Keyword Clustering for Therapists: How to Group Keywords the Right Way

Through this post you will get to know how to make keyword clusters for therapy keywords.

What is Keyword Clustering?

Keyword clustering is the process by which similar keywords are grouped together. It is performed after doing keyword research. Keyword grouping helps to identify topics and their sub-topics which are similar in nature.

By doing keyword clustering you can make sure that similar keywords are grouped together and placed under a same page or post and not scattered on several different pages helping in the process of keyword mapping.

Instead of treating every keyword as a separate page idea, keyword clustering helps you understand which keywords belong together and should be targeted on a single page.

By doing keyword clustering, you make sure that only similar keywords are placed under the same page rather than being scattered across multiple pages and no irrelevant term is added to he page. This avoids keyword cannibalization and helps search engines clearly understand what each page is about.

For example – when you find keywords related to anxiety therapy, depression therapy, PTSD therapy, then similar terms related to anxiety therapy will be grouped with anxiety therapy, depression related terms go with depression therapy, and PTSD related queries go with PTSD therapy keyword cluster.

Why to do keyword clustering?

Keyword clustering helps to identify one main topic and various sub-topics of the main topic. When these sub-topics are identified these are placed in the same group of main query.

Keyword clustering helps to build the topical map around a subject. When you have your main therapy phrase and several related queries of the term added on a single page it helps improve the topical relevance of the page. The content become more helpful for the readers and search engines also get to understand the context of the page content better.

Keyword clustering helps to make sure that the content written satisfies the user intent and make the content comprehensive covering all the sub-topics.

When all the sub-topics of a keyword are grouped and added in a single piece of content, your therapy website start ranking for many more relevant terms without creating any addition pieces of content.

Keyword clustering is especially very useful while doing local SEO for private practice therapists. When you cluster local intent terms together, it helps amplifies the local intent of the page.

Major benefits of keyword clustering are:

• It improves topical authority
• It aligns content with real user intent
• It reduces duplicate or overlapping content
• It helps Google understand expertise and relevance
• It makes content more comprehensive and helpful
• It helps therapist website rank for multiple variations of the term

When you cluster keywords properly, you naturally cover symptoms, treatment methods, therapy approaches, FAQs, costs, and local intent within one page, instead of spreading them thin across multiple weak pages.

This ensures that the topic is well covered on the same page. This results in stronger rankings and better engagement.

How keyword clustering supports user intent in therapy content

Therapy related searches usually fall into three intent types:

• Informational
• Service based
• Local or location based

If proper keyword clustering is not done, these intent type terms often get mixed up or ignored completely.

For example, someone searching for “what is CBT for anxiety” has a very different intent compared to someone searching for “CBT therapist near me.” Keyword clustering helps you identify these differences and organize content accordingly.

But that doesn’t mean that multiple intent keywords can’t be added on the same page. Multiple intent terms can be added but in a strategic way. Especially in local SEO, you can optimize the page around several intent queries to make the page more comprehensive and user-friendly for the potential clients.

For example, a single anxiety therapy page can still target multiple intents by structuring content properly, instead of creating unnecessary separate pages.

How to do keyword clustering for therapy keywords?

There are four steps to do keyword clustering of therapy keywords.

Step 1:

For doing keyword clustering for therapists, the first thing that we need to do is do a comprehensive keyword research for therapy terms. This involves brainstorming seed keywords, starting initial research with these seed keywords and then moving forward with other keyword variations and related terms.

You have to find all short-tail and long-tail variations of the terms (local, informational, service based, etc.), questions, symptom based queries, etc.

For example, for a anxiety therapy website, you may have found keywords like:

• anxiety therapy techniques
• CBT for anxiety
• anxiety therapist near me
• panic disorder therapy
• social anxiety counseling

And local anxiety therapy terms like:

• anxiety therapy City
• City anxiety therapy
• anxiety therapists City
• City anxiety therapists
• anxiety therapy clinic in City
• therapist for anxiety in City

These terms are all related to anxiety. Some are related to therapy, some are local, and some are informational.

Like anxiety therapy, you may have depression therapy as your next main service keyword which also have its multiple term variations.

Step 2:

After the keyword research is over, the next thing that is to be done is preparation of an Excel or Google sheet and list down all the main keywords in the first column. You can call it a tedious work but trust me it will make your counseling website On-page SEO process very easy.

In the first row of the sheet, list down your main/seed keywords. Each keyword will work as a single page.

Each column represents one keyword cluster. If you are doing research for optimizing local service pages then the seed keywords could be:

• Anxiety Therapy City
• Depression Therapy City
• PTSD Therapy City
• Couples Therapy City

Example columns for informational style terms:

• Anxiety Therapy
• Depression Therapy City
• PTSD Therapy
• Couples Therapy

In the below image you can see how I have done keyword clustering for Anxiety Therapy City and EMDR Therapy City in the Google Sheets.

You have to make the most appropriate keywords your seed keywords based on the intent.

Step 3:

After the main keywords are listed down, the next step is to list down all the sub-topic therapy terms that you found in the respective main keyword column. For this you have to analyze the terms and analyze which sub-topic therapy term fits best with which main seed query.

For example, under Anxiety Therapy you may include:

• anxiety counseling
• CBT for anxiety
• panic attack treatment
• social anxiety therapy
• anxiety symptoms
• anxiety treatment options
• anxiety therapy city

Under Depression Therapy, you may include:

• depression counseling
• therapy for depression
• major depressive disorder treatment
• CBT for depression
• depression symptoms
• depression therapy city

This step clearly defines what content belongs together and where to add. When you do this process you will have your cluster of terms made. But there is one more important step that is left to make this cluster more powerful and easy to understand. And that step is classifying the intent of these terms.

Classifying the intent of these counseling based queries will help you filter the terms as per the intent.

Step 4:

The next step is to further segregate these terms based on the intent. As I mentioned above the counseling terms are distributed in local/informational/service based terms. By adding intent ahead of the terms it will help in filtering the terms based on the keyword intent.

Create another column next to each sub-topic and name it “Intent”. For the terms you can label the intent as:

• Local
• Informational
• Service based

For example:

• “anxiety therapist near me” – Local
• “how does CBT help anxiety” – Informational
• “anxiety counseling services” – Service based

Just write local, informational, or service based in front of the sub-topic keyword. This simple step makes a big difference in content planning and website structure. If you don’t know the intent based with the respective term you can use AI tools like ChatGPT to know the intent of the terms.

Just paste the terms in ChatGPT and ask ChatGPT to provide the intent of the terms and it will output the intent associated with each term.

Later when you need to filter keyword based on intent, you can use this intent column for filtering.

For example when you need to create location based service pages you can filter the terms based on local intent. When you need to create blogs you can filter the terms based on informational intent.

In this way you have grouped the terms in clusters with intent included.

How keyword clusters translate into content structure

After you have performed the crucial step of doing keyword grouping, the next step in the process is to analyze which keyword of the cluster will go at which place in the website and also to know if any additional pages are required to create.

On a fresh new page the main keyword of your cluster will become the title tag and H1 of your page, the second most important keyword will take the place of the first H2, other informational based or question based terms will be added to additional H2s and H3s.

If the intent is local, most of the headings will be of local intent whereas if the intent is purely informational most of the headings will be information ones.

For local SEO for private practice therapists, using local intent headings is the best strategy.

After the heading structure is completed other variations of the terms should be added naturally within the content based upon the heading.

Final thoughts

Keyword clustering is the most important part of SEO for therapist websites after the keyword research process. Keyword grouping helps to build the content structure of the page. By properly doing the keyword grouping of terms we can make sure that we are targeting the right keywords that have search volume.

This helps building the content structure in such a way that the intent of the user is satisfied. One very important thing about keyword clustering is that it helps avoid creating duplicate pages for almost similar keywords because we already identify terms which are similar and grouped them together.

When similar keywords are grouped in a cluster, you start ranking for multiple variations of the therapy term and it’s phrases.

By doing Keyword clustering you can make sure that the terms which does not fit in a particular query group are removed. By looking at the keywords in a cluster, you can decide how the content structure of the page will be built which ultimately improves the On-page and topical authority of the website.