You have your content strategy set up to direct organic traffic to your main site in hopes of making conversions. But what if the bounce rate is too high and people aren’t interested in what you have to offer?
The problem may be that you are not providing enough value to keep a visitor on your page. If you aren’t seeing the traffic that you want, you may also be lacking the feeler pages that bring visitors to your site in the first place.
To draw in visitors, and keep them on your page, you may need a hub and spoke style content strategy. With a hub and spoke content strategy, you can work on driving traffic to your site through web pages or blogs that have a distinct relationship with the other pages on your website.
Hub and spoke is not only effective at increasing traffic but also in providing informative content to readers. To give you a sense of whether or not hub and spoke works for you, we thought we’d break down this process.
What does “Hub and Spoke” mean in marketing terms?
The hub and spoke model is the name of a marketing model that works by creating a type of topic cluster around a given article. The term comes from the hub and spoke paradigm, which was developed from the spoke and hub of a wheel.
While proverbially ancient in terms of actual use, the spoked wheel is a type of wheel that has spokes or rods connected to a center of a wheel, which is then connected to the axle. This type of wheel has existed since about 2000 BC.
Now, we have taken this design to reflect a type of distribution or organizational model. In distribution, for example, a company will start with a core process and then the spokes refer to the connecting processes that make that entire entity function.
If you can picture the hub of a wheel and spokes coming out of it, imagine a concept or idea as the hub, and connected sub-topics or sub-ideas as the spokes connected to the hub.
In content marketing, the hub is a core piece of content that you want your audience to see. The spokes are supporting content that will not only provide additional information to the reader but will also drive them towards your core, hub page.
What does a Hub and Spoke Content Strategy Look Like
A hub and spoke content strategy starts with your hub content. This is also sometimes referred to as pillar content.
This content is a substantive piece that provides informative content on a specific topic or theme. The topic should be a bit broader rather than specific so that more than one spoke page can be derived from that topic.
Examples of hub content include a whitepaper, guide, report, or eBook. This content should be on a subject that the business or brand is not only familiar with but also an expert in. The hub piece will convey brand authority on the topic.
If you decide on a hub and spoke model content strategy, you’ll need to consider how it fits in with your SEO strategy and other digital marketing strategies that you have in place. Also, make sure that this strategy works for your company. If you are a B2B content marketer, then you might be preaching to the choir and potential customers might think this information is redundant or superfluous.
Things to consider when developing a Hub and Spoke Content Strategy
When developing a hub and spoke model content plan, you’ll want to first sit down and ask yourself some questions around that pillar page. Because this is your driving page, you need to make sure it speaks to your target audience and hits all deliverables while fitting into your spoke strategy.
Ask yourself:
- What information can your company provide that your viewers would be interested in?
- In what way will that information or blog benefit your viewers?
- What information do you have expertise in?
- What is the goal of that content?
Beyond being a part of the content strategy, it’s important to establish the goal of that hub piece as that goal will determine the entire spoke content model.
- Do you wish to drive in leads? If so, your piece might look less like a dense guideline document and instead focus on the core material with multiple spokes of killer supporting content.
- Do you wish to be an authoritative voice on the subject? If so, the hub article will need to be an in-depth topic that can be talked about at length. The topic will have to be very specific, and the sub-topics can also be specific and multi-faceted.
- Are you just trying to grow brand awareness? If so, then you don’t necessarily need an information-heavy piece. Instead, you simply need to inform visitors about what you know. Keep the information closely related to your brand and closely related to each of the spoke content pieces so readers can recognize that all of the pieces and all of the information comes from the same source and is connected to your brand.
- What avenues will the blog post be promoted on? If you are aiming to promote this material on social media, for example, you need to think carefully about the titles, the style of content, and how it is promoted. You’ll need to have all of the content creation happen upfront so that the information will not only cluster appropriately but will be current and recurring on the social media platform that you choose.
If you have decided that a content hub will be an appropriate content marketing strategy for your brand and needs, you can set out to execute the strategy.
Executing Your Hub and Spoke Strategy
Once you have decided on the core topic that your content clusters will focus on, it is time to map out the strategy and executive it. This means planning out the core topic and sub-topics.
If the number of sub-topics that you have is below 10, you might need to consider a more expanded topic. Or, you’ll need to consider the other ways that this topic could be expanded in a way that makes meaningful sense.
You’ll then need to plan out a schedule. If you are posting this content to your main social media platforms (i.e., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn), then you’ll likely need to plan out content creation in advance with included social media descriptions, meta descriptions, SEO titles and SEO targeted keywords.
okwrite’s Hub and Spoke Content Strategy
The hub and spoke content strategy is a targeted and effective form of inbound marketing that gets your quality content out to your audience. Whether it is through social media posts or a strategic guest post, make sure that you have your internal linking strategy prepared. Also, be prepared to map out the length of time that you plan to employ this marketing strategy and when you reasonably expect to have an influx of traffic and leads.
Even if you have great content, it won’t be useful for lead generation if it isn’t reaching the right audiences. Additionally, you may be employing the wrong content types for your strategy.
