Keyword discovery

Every article RankYak writes starts with a keyword, so keyword research is the first thing that runs when you create a site, and it continues for as long as the site is active. This page explains where your keywords come from, how they are organized into topics, and how the pool keeps growing without any manual research.

How discovery works

When you create a site, RankYak analyzes it to understand what you offer and who searches for it. From that understanding it identifies the topics your audience cares about, and then harvests the searches people actually make around each topic. Keywords are drawn from live search data and stored with their search volume and difficulty, measured for your site's country and language, so a German site collects German keywords with German search volumes. In smaller markets, RankYak may also include searches that are real but too small for Google to report a volume for, so niche sites keep finding material.

Every piece of research runs as a visible run on the Research tab; see keyword research runs for how runs work and how you review what they find. Approved keywords land on the keyword overview, where you may star or archive them. Of course, you may also add keywords of your own at any time.

Topic clusters

RankYak does not collect keywords as a flat list. Each keyword belongs to a topic, and each topic is a cluster of closely related keywords. Covering a cluster with articles that link to one another builds depth on that subject, which is how a site earns topical authority: search engines learn to associate your domain with the topic as a whole rather than with isolated pages. The topical map on the keywords page visualizes these clusters and shows how far your coverage has come.

Ongoing discovery

Discovery is not a one-time setup step. When automatic keyword research is enabled in your site settings, RankYak keeps working on your keyword pool in the background, and the pool expands whenever more keywords are needed: new topics are researched and filled with fresh keywords. This keeps the content plan supplied with material month after month. Each of these passes appears as a scheduled run on the Research tab, so you may always see what was found and when; see keyword research runs.

Discovery continues until your site reaches its cluster target, which controls how broad your coverage grows. The target counts keyword groups rather than individual keywords, since one article covers a whole group. You may change the target in your site settings; a higher number produces broader coverage and more topics, while a lower number keeps the strategy focused on a tighter niche. Once the target is reached, RankYak stops broadening the pool and shifts its attention to refreshing the articles you already have.

Keywords you already rank for

If you have connected Google Search Console, every discovered keyword is checked against your site's actual search performance. When one of your existing pages already ranks for a keyword, RankYak marks the keyword as covered by that page instead of scheduling a new article for it, so your new content never competes with your old content.