One question I always get on webinars where I demo Agent X functionality is for a step-by-step introduction to how I refine my clustered keyword groups.
Because I’ve been doing SEO for over 15 years, I do the keyword clustering and seeding in Xagio’s Project Planner almost on autopilot.
And I get it that people have difficulty getting the same results as I do.
That’s why we decided to add some proprietary AI functionality in Agent X that basically copies my thought process.
And the results blew even me away.
Why Does Keyword Clustering Matter?
I have been preaching this for a long time now: keyword research is the most important step in every SEO project, because it is the foundation of everything else you do.
Just like successfully building a house is dependent on having a rock-solid foundation.
The problem is that people often just determine a couple of keywords with decent search volume and then start building and optimizing pages.
That approach almost always leads to major problems down the line.
At the very least, you miss out on optimizing for multiple other keywords that could multiply your search traffic.
But it also often leads to a disorganized approach to content planning.
See, when you don’t strictly cluster keywords by topical relevance, you can end up with cannibalized content or pages that target too many or unrelated keywords.
In both instances, Google and other search engines struggle to understand what your pages are about and therefore demote your site in the SERPs.
It’s a costly mistake that is difficult to undo.
But you can easily prevent it.
How Do I Manually Approach Keyword Clustering
The first thing I do after using Agent X or Xagio’s Project Planner for keyword research is to open the keyword cloud to get an idea of what I’m dealing with.
This allows me to identify high-level topics that I want to seed into groups.
Taking the above example, some immediate topics stand out for me that would be important for a local client or lead gen site, and I have selected them in the next screenshot.
By selecting these words, I can then ask Xagio to seed them into new groups, and any keywords in the project that contain these selected words will be copied into those new groups.
Once that part is completed, it’s time to go through the clusters and manually review the keywords.
Sometimes, I find ones that fit better into a different group or ones that I want to split out into another separate group.
I’m so used to this process that it usually takes me just a few minutes, but I get that many people find this a slow process.
Plus, even I like saving 5 – 10 minutes on a repetitive task, and AI has made it possible to automate it.
Let me show you what my developers came up with.
Automated AI Clustering In Agent X
Agent X has the same clustering feature as the AI Wizard and Audit feature in Project Planner.
This automation is already pretty powerful, but it does generally require you to do some cleaning up, as I described above.
However, in Agent X, you now have the added AI Clustering feature when you get to the screen with the keyword groups.
Here’s what our proprietary AI prompt does:
“This prompt performs strict keyword clustering by normalizing all service, role, and location terms (e.g., singular form, merged synonyms for modifiers) and grouping them into unique clusters based on those normalized keys. It recursively audits and merges/splits clusters to ensure that no duplicates, missing assignments, or invalid merges (like true synonyms such as “attorney” and “lawyer”) exist, enforcing complete consistency and accuracy in the final output.”
The prompt behind the scenes took many days to refine, but it now mimics my entire thought process of manually seeding and clustering.
Here’s the best part.
Not only does it take just a few seconds to complete, but it typically costs you just 1 or 2 Xags.
That’s insanely cheap for something that could save you 20 minutes or more if you’re new to the process.
Pro Tip: Follow this help doc for a step-by-step guide to using AI Clustering.
Start Using Agent X Today
If you’ve ever struggled to build clean, optimized keyword groups or wasted hours second-guessing whether your clusters make sense, Agent X now does the heavy lifting for you.
We’ve trained our proprietary AI to mimic my exact thought process, saving you time while dramatically improving your site structure and topical authority.
Whether you’re building out a fresh campaign or cleaning up old keyword chaos, Agent X’s AI Clustering gives you an unfair advantage, without having to guess.
Sign up for a paid Xagio account today and put Agent X to work on your next project.