We all know how tedious it is to place an exact keyword a certain number of times within the content without hampering its readability. It takes a lot to get search engines to crawl and rank our web pages.
Content marketers these days have moved on from simple keywords to using key phrases that show user intent.
Search engines have also gotten smarter as they can now understand the exact meaning and context of search queries thanks to machine learning updates.
However, long-tail keywords are just the first step to the evolution a proper content marketing strategy.
The hub and spoke strategy focuses on topics instead of keywords for a different approach to higher rankings.
Read ahead as we outline its importance of the hub and spoke content strategy and explore ways to implement it on your websites.
Table of Contents
Importance Of The Hub And Spoke SEO Model
The hub and spoke model is essential for the following reasons:
Improved Content Siloing
Backlinks and a page’s keywords aren’t the only things you need to rank higher on Google. Instead, the search engine needs a guarantee that your website offers accurate information about the relevant topic that your keywords represent.
Content siloing provides that evidence to Google in the form of additional context related to what your website covers and if it has the authority to discuss a targeted keyword or topic.
The hub and spoke model connects related content, helping Google to understand the website’s authority, expertise, and authenticity related to the topic. With an assessment of other ranking queries and their position, Google can determine if an individual page should get a higher rank or not.
Content hubs and silos scale the content production due to their relation to organic search ranking. The higher rank you have for a hub, the better rank you will have for the spokes and vice versa.
Generate And Distribute Link Equity
The hub page is an excellent resource when it forms an internal link with the content, as others can also reference it. When these links are established and backlinks are removed, the equity that the external links manufacture will use internal links to spread across your website.
It is also beneficial for the hub page to promote more link magnets, including white papers, related tools, infographics, and more high-value assets, which people can use as references and links from their websites. When you create greater exposure for your hub page, you generate exposure for other relevant high-value resources. As a result, you create more subject-related backlinks.
As links establish and generate link equity for your website, the equity spreads throughout the spokes with the help of the internal link structure. This enhances your site’s authority, expertise, and authenticity, driving these signals to the content that can take advantage of it.
Organic And Natural Internal Linking
Crawlers and users can easily navigate your website, provide link equity with E-A-T signals to different website parts, and discover more pages with the help of internal links. These links help to network other similar content that you want to rank better. The organization creates a natural network and makes the process easier.
The hub page needs links to all related content like infographics, videos, written content, and other digital consumable forms relevant to the topic. This content marketing strategy allows crawlers and users to find all related content, precisely what the hub aims to do.
Your spokes should have a backlink to your hub, and more spoke pages. Also, make use of any relevant infographics and videos you have, anywhere you can and not just the hub page. This is because if a user or crawler finds your spokes instead of the hub, you can still provide related content to them easily.
Hub And Spoke Strategy Structure
Now that you know the importance of the hub and spoke model and want to organize your content around it let’s look at the steps you can follow.
1. Short-Tail Keywords Research
To begin with your content hub and spoke strategy, your first step is to carry out keyword research. Focus on topics instead of queries since every search can have hundreds and thousands of related queries.
As a result, the best approach is, to begin with the topic and use that as a focal point to survey the search landscape.
Consider your buyer persona’s top three main problems, or survey your target audience to group all issues and match short-tail keywords with them. Ensure these short-tail keywords are in a sufficient volume so you can write over twenty articles for each one.
Write a detailed post on these keywords, covering the subject holistically to create your hub page.
It is best to consider whether this page answers the relevant question the reader had searched the keyword for and covers everything needed to create over twenty posts.
2. Long-Tail Keyword Research
After picking the main topic (hub), you have to decide the sub-topics (spokes) for the central hub. Spokes include long-tail keywords covering multiple specific angles of the entire topic. Use SEO keyword research tools to begin your research.
For instance, if you want to make a content marketing hub page, you can use AnswerThePublic for the main questions regarding the subject.
Furthermore, you can look at the search results-related suggestions to get more long-tail keywords and reverse-engineer your keyword’s top competitors. You have to ensure you cover every customer’s issue related to the broad topic, giving them an end-to-end resource.
When you have all the long-tail keywords, you can pick the top fifteen to twenty keywords depending on their business value.
For instance, if you have an ecommerce store, you could use your customers’ frequently asked questions related to your best-selling products to figure out spokes and then match them with good search volume keywords.
3. Internal Linking And URL Structure
A robust site structure is essential for an excellent technical SEO to have better search results for hub and spoke pages. Internal linking on your site allows search engines to index your content while understanding the details in which you have covered a topic.
Furthermore, the search bots can indicate an explanatory relationship between the pages’ content when you add interlinking. To emphasize the connection, make sure you link internally from the spokes to the hub.
For instance, for your XYZ website, it is best if you use the following URL structure:
- com/hub/
- com/hub/spoke-20
- com/hub/spoke-1
4. Hub And Spokes Promotion
You have to promote your hub and spokes, either together or the spokes articles first, then the hub ones. The approach is dependent on you and your editorial calendar. However, regardless of the method, it is best to start at the top (hub) and publish down (spokes).
The hub gives an overview of your overall subject, and the spoke goes into the details with the subtopics. As a result, publishing the hub before the spoke widens your reach and audience.
If you have spoke articles, then updating them and relaunching your content is the best way to go about the process. Try to acquire backlinks for your hub page to increase its authority because more sites with backlinks will add to its authenticity. With the help of the hub and spoke structure of internal linking, you can ensure the distribution of your link juices across the website.
Alternatively, you could publish articles and simultaneously promote each one of them, depending on your editorial calendar. You can then make your hub page with all your spoke articles for more flexibility in the process.
It could also benefit you to repurpose your content with different brand and awareness channels for a new outlook to offer it to potential leads and get new subscribers. These include:
- Email such as a newsletter
- Organic social
- Paid social media outlets like Facebook, Reddit, or Quora, depending on your topics
Since organic reach isn’t algorithmically limited, the process is efficient and inexpensive when you promote through paid social.
5. Performance Measurement
Your hub and spoke articles must rank long-lasting traffic rather than failing in the long term. If you use a monitoring tool for backlinks for SEO efforts tracking, there is a high possibility for a constant increase in keyword rankings and search engine traffic.
This happens because when search engines find out and maintain you as an authority on the subject matter you talk about, they’ll start to boost your rankings and send more visitors to your site. Once some new visitor comes to your site, they will consume as much content and information as they wish and even share it with their friends, increasing your reach.
Real-World Examples
Let’s have a look at the real-life implementation of the hub and spoke models:
1. Tony Robbins
The success story of Tony Robbins’ implementation of the hub and spoke model for their Ultimate Relationship Guide comes in the form of more than 250,000 visitors till 2020 between their hub and spokes.
These are successful as the website smartly interconnects its user and crawlers with all the relationship guides, blogs, core concepts, and products.
2. Wager Talk
Wager Talk implements the hub and spoke model to organize their sports betting guide, allowing them to use traditional and other content forms, especially SEO with video. The hub is the entire sports betting guide, and the spokes are the specific sports betting guides.
Incorporating traditional copy and video makes the hub more detailed with explanations on various metrics for sports betting. Additionally, FAQs at the end allow for further capturing of featured snippets and occupying better SERP real estate with their listing’s FAQs.
Conclusion
Hub and spoke model is a highly efficient way to enhance user experience on your website, organize your content, and guarantee the search engines of your authenticity and authority.
You can follow a systematic approach to ensure you get better rankings instead of relying on single keywords and stressing over their placement within your content to optimize it.
Are you ready to implement a hub-and-spoke content marketing strategy?
If so, we can help! Get in touch today.
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