Skip to main content
These two skills cover the full keyword research workflow: building a library of relevant keywords and validating which ones are worth writing about.
These skills require the RankEarly MCP server to be connected to your agent. See MCP Server for setup instructions.

​
The keyword research skills

​
Keyword expansion

Keyword expansion takes a topic and finds what people actually search for around it. The skill reads your SEO memory to focus the research on keywords relevant to your product, then saves everything into a keyword library.
The skill:
  1. Reads your SEO memory to understand your product context
  2. Resolves the keyword library — creates AI-Writing-US-EN for the United States, English market if it doesn’t exist yet
  3. Expands the topic into related keywords and saves them to the library
The effort level defaults to Medium (around 500–800 keywords). You can ask for more or fewer:
See Keyword Expansion for details on effort levels and credit costs.

​
Topic clustering

Once your library has enough keywords, cluster them to get a bird’s-eye view of your content plan. Run this after you’ve collected at least 500 keywords.
The skill groups your keywords into themes — broader subject areas — each containing related keyword clusters. One cluster maps to one page. This output becomes the foundation for your content calendar. See Topic Clustering for how to read and use the results.

​
SERP gap analysis

Once you have clusters, use SERP gap analysis to validate specific keywords before committing to writing.
The skill runs two phases in sequence. Phase 1 — Winnability assessment. Fetches a live SERP snapshot for the keyword and evaluates whether you can realistically rank. Returns a verdict (Winnable / Challenging / Hard-to-Win), the signals driving it, and a read of search intent. If the keyword is Hard-to-Win, the analysis stops here and recommends skipping it.
Verdict: WinnablePositive signals
  • Reddit in top 10 (position 5) — user-generated content ranking well indicates the SERP is not locked down by authority sites
  • Keyword difficulty: 0 — very weak competition, easy ranking potential
  • Small/medium sites present — lineardesign.com, clickrank.ai, shynmedia.com are not major authority domains
  • Mixed/fractured intent across top 10 — creates a wedge opportunity for focused content
Barriers
  • WordStream at position 2 — established SEO/PPC authority with strong domain authority
  • Low search volume (20) — limited traffic potential even if ranking #1
Search intent: Informational — Google rewards comprehensive, actionable how-to guides. Top results serve both SEO and PPC contexts. Content should cover what keyword expansion is, how to do it, and real examples.
Phase 2 — Content gap analysis. Reads the top-ranking pages in depth and surfaces what they miss. Returns the dominant content format, recommended length, must-have topics, and specific gaps you can exploit.
Dominant format: How-to guides (44%) — instructional content covering steps and strategies. Secondary: ultimate guides (22%), listicles (22%), glossary pages (11%).Recommended length: 1,000–1,700 words for most formats; opportunity for comprehensive guides at 3,500–4,200 words.Must-have topics
  1. Defining keyword expansion and its core purpose
  2. Why keyword expansion matters for growth
  3. Core strategies: search term reports, competitor analysis, long-tail and semantic keywords
  4. Tool selection: how to evaluate keyword discovery tools
  5. Best practices and common pitfalls: negative keywords, intent alignment, campaign structure
Weaknesses in current SERP
  • Most content is vendor-specific or tool-promotional — explanations tie to proprietary features rather than general methods
  • Inconsistent structure: too few H2s for broad topics, shallow coverage of cross-industry applications
  • Thin visual support — image counts range from 1 to 26 with no consistency
Opportunity gaps
  • A platform-agnostic guide covering both SEO and PPC without promotional bias
  • Progressive, example-driven structure with real-world examples across industries (e-commerce, SaaS, local)
  • Integrated strategy bridging technical documentation and high-level marketing guidance
After Phase 2, you can run /blog-creator to turn the gap analysis directly into a post. See Content Writing for the full writing workflow.

​
Adding seed keywords to refine expansion

If your first expansion returns keywords that are too broad, switch to seeds mode. Pick 3–5 keywords from the initial results that are closest to the angle you want to rank for, then re-run expansion using those as seeds.
Each run adds to the library — the existing keywords stay. Use seeds mode to fill in a specific cluster you want to go deeper on, or to pull keywords from a narrower angle the first run missed.

​
When to stop expanding vs. when to dig deeper

Stop expanding when topic clustering produces a clear set of themes you can plan content around, or you have more keywords than you can write content for in the next few months. Dig deeper when:
  • A theme contains only 2–3 clusters — the topic may have more angles to uncover
  • A cluster you care about has too few keywords to judge difficulty or intent
  • Your initial topic was too broad and the results feel scattered
For broad markets, run multiple focused expansions into the same library rather than one Ultra High run. A description about “AI writing for B2B marketers” and a separate one about “AI editing tools for agencies” will produce more targeted clusters than a single generic prompt about “AI writing tools.”

​
Managing multiple libraries

Keyword libraries are scoped to a country and language, so create one per market you’re targeting:
You can also separate libraries by topic area — one per product line or content initiative — when you want cleaner topic clustering later. Mixing very different topics in one library can produce themes that are hard to act on. To see your existing libraries before starting:

​
End-to-end example

Here’s a full research run for the “human + AI blog writing” topic: Step 1 — Expand keywords
Step 2 — Cluster into themes
Review the themes. Pick the clusters that align with your content priorities. Step 3 — Validate a keyword before writing
If the verdict is Winnable or Challenging, hand the gap analysis to the blog creator:
See Content Writing for the full writing workflow from here.