Inlinks has released an update to its keyword topic research tool, which finds and clusters keywords by intent.
The tool is available to all subscribers today. This is new content.
keyword research
In the early to mid 2000s, keyword research tools focused on keyword volume because search engines were not able to differentiate user intent very well.
This began to change in 2013 with the introduction of the Hummingbird update, which introduced natural language search and more semantic understanding of search queries, with an increasing focus on intent.
Keyword research tools have remained largely the same so far, generating lists of keywords sorted by search volume and cost-per-click.
Link Keyword and Topic Research Tools
Inlinks is a tool that further identifies the context and user intent of keywords.
Inlinks then uses these signals to generate topic-based clusters of keyword variants, as well as suggestions for questions that need to be answered.
Meaningful user intent data
User intent is traditionally classified as belonging to four or five different categories, such as navigation, transaction, information, etc.
Inlinks ditches these tags and uses highly specific verbs to categorize user intent, resulting in more specific keywords than generic tags.
Inlinks uses the example of the keyword phrase “renewable energy” to demonstrate how subject research can differentiate between users who want to “use” renewable energy and users who want to “generate” renewable energy.
Being able to select variants of keywords related to generating renewable energy is more useful than grouping those keywords into a category (such as information or transactions) and a set of other keywords that are not necessarily related to your topic.
Identifying intent by verbs can help gain insight into the right keyword themes.
Screenshot of keyword topic drill-down
Linked Content Plan
The content planning feature introduces a new way of thinking about content.
One useful approach the tool takes is to show the context in which a competitor’s headlines are placed.
Going back to the renewable energy example, the tool will list competitor headlines with related topics in a column on the right. Related topics can be tools, storage, photovoltaics, solar, industrial, etc., and can be selected for content planning based on what is relevant to you.
In the example of the keyword phrase renewable energy, each selected topic may then form the topic of the web page. Or themes can be used to form the backbone of an entire website’s theme categories.
As such, the tool is another way to explore multiple topic clusters, which can then be selected for placement in the editor tool to form a content plan.
Link Topics and Keyword Research
Researching keyword topics by using verbs to identify related topics is an innovative way to speed up the content creation process.
Citation
Read the official announcement at Inlinks
Topic Research Tool – New Keyword Research
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