In this article, we will learn about the Hub and Spoke Strategy Approach to content marketing, how it can be used to optimize your SEO strategy and wow to Implement Content Marketing Approach For SEO.
Producing and publishing content at the drop of the hat won't get you far. You may create the value but each topic would be isolated from the others and mainly it would lack the structure and cohesion with the other topics you've written on. It also won't give readers much reason to keep exploring your web page- unless they happen to run across your work by accident.
Blending charming phrases alone is not enough.
Do you want to thrive in fierce competition? Then you need a secret ingredient to hit the content ground running. Thus, we believe that the Hub and Spoke strategy can be your content's missing piece. Every company needs to switch over to it and play bright SEO games.
The Hub and Spoke Strategy can act as a game-changer for your content.
What Is Hub and Spoke Content Marketing Strategy?
The heart of the content hub and spoke strategy is the hub page, also referred to as a pillar. The content hub page provides broader information about specific topics but does not delve into details, instead hyperlinks the reader to a cluster page where they can get extensive information.
What Does the Hub and Spoke Model Look Like?
Let's consider that you are building an SEO content hub. On the hub page, you would summarize topics like Ranking, Keywords, Mobile SEO, on-page SEO, etc. Then for each supporting topic, you will compose a detailed article and link to the main page.
This way, you are creating a cluster around a specific topic and letting readers explore more. Visitors can broaden their knowledge with a single click, never leaving your website. You can guide visitors on the buyer's journey. So, that way you will say farewell to disconnected and chaotically spread articles.
A content hub is a central online resource. Websites like Wikipedia and Amazon are all examples of content hubs. A spoke strategy organizes content topics into separate, specific categories that link on the pillar page.
Why is the Hub and Spoke Strategy Important?
Fierce Competition in Google
If we take a close look at the current situation, companies publish millions of content regularly. What does it mean? The competition is getting wilder day by day. We can even say that sometimes the amount of blogs around specific issues has more content than the reader.
Social Social Media Channels' Short-Life Cycles
Of course, you can use social media to promote blogs, but it has a lower life cycle. The highly-ranking page on google gives a long-term opportunity for increased visibility. That sounds attractive, but you have to update the content regularly and keep up with constantly changing SEO demands.
All-in-one Ranking Factors
Hub and Spoke Covers Important Ranking Factors, and it's not only keywords. The elements like topical authority, topical relevance, and matching the user intent are critical. That's where the Hub and Spoke strategy weighs in! It can tackle all the above-mentioned challenges.
Topical Relevance
Topical Authority
Matching User Intent
Building Your Owned Audience
Your audience makes your business develop. They could be social media followers, newsletter subscribers, blog subscribers, etc. Everyone should try to expand the audience through content marketing and then leverage it for revenue growth.
Hub and spoke strategy is an effective way to establish an audience. You will be creating the clusters around specific topics and leading the reader's journey to enlightenment.
Therefore, engagement from your audience will bring you their email addresses, job titles, and so on. It may sound simple but is hard to obtain. You will have the data about your customers and will be able to coordinate your actions with them.
Improved User On-Page Experience
As we have already mentioned, it's a great way to structure the flow of your content. If you attract the reader to the hub page, you can keep them on your website and lead them throughout the journey. Moreover, the content hub is scannable and easy to read.
This way, you can represent a broad topic in a snackable fashion and slice it into clusters.
You can also giveaway information in one place and save visitors' searching time.
What are the SEO Benefits of Content Hubs?
Increased Organic Traffic
The hub and spoke strategy is an effective asset to bringing organic traffic. A well-structured hub draws Google’s attention, and the organizational structure of the pillar page defines your goal for them.
Build Long-Lasting Relationships with Company
Hub and spoke strategy could break the ice to rank for high-volume keywords. Of course, ranking for broad phrases is not an easy ride, but content hubs can perfectly chip in.
Let's consider that the authority of the main page has strengthened. It will transfer the influence to the cluster pages too.
Clusters begin to rank for narrow, long-tail keywords and throw the authority up to the main page. So, it creates a perfect ranking cycle.
Keyword Targeting
Hub and spoke strategy could break the ice to rank for high-volume keywords. Of course, ranking for broad phrases is not an easy ride, but content hubs can perfectly chip in.
Let's consider that the authority of the main page has strengthened. It will transfer the influence to the cluster pages too.
Clusters begin to rank for narrow, long-tail keywords and throw the authority up to the main page. So, it creates a perfect ranking cycle.
Increased Engagement
If you attract the reader to the hub page, you may keep them on your website and lead them throughout the journey. Hub and Spoke combine helpful links and stir readers to consume the information.
That said, visitors will interact with your website and get the benefits out of it.
Are visitors exploring many pages? Google will signal it and consider your content as relevant and appropriate to search intent.
Enhanced Topical Authority & Brand Authority
A topical authority refers to the field expertise. Writing consistently valuable content can hop on to that recognition.
Connecting ties to your pillar and cluster pages, using internal links, builds a relationship triangle. This way, Google perceives these chains as authoritative for specific topics.
Boosted Authority of Links
Strategically linked pages all benefit from each other. Internal link building raises the number of backlinks that enhance the link authority.
Besides that, the top-quality content hub is cut above traditional blog posts and can generate backlinks from other sources. All you have to do is meet your audience's passions with relevant content.
User Experience
What is more satisfying than crawling through the easy-to-read structured pages? You notice that the company cares about your experience and presents scannable content.
Google cares about user experiences and values their significance as search engines want to provide the best results and avoid displaying overwhelming pages to their users.
How to Implement a Content Hub and Spoke Marketing Model for Your Business?
The strategy walks into the regular blogging process. The only difference occurs in the planning phase, where you should split main topics into sub-topics. Once you have an outline for the pillar page and know the subjects for your clusters, you are ready to go.
In a nutshell, your research, write and publish a content hub. Then, add spokes that relate to the parent page, and the opposite. The spokes could be :
Articles
Guides
E-books
Posts
Infographics
We strive to drive traffic to the hub from the spoke page, and the hub then helps us to drive conversions to the spokes.
The hub and spoke models are tied together like Yin and Yang.
Meeting Customer Journey with Hub and Spoke Pages
Let's take a look at the customer journey
Consideration
Decision
Advocacy
Content hub and spoke strategy fit into the consideration phase. At this stage, customers have a problem or a pain point and are hunting for solutions. Searchers are not ready to purchase because they are not informed enough about a specific subject. They are searching on google like people glancing at the counters of shops on the streets. Here what we should do is to appear under the nose of customers!
Try to engage with your audience through the hub and spoke content model. This approach takes more time but is worth the effort. It delivers depth and breadth altogether, so your content is value-rich and high quality. Customers will be happy to give away their information for such content.
By capturing email addresses, or other data marketers can develop deeper relationships with them. From here, you can try to push them to complete the customer journey and buy the product.
Content Calendar
A new post every few months or static information isn’t enough to create a successful corporate blog. Regular, fresh content is the secret. Set your rhythm, for example, one or two new articles each week. It makes sense to think about the topics in advance to keep the process running. You can keep track of this in an editorial calendar.
The editorial plan should include the category, target group, and a short description. It would help if you also considered who should write the article and, of course, the publish date.
With an editorial action plan, you can gather all the essential information at a glance. You can plan significant dates and avoid last-minute writing and publishing.
How to Gather Information for an Editorial Calendar?
Publishing Frequency
It depends on the channel and content type. If we talk about blogging updates, 2-4 per week is a good number. For social media, things turn a little bit tight. Once per day is an optimal number, depending on the company type.
Content Types
It's impossible to give you a concrete number, but relevance is the priority at this stage. Observe what's working and what's not. For example, If you consider that the number of content types is not enough, add more.
Distribution Channels
The answer should come from the audience personas. What is their preferred source of information?
Content Production Stages
How hard is it for content to break through? Describe the steps the material goes through before seeing the light. Everyone, including new team members, will know what it takes to complete the process. Typically It is Research, Drafting, Proofreading, Revision, and Finalizing.
Set the standards that everyone should follow before moving it to a new level. State the readability score, platform usage, platform rankings, etc.
Decide on Content Types and Meet with Customer Journey.
Set the standards that everyone should follow before moving it to a new level. State the readability score, platform usage, platform rankings, etc.
Decide on Content Types and Meet with Customer Journey.
Example of Content Calendar
Your content calendar may look like this:
Month 1
Publish SEO hub
Publish 2-3 spoke pages: On-page SEO Optimization, Off-page SEO optimization
Promote content on social media and in the newsletter
Month 2
Present guest posts linking back to your hub
Create four blogs as a spoke page
Promote content on social media and in the newsletter
Month 3
Add whitepaper and infographics to the hub
Connect to influencers to share your content through their channels
Promote content on social media and in the newsletter
You can produce the content internally. If you have a specific team that will commit to content, go for it. Also, you should keep in mind that content strategy is not only a marketing initiative.
So, before you start doing anything else, create the content strategy and integrate it within the organization.
You can nominate the person responsible for content curation: managing, scheduling, and implementing. That will help you to keep things under control.
Pro/Cons of In-House Content Writing
What are the Pros of In-House Content Writing?
Deep understanding of the Brand
Direct access
Builds a Company Culture
What are the Cons of In-House Content Writing?
Time-consuming
Expensive
Lack of in-house writers to handle content demands buy-in
Outsource Content Writing
The way you present yourself online matters. No company wants to risk diluting the message or compromising the brand image. But, if you choose the right outsourcing partner, there's very little to fear. Moreover, outsourcing could be a viable and effective way to manage an editorial plan. You can boost leads and visibility with minimal time and HR investment.
How much Does it Cost to Outsource Content?
Two options pop up when considering outsourcing content: hire an agency or a freelancer.
Freelancers and agencies tend to charge according to:
Hour
Freelancers: Per-hour payment is less favored among writers. But the prices can range from 10€ to 60€ depending on experience.
Agencies: Per hour count reaches from 20€ to 80€
Word Count
Freelancers: Typically, you will find rates from 0.02€ -to 0.10€. Writers with decent profiles and experience will charge at least 0.10€ per word. So the article with 1500 words will cost you 150€. It even goes higher with experience. Prices for expert articles can hit up to 0.30 €.
Agencies: Per word count approximately ranges from 0,08- 0,20€ depending on your requirements. For expert articles, it can hit up to 0.50€ too.
Pro/Cons of Outsourcing Content to Freelancers
Pros of Outsourcing to Freelancers
Cheap
Easy to negotiate over terms
Experienced writers
Cons of Outsourcing to Freelancers
Lack of Expertise and brand knowledge
Flexibility
Hard to find
Freelance writers can lack loyalty
Pro/Cons of Outsourcing Content to Agencies
Pros of Outsourcing Content to Agencies
Offers all-inclusive packages
Frees up valuable time
Work with various writers
Work with various writers
Publish lots of content
Cons of Outsourcing Content to Agencies
The most expensive option
Reaching unreliable agencies
Delays
Lack of inside knowledge of the brand
Pro/Cons of Hybrid Content Writing - Marketplace + Managed Services
Pros of Hybrid Content Writing
Price service ration
Increased productivity
Saving time for the other tasks
Cons of Hybrid Content Writing
Hard to manage
The risk of failing to align the brand voice
The Initial Stages of Content Hub Planning
Brainstorm
Brainstorming is a creative technique for generating new ideas, solutions, or insights. It involves writing or self-talking to stimulate new thoughts. It allows you to think without fear and judgment.
Conduct Internal Research
If you have enough resources, email subscribers, and customers, do internal research. Sending out a questionnaire with a relevant question will deliver insights.
Ask them about
Challenges they are facing
What problems do they have
What they wish to know
Your customers are searching for queries because they have a problem. They need to understand the essence of the problem and find solutions.
The first mission is to identify the pain points your audience is facing. You may have already defined it in your personas document, but if not, it is better late than never.
Keywords should reflect the relationship that hub and spoke page has. Again, the aim is to create a union between multiple contents, so it should be visible that those pages are related. So you should take a structured approach when planning the usage of keywords.
Keyword Research means working with tools that find relevant phrases that your audience is searching for. We can perfectly demonstrate the bond of the hub and spoke articles with the distribution of short-tail and long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords
A short-tail keyword is a word that relates to a broad topic. They are searched more times than long-tail keywords.
For example, "SEO" is a short-tail keyword. It could attract millions of topics due to its broad nature.
Long-tail keywords
Long-tail keywords attract searchers who are interested in particular topics. It is niche-related and, considering the smaller competition, easier to rank for.
But It brings lower-traffic potential. For example, "How to write SEO optimized blogs?". This long-tail keyword includes short-tail with specific information.
Again, You should have a clear understanding of the challenges customers face to answer them with solutions. Once you know it, you can develop potential topic ideas and research keywords in keyword tools:
After you finish keyword research, you will get the data about the potential terms to use. After that, you should determine the phrases you are going to put on your hub page.
Ask yourself- What are short-tail keywords our audience use in search?
Map Keywords in Spoke Page
Okay so, you have listed short-tail keywords you are going to target on your hub page. Now it is time to map long-tail keywords for spoke pages.
It is crucial not to look at a single dimension. Let's say you are doing a content hub about SEO. You can include long-tail variations of hub keywords. For example:
How to optimize on-page SEO
SEO Optimization tools
How to rank high in search results?
Also, try not to look at a single dimension. Think about related terms such as:
The best practices of SEO information architecture
Several resources will help you to find topic ideas:
Wikipedia- You will find any topic in the world with related sub-topics too.
Quora- Quora is a continually growing user-generated collection of questions and answers. You can use it to develop potential topic ideas.
Reddit- The forum displays popular customer questions. You can find many questions that are relevant to your topic. All you have to do is search for SEO and open relevant subreddits, uniting the subject.
Amazon- Analyze positive and negative comments on Amazon to understand what people appreciate and also miss. It will give you great topic ideas and the opportunity to fill a void with helpful content.
Google Image Tags- Type something broad and see the tags above the images. Google considers these tags as something related to the search.
Online Courses- Check the table of contents of famous online courses
How to Create a Content Hub?
1. Choose a Title
The title is a crucial part of SEO and search intent. The title shapes the first impression that tones how people perceive the rest of the process. With the engaging headline, you can push viewers to become readers. You don't want to go easy. Instead of writing an SEO Guide, go for the version like this: Definitive Guide to SEO: From Beginner to SEO Pro.
Produce Outline
Outlining will help form and organize ideas in a persistent habit and thought-provoking flow. Acting like this allows you to select helpful information or quotes from sources. Also, it gives content creators groundwork at the first stages of writing.
There are a gazillion blogs that giveaway rich content but never get noticed. Contrary, we also have blogs working their fingers to the bone, but people quickly leave them.
Value could be there, under the nose of customers, but people ignore that if it's not optimized. Here are some noteworthy factors
Keep your texts short
Use lists
Divide text into paragraphs (H1, H2, H3)
Write the intriguing headlines and use keywords
Include keywords in headlines, meta descriptions, and text
Interlink spoke pages (You should already be doing this, but it is a reminder)
Add CTA
Marketing without CTA is unimaginable. Marketers attract visitors to take action that benefits them. Creating urgency is a common practice in marketing. For example, you can see it everywhere: Sign up now and receive 50% on the purchase.
CTA can drive users to jump on another link, download material, or buy a product.
What to consider when developing CTA?
Placement
Design
Text
What are the forms of CTA?
Read More
Add to Cart
Social Media Share Buttons
Try it Now
Contact Us
Start Free Trial
Where to put CTA?
On the top of the page
Middle of the Page (Split)
At the end of the Article
Post-Content Hub Actions
Promote Content Hub
You might think that you do not need the promotion because you optimize your content hub for SEO. You can stick with only ranking on search engines, but why not seize every opportunity? The competition is immense! Otherwise, nobody would have needed a promotion. It would help if you tried to stand out from the competitors.
The hot trend that keeps on growing is a collaboration with industry-related influencers. If you identify a person with sizable followers, this can be a massive traffic and backlink lift for your website. They share your pieces with their audience and boom! You seem trustworthy in their eyes too.
Other than that, content hub creators often reach out to these people to offer them guest blogging. This way, writers integrate quotes from influencers into the text. The influencer would look forward to sharing the post as soon as possible.
Your audience will salute the guest on the blog! As it's refreshing to understand the outlook of external sources too. Plus, updating content only yourself can be a burden on your shoulders.
Also, do not forget to use all the appropriate channels to promote your blog
Email
Social Media
Website
Edit and Update the Articles
Everybody wants to get long-term results and stay on the top for a while. You may have created a thorough content hub, but your job is not over here. As time passes, you should observe industry updates or new ideas to refresh your material.
Otherwise, the competitors' will out shadow you. Updating the old blogs are a great idea as it prevents your work from vanishing. Google loves the website, constantly seeking to improve and keep readers updated.
Think about it. You are investing so much energy for what? Time will pass, and it will wash away. Of course, you don't want that.
Track KPIs
Traffic
Check how many visits you have in a given period and compare it to previous results.
Traffic Source
Where does the traffic come from? Organic Search, Social Media, or ADs? It will draw the picture of efficient as well as under-performing channels. Then the ball is on your court. You can use strategic decisions and change the baffling directions.
Pageviews
It can state whether the topic you went through was compelling.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who leave the website after viewing only one page. Is your bounce rate high? The possible reasons could be irrelevant content or poor user experience.
Average Time on Posts
It is a great way to measure engagement and relevance. If you notice that a blog post has a low average time-on-page, you can predict that you did not meet visitors' expectations, or the problem sneaks in the unengaging copy.
Mobile Performance
The majority crawls through search engines on mobile devices. Thus, your website must be mobile-friendly. For people, time is the gold, and they don't want to waste a second of it waiting for the page response. They will drive away because various options are remaining out there.
Popular Pages by Views
What pages are the traffic drivers? Knowing it can help you analyze what works best for your target audience.
Lead Source
How do you generate leads? In this case, what's more, effective social media or email?
Where Would I Find Good Examples of Hub and Spoke Strategy?
Tell us about your content strategy and the texts you want!
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