So I stumbled across a new process that I think is super interesting. I’ve been really liking the concept of the “Keyword Universe” that’s been talked about by amazing SEO minds like Kevin Indig. Basically the concept is that through combining data from a bunch of different sources (query data, sales calls PAAs etc), could you get a more comprehensive view of how people search and the different topical areas worth exploring.

While this isn’t near as comprehensive as Kevin’s process, I thought it would be interesting to see if AI could help SEOs create a Keyword Universe. In theory, you could use AI to export your competitor query data to better understand the whole “Universe” that you and competitors are competing in.

Here’s how I was able to create a sample Keyword Universe with Ahrefs and Claude:

1. Identify the competitors that you want to analyze. In this example, I chose five companies in the eSignature space: DocuSugn, ReadySign, BoldSign, SignWell, OpenSign.

 

2. For each competitors, login to Ahrefs and run their domain through. Than go to “Organic Keywords”.

3. Filter out branded queries by going to Intents > Non-branded.

4. Export the query list and repeat this process for each website.

5. Now go to Claude and upload each Excel document.

6. Provide a prompt that tells it to create a Keyword Universe.

Here’s the full prompt I used:

I want you to create me a “Keyword Universe” that I can use for my SEO strategy. I’m going to give you a list of queries for the top sites I want to analyze. Look at 1,000 queries for each competitor. Then I want you to take the keywords out and group them into common groups and themes. Also use Traffic for each keyword understand overall priority.

Claude will analyze each document one by one to analyze the query data for all the sites you created.

Then it will go through and map out a sample Keyword Universe that contains the different topics to target, number of mapped queries and more. It even tiered the topics for me based on estimated traffic levels.

Some examples of topical ideas it gave me included:

1. E-Signature Software (Tier 1, 424,760 Search Volume)
2. PDF Signing (Tier 1, 111,430 Search Volume)
3. Contract Management (Tier 2, 150,010 Search Volume
4. Forms & Templates (Tier 2, 44,170 Search Volume)

At the end, I was even able to have Claude create a visualization that mapped out each topical area on a bubble graph. It made it really easy to see the high priority areas of the Keyword Universe to target.

Although this process is definitely not perfect, it actually doesn’t take that much time and can give you really great insights on building a Keyword Universe and content strategy. I’m definitely going be using this process when building out content plans moving forward.