Content hubs are powerful when paired with well-structured SEO strategies since they provide meaningful links between relevant pieces of content in one place, making it easier for crawlers and visitors alike to find their desired solutions quickly. By actively leveraging this combination of technology, agencies can ensure maximum visibility while providing valuable experiences along the journey!
What is a Content Hub?
Managing your content strategy is key to success for both search engines and customers. Content hubs act as a powerful tool in this endeavor, helping boost website authority and branding through SEO benefits like backlinks, leads, and improved rankings.
Although they don’t look different from regular web pages on the surface, their working mechanism sets them apart!
A typical content hub consists of a central webpage. This webpage collates information related to one single topic. Additionally, there are several sub-pages (or spokes) that lead off from this page. This resembles an old-fashioned wagon wheel’s rim connected by the central point: the hub page or pillar page. This page is dedicated to broad topics, which are further divided into subtopics and covered in detail across multiple format types such as white papers and articles.
The creation process involves several steps. Firstly, choosing the number and kinds of topics is necessary. Secondly, keyword research can be used to select high-level topics, followed by SERP landscape evaluation. Thirdly, strategic user flow pathways should be designed while optimizing URL structures according to changes in algorithms over time.
How Do Agencies Create a Content Hub?
Having a content management system that can support SEO techniques is a must for any agency looking to create an effective content hub. It offers features such as in-context editing and prebuilt plugins, making it easy for agencies to optimize their sites with the click of a button. It also allows marketers complete control over URLs, metadata, and markup, which helps boost search rankings through keyword-rich, relevant content.
In addition, dynamic metadata capabilities within these CMSs help keep the website’s sitemap up to date, thereby providing crucial structure information required by search crawlers during indexing. Further, analytics integration with Google Analytics allows detailed analysis of existing projects, helping agencies identify areas where improvements are needed or new ideas that need exploration.
Here’s an 8-step guide for agencies to create content hubs that drive organic traffic:
1. Choose a High-Level Topic
Pick a high-level topic that has multiple subtopics and keywords related to it, like “vegan food” or “green cards”. You should consider relevant long-tail phrases when searching. These phrases have higher user intent toward taking action. For example, “where do I buy vegan cooking utensils?” Longer queries such as this generally result in fewer searches but offer more precise results than other simple search terms. This is because they have lower competition overall compared to the most commonly used key terms.
The best way forward is often finding crossovers between subjects. This means combining two topics into one phrase which encompasses both aspects. For example, “vegan healthy lifestyle” can be used to describe a combination of the two topics. After you’ve analyzed keywords and identified potential areas of interest, you can use Topic Research tools like SEO GPT to further investigate specific ideas that relate to those key terms. This allows you to narrow down your focus while still addressing all pertinent questions related to the broader subject area.
2. Take a Deep Dive into Keyword Research
Prioritizing the right keywords within your content hub is a great way to build trust with both search engines and people. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness) guidelines recommended by Google should be part of every strategy when creating high-quality content hubs that are meant to convert organic traffic into qualified leads over time. Content architecture optimization helps establish credibility in SERPs, so you need to have an idea of how users flow through pages related to any given topic or subtopic.
Evaluating competition is key when creating the best-suited flows based on data. Analytics tools such as Adobe Analytics and Kissmetrics can be used to gather data to customize the user experience. Internal links between topics and pages should be included, with primary CTA points at the end of the journey funnel. By doing this, sales cycles are shortened and more mid and bottom-of-funnel prospects can be attracted by referencing particular pieces created around associated keyword groups.
Once you have a better understanding of the keyword landscape, understand how to structure content around user intent, and lay out a strategic flow, it’s time to start executing. A successful hub page should answer queries at each stage in the funnel, from top-of-funnel blog posts and white papers down to product pages for those looking for an immediate conversion. Content hubs act as unifying spaces that guide users along their journey while addressing relevant questions they may have on particular topics.
It’s both important and beneficial for search results if your content is up-to-date with timely facts or changes happening within your niche/category. As SEO evolves alongside technology, one size doesn’t always fit all when building digital experiences for users; tailor landing pages according to specific needs versus offering generalized solutions across channels.
The technical side of creating structures can become quite complex quickly. However, this process will be easier when research on the target audience, marketing goals, and keyword mapping optimization strategies have been completed before any buildout, roadmap, or plan launch phase.
3. Bucket Similar Intent Keywords into Groups
Organizing content allows agencies to create separate pieces of digital real estate for each keyword group, which helps with user experience and maximizes click-through rates from search engine result pages (SERPs). By creating multiple entry points that cater to different phases of the customer journey, we can drive traffic deeper into our site.
If somebody is just looking to learn more about a given topic, they may land on one page. On the other hand, those who are further down the funnel and actively searching for something to purchase would visit another URL structure. This has been optimized with specific keyword phrases or buying intent terms in mind.
Near the completion stage click-through rates (CTRs) will increase dramatically. We need data at every step along the process showing what search queries bring qualified users (trending topics, number of clicks per query, etc.). Both organic and paid results should work hand in glove as part of a coherent SEO strategy, driving brand/product awareness but also directly affecting revenue growth by targeting specific groups within audience segments you understand well.
To do so correctly, leveraging voice search trends like long-tail keyphrase optimization and natural language processing have become must-haves when optimizing pages and calls-to-action (CTAs) based on consumer searchers’ trends and activity behavior. Analysis platforms such as AI-powered software tools can help make sense of it all, automatically adjusting your effectiveness over time.
4. Understand the SERP Landscape
You want the content hub to be easily crawlable by search engine bots and easy for users to navigate. That’s why it’s key to have a well-thought-out URL structure from the beginning, so you don’t need drastic reorganization down the road when your team wants (or needs) to add more pages or move existing ones.
Structured data can help further give context about what type of content lives on each page and how related pieces fit together into larger topics.
This helps improve relevance. All structured data elements should be properly marked up with schema markup code snippets across relevant web pages within our hubs. Providing additional information enables us to understand where we should invest in creating corresponding SERP features such as Featured Snippets, People Also Ask boxes, and Answer Carousels.
Finally, understanding changes in user intent based on keyword demand over time will allow us to stay ahead of an ever-changing SEO landscape.
Utilizing tools such as Google Trends can show if interesting shifts are happening around certain queries related to keywords used throughout these hubs. This could indicate opportunities that may exist outside organic rankings altogether, like voice search results, featured snippets, local packs, etc. Once all cogs are in place and working together efficiently, monitoring performance becomes easier while allowing teams to adjust their approach quickly and act upon user feedback and insights gleaned from competitors’ analyses.
To determine success, focused metrics must be identified beforehand. Track CTR rates per page, and impressions; analytics tools such as Search Console allow us to measure organic visibility and assess traction sites earning backlinks.
5. Evaluate Topic Authority
Once you’ve identified the main topics and sub-topics to focus on, it’s key to assess whether your content hub has enough brand authority in that space. The audit of which terms/pages are ranking organically for yourself as well as competitors within similar industries or companies of a different size (if applicable). Analyzing competitors’ search results can give insights into where they outrank us.
Is there an opportunity to apply what we learn about their existing strategy? Can our team create better quality, more engaging content around those same topics? To be successful with running organic traffic campaigns through a content hub framework, first aim at building topic clusters with internal linking to support keywords related to broad concepts.
When done successfully, this will allow searchers greater depth when exploring various paths throughout your website while still providing relevant user experiences along the way. This thorough keyword research phase should continue even after the Hub launch so that ongoing optimizations can be applied as algorithms change over time and new opportunities arise in SERPs.
6. Optimize Your Site URL Structure
Optimizing your website’s URL structures can have a big impact on improving organic visibility and driving qualified traffic. It’s best practice for any generated URLs to always live within whatever subfolder houses them via consistent patterns throughout each page level. Keywords should then be woven into these links naturally when needed, but not excessively, so that page authority remains high enough.
Keeping proximity from homepages, like the main homepage, helps create trust among visitors.
It’s recommended to nest your URLs within the sub-folder where your content hub is located and follow a consistent pattern throughout each page level. We also suggest that you naturally weave in priority keywords into the URL, as needed. Looking back to our vegan example, here’s how you can optimize your site URLs:
www.website.com/vegan-food>www.website.com/vegan-food/benefits
7. Design a Strategic User Flow
Designing a strategic user flow is essential to improving the performance of your website. Content hubs are great for building trust with users and optimizing content for SEO, but they should be relevant to your brand as well.
Using tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or AnswerThePublic can help you create substantial keyword lists based on things such as monthly search volume and paid conversions. Analyzing this list indicates what kind of questions people have so that related terms can be grouped into categories depending upon their intent, whether it’s looking to learn more or convert straight away. Investing resources into creating article content is important, but understanding how competitors structure subtopics will make sure you’re getting maximum impact from organic traffic sources like Google.
Best practice suggests nesting URLs within subfolders following consistent patterns throughout each level while naturally including priority keywords if appropriate. Cross-channel engagement through Paid Media, Social, and Email channels helps identify which topics require the most attention when aiming for engaging results from searchers seeking answers.
Promotion across platforms provides better visibility for these pieces of information, thus helping them find, engage with, and eventually convert on said material faster.
8. Continue to Build and Optimize the Content Based on Changes in Search Algorithms
Continue optimizing and building your online content based on changes in search engine algorithms. It’s also recommended that you promote your content through other channels, such as Social Media, Paid Ads, and Email to get insights into what users are interested in.
Content hubs are an effective way to grow both trust from audiences and SEO-ready content on a website, though they must be related to the brand for successful bottom-of-funnel visits. You can make use of keyword tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or AnswerThePublic when looking for topics that generate enough search volume as well as paid conversions.
This will help you determine what people commonly seek answers to through Google searches by categorizing similar query intents into useful buckets, e.g., researching more versus actively converting customers! Allocating resources toward articles is significant, but understanding competitor page hierarchies might give insight when creating digital content hubs.
SEO Vendor can help you understand how to make the most of your strategy. We can assist in determining who your target audience is and what topics interest them most and help you craft a suitable content plan that includes several types of media, such as text, audio, and visual.
