Building an online brand presence is essential for growing a small business and establishing yourself, as the business owner, as an authority and expert in your niche. The internet has leveled the playing field for smaller businesses to compete against larger corporations. Savvy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website draws more visitors, giving you more opportunities to generate leads and conversions.
One strong marketing strategy is creating hub-and-spoke content on your website. Hub-and-spoke can give you a lot of bang for your marketing buck. Learn more about this strategy to help improve your site rankings on search engine returns.
What is the Hub-and-Spoke Model?
Your website consists of landing pages, where a visitor will "land" after clicking on a link in search returns (SERP). One type of landing page is a general information page with informational "evergreen" content (content that is relevant year-round, as opposed to content with a small window of relevance). However, sometimes it doesn't make sense to cram all the information about one topic onto one page. Instead, the information is broken down into the "hub" or parent page, which has a broad overview, and then "spokes," or child pages, which contain deeper dives into other aspects of the topic.
Benefits of Hub-and-Spoke Content
Hub-and-spoke helps increase your organic rankings. Your spoke pages each have slightly different popular keywords and longer keyword strings, which broadens your range for capturing new site visitors. For example, an HVAC contractor may be able to capture different users by having a "hub" talking about air conditioning services and then child pages talking about boosting A/C efficiency, the best way to reduce utility bills in summer, and a deeper dive into Smart Home technology. Each of those spoke pages may attract a different visitor, but they all land on the same site, thereby giving the contractor three potential leads instead of one.
You can create different "spoke" content articles through keyword research, using the high-volume keywords for your type of business as the hub, and then the long-tail, lower-volume keywords as the spokes. This gives you a logical framework to create your content.
Each of your spoke topics should be related back to your brand. The more thoughtful, informative content you produce, the more you establish yourself (and, by extent, your business) as an industry expert. You're creating a sense of trust and authority for new customers, which may increase their willingness to buy.
Conclusion: Using Hub-and-Spoke Content to Your Advantage
When done well, the hub-and-spoke frame has the potential to increase your leads exponentially. The beauty of this kind of content is that you can utilize it for any main topic that relates to your industry. As you grow your content, you reach out to more people and establish yourself as a thought leader. Adding more evergreen, informational content will bring visitors back to your site to learn more, even if they aren't ready to convert on their first visit. You can increase your leads and use your content to entice these visitors to make decisions, such as signing up for your email list.
The informational content that you provide helps build brand awareness of your business. Your site and business name stick in the mind of buyers, who will remember that when they're ready to