 5K followers or less saw just over 12% engagement, while those with higher counts saw 13-14%.

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The takeaway here is that even smaller influencers drive action on social media. There's a psychological effect individuals feel in smaller communities allowing them to feel seen and heard.

These micro TikTok influencers also charge cheaper rates. This allows your agency to branch out into multiple communities and expand your brand recognition further throughout the platform.

4. There Are Always Risks

No matter what you do, there is always an inherent risk in hiring a third party.

Anything an influencer says or does has a rippling impact on their community. When your brand forms that association, those thoughts and impressions are now extended to you. When the influencer is in good standing, that favor passes to your brand. But, the same is also true when an influencer damages their reputation.

The risk extends both ways. Trouble on your brand's side can potentially harm the image of an influencer. For this reason, there's always motivation for both parties to clearly define terms, understand the assignment, and deliver results accordingly.

Take the time to follow the tips in this article and do your research. You can mitigate the risk as much as possible by carefully vetting who you interact with ahead of time.

Recruit TikTok Influencers to Boost Your Online Presence

The future of social media marketing is already here. Billions of consumers worldwide spend significant portions of their week checking out content from their favorite creators.

Those creators have the benefit of selling themselves as the product. They garner more favor and trust with audiences than most brands ever can. That's why more agencies and businesses are investing in influencer marketing as a viable strategy for reaching goals.

Start developing smart research strategies to find the ideal TikTok influencers. Make sure that their audience has a shared interest and can connect with your brand's offerings. Try to work with influencers that share your values to keep your messaging consistent across all channels.

Finally, don't limit yourself to the platform's biggest followers. Though the reach is attractive if you can afford it, smaller creators often show the same if not higher engagement rates than major celebrities. You benefit from spending less and earning more transactions than you might with a traditional marketing campaign.

If you want to learn more about TikTok, DashClicks can help you get started with our state-of-the-art platform and white label TikTok ads service. Sign up today to create your free account and start tracking your TikTok campaigns with our intuitive integration features.

Negative reviews & stories and unfortunate incidents about brands and products are the new normal in the business world. Such stories and reviews can be an instant turn-off for customers and prospects looking to buy products online. Poor reputation management can backfire on all your marketing efforts. Therefore, reputation management is even more crucial.

How Does Reputation Management Work for Clients?

Negative stories, comments, and reviews published online can tarnish your brand image. They may also negatively impact sales as visitors and prospects may change their purchase decision at the very last moment, especially at the bottom of the sales funnel. So, all your efforts and money spent on lead nurturing goes down the drain.

The objective of reputation management is to professionally respond to negative customer comments online and react to stories posted with the intent to paint your company in a bad light. It includes publishing a post on social media, writing and publishing an article, or releasing a public statement addressing the story's content.

It frequently happens as an image makeover exercise, especially after an unfortunate incident that might spoil someone's brand reputation.

Almost one-third of the reputation market comprises small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This article will also discuss how to discover, retain, and expand clients and get a pie of this lucrative market.

How to Get More Reputation Management Clients?

It's an opportunity your agency can grab, as the service complements other digital marketing services such as SEO and social media marketing. Here are some of the proven ways to get more reputation management clients.

1. Create a Landing Page for Reputation Management Services

First, you must create a landing page for reputation management services, as you can divert your leads and prospects to this page for conversion. A landing page should be specifically designed for conversion purposes, so it should be clutter-free and highlight your previous achievements.

You can add a small introductory video at the beginning of the page to inform the customers about the importance of reputation management and how you can help them by providing result-oriented reputation management services.

A few testimonials of your satisfied clients will be a plus.

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2. First, Approach Your Existing Clients

As an agency, you must already have many satisfied customers, so the best strategy is to start with your existing clients. Many of them must actively be seeking reputation management services.

On average, it costs nearly five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. It will be easy for you to offer your services to your existing clients because all the factors, i.e., familiarity, confidence, and trust, will work in your favor. Some of them must already be availing of these services and might not be quite happy. Once they get to know about your professional ORM services, they will flock to you.

3. Approach Companies With a Damaged Reputation and Poor Reviews

Reputation management is a service you can provide to almost every client of yours, but still, it would be better if you find the customers who'll drive the most benefit. You can use sales intelligence tools such as UpLead, Datanyze, and Salesforce's Snapshot Report to identify such clients.

You can combine the insights from these tools and offer a free trial to the raw leads. This step alone would help you a lot in your effort to seize reputation management clients. When equipped with such crucial and useful information, businesses will form a positive image of your agency.

A free trial will convince them about the efficacy of your tools and tactics. It will help them realize that these are the kind of services they need and that you have expertise in them.

4. Use Email Drip Campaign

A drip campaign is a part of the sales funnel strategy comprising a series of automated emails. These emails are sent to your website visitors based on the specific action they took on your website. Their actions will also decide how many emails to send and their frequency.

Here's a flowchart to demonstrate how drip email campaigns work -

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Drip marketing serves two purposes. On the one hand, it helps you keep in touch with your audience in a highly personalized manner, and simultaneously it keeps you top of mind by informing them about the special offers, dates, and events.

For example, you can use a drip marketing campaign for a prospect if they have:

• Placed an order
• Attended an event at your store
• Attended a webinar
• Signed up for a newsletter or subscribed to your YouTube channel
• Download a report or eBook
• Abandoned a shopping cart
• Interacted with sales or customer service
• Not placed an order for a while

Drip marketing can boost sales by turning casual visitors into buyers, encouraging repeat purchases, and turning a dormant audience into an active audience.

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5. Use DashClicks Reputation Management App

DashClicks offers a reputation management app that helps you win more customers. This tool can efficiently manage your reviews across multiple sources from one dashboard and boost your reputation.

The reputation app allows you to compile your business reviews in a single dashboard. Effortlessly track your ratings and publish replies with one software tool.

This tool allows you to communicate with customers from every review source and leave replies without leaving the Reputation app.

You can also track your average rating, best review sources, and peak performance months 24/7 with your reporting dashboard. Invite customers to leave business reviews by sending carefully designed emails and SMS messages with one button press.

Once you add reputation management to the list of the services you offer and approach a few existing clients, you'll be stunned by the positive response you get from your clients. You may soon utilize cold calling and other sales tactics and see that your clients list is growing beyond your expectations, and you may not have the resources to accept any more clients. In the meantime, our white-label reputation management tool will help your agency to scale.

Further Reading: How DashClicks Reputation Management Software Can Help You Protect Your Brand Online

6. Ramp up Cold Calling Campaigns

The easiest and the best way to boost your business is cold calling. But, you need to have a well-planned strategy for that. At DashClicks, we train agencies in the art of cold calling. We use InstaSites, our bulk website development tool, as a prospecting tool to push our services step-by-step.

To learn this technique, watch this video -

‍

You can also read it in the blog format here -

How to Replicate the Prospecting Gold Mine

DashClicks provides you with enormous educational material to improve sales. Watch this video to learn how to close sales in four simple steps.

7. Try to Grab the Number #1 Slot

Last but not least, try to make your agency a reputation management leader. And it's possible with the right strategy and the best reputation management team to support you.

If cold calling seems difficult, you can watch this video to learn the secrets.

This article will also help you succeed as a digital agency -

Success Formula to Build a Profitable Agency From Scratch

A Sales Call Script to Sell Your Digital Products

Read this article for a complete sales call script -

How to Use InstaSites Software to Super Charge Your Sales

Final Words

With DashClicks behind you, you're ready to grab the #1 slot in this niche. With our reputation management software, you'll add happy clients swiftly and consistently. It will increase trust and brand value.

Are you ready to encash this hot new opportunity in the market?

If you want to make a sale, then you need to know your customer better than they know themselves.

Pushing a product onto someone rarely works. We exist in a time when consumers feel bombarded by hundreds of solicitations a week about a new good or service. They're likely to avoid you because, more importantly, you don't know them.

To increase your returns, your brand needs to know the customer down to the individual. This is what we call a buyer persona.

In this article, we're going to clearly define buyer persona, the benefits of creating one, and how to research yours effectively.

What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a profile based on all of the attributes that would make the ideal customer for your business.

The buyer persona contains all of the demographic data that distinguishes one social group from another. It should include details such as age, gender, occupation, location, and income.

In addition to personal or career attributes, buyer personas also highlight customer needs, wants, and pain points. In short, your brand should be able to imagine a somewhat-real idea of what this customer experiences on a daily basis. With this knowledge, you can posture your marketing and sales efforts to have a greater impact.

Buyer Persona Examples

Finding the right buyer persona for your brand is critical for creating successful sales. Everyone has a unique profile, but your brand needs to be able to meet their needs and pain points effectively. Let's take a look at a few examples of imagined buyer personas for a digital marketing agency targeting automotive companies.

Buyer Persona Example 1

Buyer Persona Example 2

Buyer Persona Example 3

Buyer Persona Example Analysis

Based on these three example profiles, we can already uncover commonalities that will be vital in guiding our marketing and sales processes.

First, we see that our target customers at these automotive brands are not gender or race-specific. There isn't enough data to suggest that leaders in these automotive brands favor one gender over another. Therefore, our attention rightly focuses more on their occupation within the company and their ability to implement our services.

Second, the age group appears to have a pattern of including individuals anywhere from 30-40. Because leadership positions tend to trend toward older individuals, we may want to continue research to either extend our range or make it more precise.

The responsibilities of these personas differ within their companies. However, there is a common thread in that these leads play a role in helping the company close sales with the right customers. Employing effective marketing tactics and managing leads effectively is the challenge they face regularly.

Finally, we benefit from knowing how these individuals spend their time online at work and at home. Some seem to be more social-savvy than others, but there is a throughline in using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in both scenarios.

With this data, our buyer persona starts to look like this:

While our example individuals had their differences, there are enough shared attributes for us to begin realizing a more effective pitch for our agency's services. We know who to target, where to reach them online, and what problems they face.

Now, we use this data to position our services as the solution to those pain points.

Benefits of Targeting Buyer Personas

Targeting carefully-crafted buyer personas is key to improving your marketing efforts.

Customers now demand a personalized experience when shopping or receiving advertisements. A survey study by Segment featuring 1,006 respondents concluded that an overwhelming 71% feel frustrated by impersonal experiences with brands.

When you deploy personalized content to audiences, you're doing what is now expected of companies to remain competitive in the industry. Buyer personas are your ticket to achieving this.

Here is a list of everything you can benefit from by targeting buyer personas with your marketing campaigns and content creation efforts.

1. Improved Targeting

It helps to know who you're talking to before you initiate the conversation.

Without understanding your buyer persona, you find yourself talking to everyone, and, therefore, no one at the same time. Compare this to blindly approaching every customer that comes by on the sales floor. Not everyone has the same needs, and you'll never know who will be receptive based on a blind guess.

When you begin compiling important qualifiers regarding your customers, you become more efficient in your sales approach. You spend less time and money going after those with zero interest and focusing your efforts on those that matter more to your company.

2. Improved Content Creation

If you know who you're targeting, you immediately gain a better understanding of how to approach the conversation.

This applies to not only in-person or phone conversations but should influence your website copy, blogs, paid ads, landing pages, and more. Instead of casting a wide net and hoping for the best, you're now prepared to tailor your offers and messaging to those who are most likely to engage with you.

Furthermore, improving your buyer personas and creating new ones offers compounding benefits. When you're creating the right kinds of content for your audience, the performance data becomes even more meaningful. You'll know what works, what doesn't, and what you can do to get consistent results moving forward.

3. Improved ROI

The positive benefits continue to snowball into what matters most - your bottom line.

When you create buyer personas, you know who to speak with and how to speak with them. Now, you can start pushing toward closing more successful deals and boosting your ROI.

Businesses and marketers alike don't want nonqualified customers entering their doors. It costs time and money for a person's attention, and attracting the wrong leads is a poor investment. Instead, you'll now focus heavily on the audiences with the strongest interest and purchase intent, even if it means less traffic overall.

You'll spend less time chasing vanity metrics like overall clicks or daily traffic to make your agency look better. Your brand will benefit more from closing more deals with qualified leads that align with your buyer persona.

4. Better Consumer Feedback

Finally, interacting with your buyer persona gives way to more actionable feedback. In our always-online world, everyone has an opinion. But, which opinions about your brand really make a difference?

Opinions and feedback from engaged and paying customers are critical for growth and success. They've already committed to interacting with your brand, but now you can discover how to make your offerings even better.

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You can get better feedback and improve your shopping experience by doing your research ahead of time. Let's dive into how to do buyer persona research so that you can start finding better leads today.

How to Do Buyer Persona Research?

If you're a currently operating business, you likely already have data on hand that's valuable for building buyer personas. However, more information will only further improve your efforts.

Your marketing efforts might prove rough at first. But, by employing these tactics, you can use your buyer persona research to create better customer profiles.

1. Evaluate Your Brand

This should be the first step in creating any type of business. It's the reason why companies typically state their mission, vision, or goal by existing.

A successful business does not exist simply to sell a product or service but to provide actionable solutions to customer pain points. In the process of defining these goals, you should naturally begin to consider who will benefit from your offerings.

As a white label digital marketing agency, we know that our mission is to serve other agencies and entrepreneurs. We strive to complement their business efforts and provide fulfillment services to cover any gaps in their own business offerings. For these reasons, we know we want to focus on B2B buyer personas that work in the digital marketing field.

You should apply the same thought process when establishing your buyer persona. Understand who you want to reach, but leave an open mind for the various audience segments that make up that broad spectrum of potential clients.

2. Survey Your Existing Customers

Unless you're a brand-new agency with no clients, you already have research options available.

Brands of any size will benefit from interviewing their customers directly. Your audience interaction shouldn't always be entirely focused on a sale. Building rapport with your existing customers and maintaining their satisfaction is crucial for growth and scaling.

Check-in on your customers and ask how your product or service is treating them. This not only shows that you care but invites them to speak honestly about your strengths and weaknesses. You might discover concerns about price, quality, or customer service, all of which speak to customer needs and pain points.

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You can also obtain information by sending our customer surveys. Take the opportunity to curate a series of questions for your newsletter subscribers or your previous customer list. If you're an e-commerce brand, invite them to leave reviews on any products they purchase shortly after they complete their transaction.

Brand questionnaires need not only apply to the actual transaction and experience with the service. Ask your customers what type of content they like to see, where they spend their time browsing, and how you can improve their browsing experience. Any feedback you receive simultaneously builds out your buyer persona and helps you improve your marketing efforts.

3. Collect Information from Your Prospects

Many marketers, particularly in PPC areas, leverage their content to collect lead data.

These initial campaigns are known as discovery campaigns and exist to help with lead segmentation. While boosting sales should always be a focus, taking the time to learn more about your audience is beneficial for long-term results.

Your ads and landing pages for these types of campaigns should reflect this. However, this is still a transaction and your average web user is not going to relinquish their data for free. You can offer incentives, otherwise known as lead magnets, to encourage users to provide some personal data.

Lead collection forms on your landing page can give you the attributes you need to qualify who's reading your content. You can ask for as many qualifiers as you want. Just be mindful that many users are hesitant to give out anything too personal, nor do they wish to spend too much of their free time helping you out.

Finally, the paid platform you're using likely offers a tracking pixel to assist with collecting some of this data automatically. You can install a Facebook or TikTok Pixel on your site to track users that click on your ads on those platforms. Then, you have information about who they are, how they found your content, and how they spend their time on social before they reach your form.

4. Create a Negative Buyer Persona

If your buyer persona is your ideal customer, then the negative buyer persona is the individual that you do not wish to attract.

While scaling and growing your sales is the goal, some people will never be the right for your product or services. You can give yourself an edge in crafting your buyer persona by defining criteria that would rule out a potential lead.

For example, a business that sells garage door repair services is interested in home or business owners. Individuals that do not fit those categories, like apartment renters or those that live at home, are not ideal for their company. They do not have a garage door and cannot benefit from their service in any way.

Other negative criteria might not be so clear without research. Price is often a tricky factor to consider as you need to balance the cost of business, build quality, and accessibility to customers. Once you decide on a firm price point, you'll want to rule out customers outside of a certain income level as they likely cannot afford your premium product.

Knowing what to avoid is just as essential as knowing whom you wish to target. Take the time to evaluate your brand, consider your customer base, and define the attributes that make up your negative buyer persona.

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How to Create a Buyer Persona?

Armed with a library of research, we can now begin the process of creating a buyer persona.

Let's start by reviewing our research.

1. Analyze and Segment Your Data

In our earlier example, we created three basic customer profiles. After performing your research, you likely have information from dozens, if not hundreds, of customers that you need to consider.

We recommend compiling your audience data in spreadsheet software like Excel. You can also utilize form builder and tracking software like DashClicks to quickly organize your information. Then, you can download all of your collected data in a CSV sheet to use in other applications.

Segment your data for easier browsing. Some categories you may want to implement include:

• Sex
• Age
• Location
• Occupation
• Income Level
• Interests
• Social media profiles
• Housing

Your criteria will differ based on your brand’s unique needs and requirements.

Then, start to highlight the most consistent attributes shared across all of your surveyed leads and customers. Add each of these qualifiers to your buyer persona profile until you start to form a clear picture of your average ideal customer.

Do not necessarily rule out any qualifiers that aren't ranked at number one. There may be a significant enough number of customers that can benefit from your brand to consider making additional buyer personas.

2. Rule Out Any Negative Buyer Persona Qualifiers

Our earlier process of creating a negative buyer persona will help us in eliminating unuseful information. Some of your surveyed leads might have tangential interest in your brand, but do not make for worthwhile prospects based on your previously established reasoning.

You'll now have a list of buyer persona attributes shared among your viable audience. You've eliminated any unworthwhile prospects and can now move forward in building and sharing your buyer persona with your team.

Note that ruling out certain leads now does not necessarily mean you should forget them for good. Some of your most interested leads might only have one or two factors going against them right now. Oftentimes, you can use this data to consider proposing new goals that can help you extend your offerings to new audiences when it comes time to scale.

3. Start Implementing Changes to Your Strategy

With your initial buyer persona(s) created, it's time to start utilizing them in your marketing efforts.

Buyer persona-focused content should not apply only to new efforts. You should communicate with your SEO, content, and social media teams to revisit existing plans and previous content. Revisit your work and consider how effective it is in addressing your new ideal buyer persona.

This process should prove educational. Take the opportunity to tweak content as necessary to begin addressing your ideal customer. Use a daily task tracker to write daily notes and provide feedback to your team as you come up with new ideas for better content moving forward.

Your entire team must be on the same page in understanding your buyer persona. Consistency in your message is key to building trust. With persistence, you can begin to establish your brand as a household name with your new target audience.

Buyer Personas Lead to Better Marketing

Creating a buyer persona is essential for improving business efficiency.

Your company needs to be aware of its audience and important customer pain points. Simultaneously, those prospects are demanding personalized content from brands that want their business.

The buyer persona helps aid both in meaningful content creation and accurate campaign targeting. Your team focuses on how to deliver the right message while ensuring that those words reach the most ideal ears.

Finally, it will provide you with meaningful, actionable feedback. You'll interact with genuine customers and learn how you can improve your experience from discovery to the final sale.

Keywords are the bedrock of search engine optimization.

They are the tools that people use to find the perfect content online for their needs. With that known, how does Google help match the ideal page with a person’s actual search intent?

This article will explain how keyword clustering attacks this problem directly. We’ll help you gain an understanding of the strategy, its myriad SEO benefits, and how you can perform keyword clustering for your website.

What is Keyword Clustering?

Keyword clustering is an SEO strategy in which website owners group, or cluster, related keywords based on their implied intention. Google is able to better understand your content based on these relationships, and, therefore, helps your page gain visibility with the correct audience.

For example, let’s use a car dealership as an example for our business website. Our main focus is “automobiles.” However, this keyword is too vague and can apply to a wide variety of related queries that include that keyword. Therefore, we need to examine that list of terms and cluster them into related groups.

From there, we might ask what is important about the automobile business. It provides both automobile sales and automobile repairs. These can serve as the pillar pages for other keywords that end up looking something like this with “automobile as our pillar”.

From there, you can then begin to choose which keywords are important for your business. You’ll also want to be mindful of the keyword’s search intent before including it in the cluster.

In the above example, certain keywords like “automobile definition,” and “automobile insurance” do not fit into our grouping. While our auto dealer can certainly speak about either topic, the cluster is focusing on “automobile sales,” a transactional keyword.

“Automobile definition” is likely unnecessary, while we would only be able to speak about auto insurance from an informational perspective, which would be better suited as a different pillar within a blog.

Be aware that clusters themselves can become pillars for other clusters as your website expands. “Automobile parts” alone can bring up a slew of related terms that would direct users to content that helps them either purchase specific parts or learn more about their vehicle. Both of which present new content options for your site and new opportunities to boost your SEO.

The Benefits of Keyword Clustering

Keyword clustering is the best way to boost the overall SEO benefits of your website. When you build your website, you should plan all of your content around using related terms that support similar search intent.

When you do so, your website will benefit in the following ways:

1. You’re More Likely to Rank Higher Overall

Google is no longer necessarily interested in the volume of a particular keyword on a page. SEOs and content creators used to look for as many opportunities to cram a word or phrase onto a page to boost their rankings.

Now, Google’s crawler is able to understand the bigger picture. Instead of simply matching a keyword with a query, it wants to find different, but related terms that help solidify the true intention. In other words, Google wants to help users who want to buy a product do so. Likewise, it wants to provide unbiased information to a user just looking to browse.

By working with Google's needs in this way, you help ensure that all of your content gets a visibility boost. When the search engine is confident that your content will satisfy a user's full needs, the more likely it is to recommend your brand.

2. It Helps Attract Better-Qualified Traffic

This is an inevitability when using keyword clustering and gaining more visibility overall.

When it comes to your bottom line, what matters is your return on investment. If your optimized webpage gets 1,000 clicks, but only 10 purchases, it's underperforming. If it receives 100 unique visitors but converts 100 sales, it's a success.

Keyword clustering helps website owners avoid the mistake of chasing vanity numbers like impressions or clicks. While it's important to boost your traffic, it's more important to make sure your content gets seen by the people that are most likely to engage with it.

When you take the time to keyword cluster, you naturally begin to segregate your keywords by the user's search intent. By prioritizing that ahead of time, you can plan content topics that focus on the keyword AND intention to maximize your performance.

3. Boosted Rankings for Additional Search Terms

Including related terms on your pillar page will help that main keyword rank higher in search results.

The added benefit is that the high-ranking page can also help your site get additional clicks for the related terms. This is most common with long-tail keywords that typically net a lower search volume, thus leading many to avoid them.

The truth is that long-tail keywords are a hidden SEO superpower as they tend to exhibit better engagement due to the strong search intent. Because we already value user intent when clustering our content, we have an easier time getting those important clicks from our secondary or tertiary terms.

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4. It Will Boost Vital SEO Metrics

A higher engagement rate with your website content will also boost your most-tracked SEO metrics across the board.

As Google is better able to match the right visitors with your content, your bounce rate will decrease. These qualified leads want to explore your offerings making them less likely to leave. Meanwhile, your average session duration, page clicks, and custom goals will see a boost as they spend more time on a page.

You can leverage even more of an SEO boost by using the best techniques like internal linking. Take advantage of these clusters and their intent to show new customers around your brand while you already have their attention.

5. It Futureproofs Your Website

By structuring your website around pillars and clusters, you'll have an easier time adding new pages and content in the future.

Many site owners will make the mistake of creating new pages to help rank for certain keywords as time passes and the site grows. This makes sense as new information, techniques, and guides become available every day. The newest, latest information will benefit from the highest rankings.

The issue arises whenever you already have a page ranking for that keyword. By adding new pages that rank for the same keyword, you end up suffering from what's known as keyword cannibalization. Two of your pages are fighting for the same authority as opposed to having one super page that could outrank your competitors.

With keyword clustering, everything is better organized for future content additions. Similarly, you'll have an easier time referencing existing content and simply making the necessary updates to those pages. In short, keyword clustering sets you up to make smarter choices for your website's SEO.

How to Perform Keyword Clustering?

Keyword clustering is not necessarily a difficult process as much as it can be a time-consuming one. This will vary depending on how specific your niche is and how many industry-related terms are actually relevant to your brand.

To get started with your keyword clustering strategy, follow these important steps:

1. Start Compiling a List of Keywords

No matter what your strategy is, SEO content creation begins here.

The best strategy is to take advantage of whichever SEO tool or keyword finder you're most accustomed to using. We make frequent use of SEMRush, but tools like Moz or Ahrefs are excellent alternatives.

Don't forget about any existing keyword data you have on hand. You'll want to consider how you'll organize any existing content into your clusters to avoid common errors like keyword cannibalization.

Next, follow the tried-and-true SEO strategy of directly examining your closest competitors. You're not necessarily looking at the top of the ranks, but the websites that are closest to your actual position. Determine what keywords they're using, how they group their content, and what type of content they provide to support their efforts. Then, differentiate yourself and determine how you can do it better.

You'll also want to save time by pruning out any unnecessary keywords. Many of the keywords yielded may have tangential relations to your industry, but many will not have anything immediately to do with your core offerings. Avoid adding queries like this to your clusters to avoid confusing search intent.

2. Identify the Core Term to Create Your Groups

After you compile your list of terms, you'll want to begin the process of grouping or clustering your keywords.

You do this by looking for the words or phrases that appear most frequently throughout the list. This can turn into a tremendous time-sink, making it much more reasonable to seek out a service that specifically offers clustering assistance. Thankfully, all of the tools we recommended above offer clustering and segmentation tools to help you identify the most commonly-appearing terms.

When you observe your keywords by frequency, you should naturally begin to see similarities. The constant term in each is your core, allowing you then further segment your keywords into distinct clusters.

Going back to our first example in this article, “automobile” was our core, while we went on to create cluster pages for “automobile sales” and “automobile repairs.” Both are extensions of automobiles and relate, but ultimately serve two distinct purposes for our audience.

3. Plan and Create Pages for Each Cluster

With your groups made and the search intent identified, you can begin the process of creating the actual content. We started with the grouped content as it will play a significant role in building up your central pillar page.

These cluster pages are crucial for content marketing as it allows your writers to explore topics in greater depth. They should aim to fully understand the user's search intent while satisfying every need they have.

You'll want every cluster page to expound on precise topics with at least 1,000 words, if not more. Do your best to keep unrelated topics to their own page, while internally linking to those topics whenever relevant. This not only helps create a beautiful network of information but helps you maximize your SEO benefits for each website URL.

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4. Assemble the Pillar

Finally, you can begin creating a pillar page that helps deliver all of the information available on your core topic.

Many sites already have pages that serve as a pillar, whether it be the home page, a product categories page, or a service page. The mistake many make is failing to provide it with any meaningful content outside of linking to the cluster pages.

Instead, the pillar page ought to be the go-to page that someone can use to find any answer on the core topic. You should create content that effectively walks readers through the subject while taking every effort to link out to your clustered content when relevant. Then, the user has the opportunity to open the new link or bookmark your different site pages for later viewing.

Repeat the process of creating a pillar page for every cluster group you made during step two. Double-check to make sure all of your clustered content helps to support your pillar.

Common Keyword Clustering Mistakes

While keyword clustering is an important SEO strategy, it doesn't grant automatic results. Critical mistakes may prevent your site from seeing any rank increase.

Be mindful of these everyday SEO mistakes when planning your website's pillars and clusters.

1. Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword clustering generally helps to avoid this particular issue. Nevertheless, it's not uncommon for site owners to inadvertently cannibalize their keyword rankings, especially as your page number count and content library grow.

It makes sense for you to add content when you want to improve your rankings for that keyword. The problem with creating two unique pages is that Google's crawler wants to index one page per domain as this is the ideal practice. When it sees the request to index two pages for the same keyword, it's unable to pick the rightā  one. You end up hurting your ranking efforts rather than helping them.

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Instead of creating a new page, consider adding new sections of content to the existing page. As long as the old information is still relevant, it can remain while benefitting from the updated data.

Likewise, if the older page has outdated, irrelevant content, consider replacing all of the content or deleting the page entirely. There is no one correct option and your strategy should be based on your current keyword rankings.

Keep a map of all the content and keywords used throughout your site. Before creating a new page for your SEO, look back to your map and act accordingly to avoid cannibalizing your progress.

2. Keeping Your Pages Static

Another mistake website owners make is believing that creating a web page is a one-and-done endeavor. Injecting updates of new content to your site is the best way to keep your pages modern and eligible for higher rankings.

Most site owners will try to do this by creating new pages weekly with strategies like creating a blog. While this is highly recommended, your pillar and cluster pages also need regular updates.

The reason for this is that Google's crawler is always looking for the most reliable, up-to-date data. The crawler is likely to favor a brand-new page with accurate data as opposed to a page that was last edited three months prior.

It's best practice to check in on your website pages at least every few months. Of course, this frequency can change depending upon how often your industry goes through changes that could affect your content and the accuracy of the information within.

Even if your core content is still valuable, it's healthy to check in on your site and see if changes can be made to improve or merge content. You should also honestly reassess your old content for readability, grammar mistakes, or general structure errors. Completing these quick fixes is a great way to refresh the page for crawlers.

3. Failure to Implement Internal Linking Strategies

This critical mistake causes many site owners to lose out on easy boosts to their overall site performance.

When we create our keyword clusters, we are laying the template for how all of our ranked keywords relate to one another. They all feed into the core topic, the pillar, but their shared nature also allows for countless internal linking opportunities that should come naturally.

For example, when a user looks up our example website for automobile sales, there's room to explore that intention. While the core intent is to find a vehicle to purchase, you may be able to leverage that intent to explore your related content. You might want to show off different types of vehicles, vehicle parts, or specific vehicle brands.

You should ensure that each page focuses on the topic at hand. However, capitalize on natural opportunities to share your additional content with the reader as it pertains to their immediate interest. You're simply presenting them with an option to engage with more content and making it easy for them to do so.

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4. Your Pillar Page Contains the Bare Minimum

This is another common mistake that is a result of misunderstanding the pillar page's purpose.

Because the pillar page is the foundation that links out to cluster pages, site owners mistakenly think the pillar page requires little content. After all, it's the cluster pages that delve into the deep minutiae of specific products or services that your brand offers.

However, your pillage page still requires content for crawlers to understand its purpose and how it relates to other content. While you should leave the fine details for cluster pages, the pillar page is ultimately meant to provide the user with all the information they need about the core topic. The cluster pages are there if they want to expand their knowledge on the related topics.

Ideally, your pillar page should have enough content to satisfy users and crawlers, but leave enough intrigue to motivate additional clicks. By providing quality content even on your pillar page, you solidify a cornerstone of your site's foundation, hence the name pillar.ā

Structure Your Site Around Keyword Clustering

The old manner of mapping your keywords isn't enough to keep up with Google's changing algorithm.

By implementing keyword clustering, you get to put a greater emphasis on delivering high-quality content without placing as much stress on keyword frequency. Instead, you bolster your content by smartly segmenting keywords into clusters to explain their relationship.

Not only will clustering help you rank higher, but it will also help you boost your key SEO metrics across the board. Be sure to cluster intelligently, avoid cannibalizing your keywords, and make use of smart internal linking whenever possible to take your results further.