Expand your understanding of clustering

Gianluca says: “Rethink the concept of clustering.

We usually think of clustering as something that is only for creating content, especially in the informational space. However, we know that we need to be visible along the entire search journey and customer journey. This means we must be visible with our informational content, but also our commercial, navigational, and transactional content – to use the classic definitions for intent.

When you cluster, you need to do so for different types of clusters. The first one is still clustering for topics: entity search, and so on. Then, it is also interesting and very effective to start clustering these queries and segments for other things, like the buyer personas that are implied by these queries. You can cluster them by sentiment, in order to understand the urgency and needs that are implied by those searches.

We know that search is multi-modal, so some content is better served using video, some with visuals like images, infographics, etc., and others with written content. If you know the SERP features that are more common for a query, you can also cluster them by preferred format.

Last but not least, you should target the entire customer journey, which is synonymous with micro moments: I want to go, I want to buy, I want to know, etc. You should also cluster that initial group of queries and topics by the micro-moments that they specifically target. This goes further than classic clustering for a topic and becoming a topical authority. It's also about serving other things and being more effective for your visibility.

If you are visible with content that responds to an urgency and targets a specific, appropriate micro-moment, and is presented in the format that people prefer for consuming that kind of information, then you are going to have greater success. You will be sending better user signals, which we know are extremely important for Google, and consequently, because of how LLMs use Google search to retrieve information, that will also help you obtain visibility on LLMs like ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.”

Can you explain more about how clustering for micro-moments works, and why that is beneficial for SEO?

“Let me give you an example. Let's say that someone is interested in minifigures, and they are searching for information about how to paint a Space Marine for display, not for a game. Obviously, you would need to have content that makes Google understand that you are an expert on the topic.

You will have done your keyword research, maybe even used the query fan-out to expand your keyword research, and you have created a cluster. You know that this question is not a search in isolation. Someone searching for how to paint a Space Marine for display is probably also going to look for information like the best airbrush for painting acrylic or oil, what brand of acrylic paint to buy, etc.

There is a very large spectrum of topics that are related to this simple first query, which can be the start of a more complex journey – and not all of these queries will be informational. Many queries might initially be looking for theoretical information, then that ‘I want to know’ becomes ‘I want to do’. If they want to do something, then they need something: ‘I want to buy,’ which becomes ‘I want to go to a place where I can buy something.’

However, if they want to buy something, before that, they may need more information specific to that line of products, like acrylic paints that they want to buy. Then, the final micro-moment will be the transactional ‘I want to buy’ moment.

When you are considering micro-moments and doing this clustering for the entire query space around your topic, you are able to create content, and an infrastructure of content, that correctly targets all the different search intents and micro-moments. That makes you more visible in more queries, all along a potential search journey – both inside Google and jumping back and forth between Google and ChatGPT. This is the advantage.”

How do you target queries that haven’t been searched before, and you don't know are being searched?

“That is obviously quite a sizeable challenge, which would require investigating thousands of prompts. It would also be very expensive, if you consider how much these tools usually cost.

That's another reason why it’s a good idea to cluster by buyer persona. You can do this with a tool like ChatGPT, OpenAI, or Claude. You upload the buyer persona that has been defined by you or the client (it’s better if it’s by the client), and you can say, ‘Considering this content and this cluster that I have created, and knowing what the buyer personas are, tell me which queries best suit each buyer persona.’

By doing this, you can create specific content on the same topic for someone who is an expert, but also for someone who is a beginner, for example. That enables you to create an architecture of content that has the possibility and opportunity of being visible to a wider audience of people.

Now, you are not only creating one piece of content targeting a universal persona; you are eventually creating content that targets specific personas, in order to also be visible in a very personalised search.

How you create that content is another story. It can be different, separate pieces of content, or it can be chunks inside a single piece of content, where one is speaking to a certain persona and another is speaking to a different kind of persona.

For instance, let's say that you have a landing page about a Safari in Kenya, but you are targeting different types of personas: young couples without kids, mature couples without kids, families with kids, and older senior couples. You don’t need to create four different landing pages; you can have one landing page, but you can create modules inside that page that specifically talk about and sell these tours to each specific target.”

Does chunking the content on pages potentially dilute the impact of that content, if aspects of it are not relevant to some buyer personas?

“That is a risk, but this is where the content creation process is so important.

You have to brief the person who is going to create the content to say, ‘You have to create this content targeting this specific person.’ In your content, you have to call out the characteristics of a persona so that, when someone is searching (especially in LLMs, where they are detailing their personal situation, because that’s how conversational search works), those LLMs will retrieve the correct content, not the incorrect one.

In terms of classic search, there is also strong personalisation there, and it's going to get even stronger. That won’t be a problem, especially if you are creating different pieces of content, because you can specify in the H1/H2/H3, with classic on-page SEO, and use wording that clearly calls out a specific type of person.”

How do you create content that has different information for LLMs to draw from for different personas, but is also relevant for real users?

“It’s challenging, but it is less difficult when it has been carefully thought through, and you have a landing page that clearly presents the intended characteristics.

For instance, in the case of a landing page about a Safari, you can create four classic blog posts, with one saying the things that you, as a tour operator, can offer to young couples without kids – more adventure, more specific experiences – compared to a blog where you are talking directly to a family with teenagers or kids.

There, you might say, ‘You are on Safari, but you are also in a glamping site that is going to offer you all kinds of solutions for your kids. You are not going to be abandoned, and you are not going to have security issues.’

All of the work that you have done before will have indicated to you that, for instance, when you have a family with kids or more mature couples looking to go on Safari, their worries are mostly related to security, health, vaccines, and this kind of information. A young couple without kids would not really think about this; they’re really thinking more about contact with nature and living the adventure.

You will have retrieved all of this information when you did your topic research, and then you clustered by buyer persona based on that information.”

Gianluca, what's the key takeaway from the tip you shared today?

“Clustering is not just for informational content. Visibility is becoming the real challenge, and the real necessity – even more than traffic, because traffic from search engines is shrinking, and let’s not even talk about LLMs.

To be visible, you must be visible along the entire customer and search journey, and have the most effective mentions and search snippets.”

Gianluca Fiorelli is an International and Strategic SEO Consultant. Find out more over at ILoveSEO.net.