Keyword clustering — grouping a flat list of keywords by topic, intent, and parent page — is one of the highest-value AI SEO tasks. It used to take an SEO analyst a full day to cluster 500 keywords. A well-structured prompt does it in under a minute with roughly the same accuracy for the easy cases (and flags the ambiguous ones for human review).
**Prompt 1 — Basic intent-based clustering:**
```
You are an expert SEO strategist. I will give you a list of keywords. Group them into clusters where each cluster represents a single searcher intent that could be satisfied by one target URL. For each cluster: (1) suggest a cluster name, (2) list the keywords, (3) label the intent as Informational / Navigational / Transactional / Commercial Investigation, (4) suggest a target URL slug.
Keywords:
[PASTE YOUR KEYWORD LIST HERE — one per line]
Output as a markdown table with columns: Cluster Name | Intent | Keywords | Suggested Slug.
```
**Prompt 2 — Parent/child clustering with pillar mapping:**
```
Act as a senior content strategist building a topic cluster architecture. Given the keyword list below, identify: (1) 3-5 pillar topics broad enough to be cornerstone pages, (2) all supporting cluster keywords for each pillar, (3) for each cluster keyword, indicate whether it belongs as a subsection of the pillar or as a separate spoke page.
Keywords:
[PASTE YOUR KEYWORD LIST HERE]
Output format: one section per pillar, with a table of cluster keywords, intent, and page type (pillar section vs spoke page).
```
**Prompt 3 — Deduplication and cannibalization check:**
```
You are an SEO auditor. Review the following keyword list and identify any groups of keywords that are so similar in intent that targeting them on separate URLs would cause cannibalization. For each cannibalization risk: list the conflicting keywords, explain why they conflict, and recommend which one URL should target all of them.
Keywords:
[PASTE YOUR KEYWORD LIST HERE]
Be specific. Do not group keywords that are similar in topic but distinct in intent.
```
**Prompt 4 — Cluster labeling for a spreadsheet export (Gemini 2.5 Pro or GPT-5 recommended for large lists):**
```
I have a spreadsheet of keywords. For each keyword, output a single cluster label (2-4 words, title case) and an intent label (Info / Transactional / Commercial / Nav). Return results as a JSON array: [{"keyword": "...", "cluster": "...", "intent": "..."}]. No commentary, just the JSON.
Keywords:
[PASTE YOUR KEYWORD LIST HERE]
```
**Prompt 5 — Long-tail opportunity extraction:**
```
From the keyword list below, identify the 20 highest-opportunity long-tail keywords (4+ words, specific intent, likely lower competition). For each: (1) state the keyword, (2) describe the specific searcher intent in one sentence, (3) suggest what format the target page should take (listicle, how-to guide, comparison, tool/calculator, definition, etc.).
Keyword list:
[PASTE YOUR KEYWORD LIST]
```