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Understanding what's in Keyword Research
Understanding what's in Keyword Research
Updated over a year ago

Topic Cluster Analysis

Keyword Research allows you to analyze clusters on 2 levels:

  1. Domain-level topic clusters - You can insert your business category or sub-category (SEO blog, coffee shop, web analytics, video games, toys for dogs) to get a list of dozens of ideas for content.

  2. URL level topic clusters - You can analyze the topic and the suggested keywords to understand how big the potential is hidden in this topic. That way, you get the main keyword and secondary keywords for one content piece.

Search Intent Explained

Search Intent is used to describe the purpose of and the reason why a user is conducting a specific online research.

At Surfer, we have 4 categories of Search Intent which can be the basis of how you filter the topic clusters/s would like to write content and dominate:

  1. Local

  2. Customer Investigation

  3. Informational

  4. shopping

Finding the correct search intent is important in SEO because not only does it help you focus on a particular audience, but it also helps you evaluate your chances of ranking for a keyword. Read more about how Surfer uses Search Intent to help you rank in our blog.

💡 How does Surfer recognize user intent?

  • BERT reads titles, URLs, and descriptions of pages ranking in the top 10 and provides dominating search intent which helps us determine the four search intents. Read more about user intent on our blog.

What is Search Volume?

Search Volume is a measure that displays how many people are searching for a specific keyword. It is an important factor to consider when developing your content strategy, as it indicates how popular a given keyword is. The best keywords are those that have a high search volume and minimal competition.

In this section, you will see your monthly search volume (MSV) and total traffic. What's the difference?

Total traffic is how many searches actually clicked through to a webpage from the primary keyword in your topic cluster.

Monthly search volume, which tells you how many people have searched for this specific keyword in the last month.

Keyword Difficulty vs. Relative Keyword Difficulty

Both metrics measure ranking difficulty in SERPs. hard to rank for a specific cluster on your domain.

  • Keyword Difficulty measures the ranking difficulty of a specific keyword.

  • Relative Keyword Difficulty measures the ranking difficulty of a cluster on your domain.

Keyword Difficulty runs from 1 (easiest) to 10 (highest) difficulty. You can also filter topic clusters by Keyword Difficulty to find those cluster keywords which are easier to rank for.

❓How is this calculated? Surfer calculates keyword difficulty based on the strength of the domains that are ranking in the top 10. The metric helps to understand if high-authority domains dominate a keyword. Authority relies solely on referring domains.

You can deselect keywords, and it will affect overall cluster difficulty as it is an average of the chosen keywords. You can also sort your clusters by difficulty.

Meanwhile, Relative Keyword Difficulty considers your domain's strength and checks whether the difficulty is:

  • Easy

  • Medium

  • Hard

You can turn the Relative Keyword Difficulty on by connecting your Keyword Research to the Google Search Console.

How to connect Google Search Console

1. Click on the "G" icon on the right side of your Keyword Research.

2. Sign in to your Google Account and give Surfer all permissions.

3. Connect your domain to the planner.

You can connect multiple Google Search Consoles to your Surfer account. Just go to the Google Search Integration page found in the menu and sign in there. to add as many Google Search Consoles as you need.

👉 IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have connected your console yet, the relative difficulty cannot be seen; please keep in mind that if your domain is fresh, we will display a standard 1 to 10 scale.

When a domain is either new or has low authority, every keyword will be relatively hard, especially in tough niches. That is why we believe there is more value in displaying standard difficulty to differentiate hard from hardest.

Do you still need help? Don't worry! You can contact us at [email protected] or via live chat by clicking the icon in the bottom-right corner.

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