What is a Content Hub and How to Leverage the Hub and Spoke Model

by | May 29, 2023

a man with sunglasses rides his bicycle quickly down the road
Are you looking to enhance your business’s online visibility and drive more traffic to your website? Setting up and leveraging a hub and spoke content hub is a powerful strategy to boost your SEO efforts.

What Is a B2B Content Hub and the Hub and Spoke Model?

A B2B content hub is a curated collection of interconnected content such as blogs, podcasts, infographics, and resources that provide valuable information on an overarching subject.The hub and spoke model, in particular, is a type of content hub that focuses on generating content on a comprehensive topic. It includes a hub page, which serves as the overarching topic aiming to establish greater authority and improve rankings, and spoke pages, which are individual pieces of content that support the hub in achieving its objective.

The Hub and Spoke Model for SEO

The hub and spoke model is an efficient SEO practice as it uses quality content and keywords to:
     
      • Improve your website’s authority on a topic.
      • Organize and optimize your website’s content structure.
      • Drive traffic to your site.
    The hub page acts as the main piece of content for a keyword that is difficult to rank for. It is most often a services page, buyers guides, or blog categories.For example, if you are a bike store in New York, you may want to rank for “rent a bike New York” which is very competitive keyword. How are you going to rank for this term? Chances are, you’re not.This is where your spokes come in, to transfer the load between the hub and the rim.The spoke pages are the supporting content related to the main topic such as blog posts, or about and FAQ pages. They include lower-volume long-tail keywords that are less difficult to rank for.Following the bike store example, your spoke topics could be “Rent a Cannondale gravel bike New York” or, “What are the best gravel bike loops in New York?” It is the content that prospects will find on the SERPs, that link back to your hub, and that will help improve your visibility for the main topic.

    How to Build a Hub and Spoke Style Content Hub

    Identify a central topic that is relevant to your business

    This will be the focus of your hub content. Consider what you are an expert in, what you want to rank for, and what you will be able to write valuable and informative content on.

    Conduct keyword research

    Use tools such as Ahrefs Keywords Explorer or Google Keyword Planner to find high-volume keywords for your hub content, and low-volume long-tail keywords for your spoke content.

    Create your hub content

    Your hub content should be a comprehensive, in-depth page such as:
       
        • Core offerings: service pages
        • Target audience: buyers guides, industries served
        • Resources: blog categories, training material
      This page should include rich content that informs and links to the different spoke content pieces.

      Create your supporting spoke content

      Your spoke content should revolve around your researched subtopics related to the main content such as:
         
          • Blog posts
          • FAQ and about pages
        Each supporting piece should be optimized for search and link back to the hub content using relevant anchor text.

        Promote your published content

        Once you have published the content, promote them through various channels such as social media, email marketing, influencer outreach, and other relevant platforms to help drive traffic.

        Monitor KPIs to help measure your hub and spoke content performance

        Continuously monitor the performance of your hub and spoke content and its impact on your SEO efforts. Analyze the traffic, engagement, and conversions to determine the effectiveness of the strategy. Update and refresh the content periodically to keep it relevant and up to date.

        Increase Your Website’s Visibility with a Hub and Spoke Content Marketing Strategy

        Setting up and leveraging a hub and spoke content hub can greatly benefit your business’s SEO efforts. It helps you to organize your content in a way that supports the growth of organic traffic to your website. By adopting this model, you can also establish yourself as an authoritative source in your industry, improve search engine visibility, and generate valuable leads.The team at Method + Metric are experts in content marketing and can help you to implement a bespoke content hub that will enhance your online presence and help you achieve long-term SEO success. Don’t know where to start? We offer SEO Audit service for businesses of all sizes. Get in touch today!