Hub-and-spoke content marketing is becoming an increasingly popular tool that companies are using to establish themselves as industry experts while boosting traffic and keyword rankings.

This type of content marketing was discussed during a recent webinar led by two SEO experts at Conductor.

Zach Kadish, SEO customer success team manager at Conductor, said a hub-and-spoke strategy is about generating content on a broad topic, while diving deeper into more relevant areas on different parts of the website.

In an article he wrote for Search Engine Journal, he listed the successes of hub-and-spoke for a client that included the following:

• 328 percent increase in keywords on Page 1.
• 741 percent increase in keywords on Page 2.
• Ranking No. 1 for the targeted keyword on the hub page

While he said many brands may already be using similar models, hub-and-spoke is unique because it’s a way to generate content in a “focused way” around a more broad topic.

Kadish said that in this model, the hub is the center of the wheel, and all the spokes are pointing outward.

The hub is the main topic that a brand will create more authority around, he said, and the spokes are the supporting content that can help increase the authority.

Higher-volume keywords are the hubs, and and the lower-volume keywords are the spokes.

Chaz Marshall, SEO success manager at Conductor, gave an hub-and-spoke example where “civil engineering” is the hub topic and a possible spoke, or subtopic, could be, “What is the salary of a civil engineer?”

If hub-and-spoke is executed well, experts say there’s a potential for site visitors to turn into leads, even if it doesn’t happen immediately.

Evergreen, educational content provides value to customers, experts say, and increases the chances that they will remember a brand in the future.

Kadish said that creating more content around specific services or business lines will help Google to associate these types of content with that brand.

Experts say that hub-and-spoke success starts with keyword research to see what customers are searching for.

If a company is new to keyword research or struggling to navigate the tools needed to perform this research, experts say it may be worth it to consider hiring an expert in this area to join the team.

Some companies choose to work with a content marketing agency to help build a content marketing strategy and even create the content for it.

Prior to hiring these experts, marketing teams can get started by re-evaluating their company goals and research around the consumer to set the framework for the work to come, experts say.

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