Maximize Your Content ROI With the Innovative SEO Strategy
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 9:48 am
See how HubSpot created and implemented their Innovative SEO Strategy using AccuRanker… and how you can get the same results!
Download the Guide Now!
If you’ve heard of HubSpot’s Topic Cluster SEO Strategy but aren’t sure how to implement it on your own site or track your Content ROI, read on!
Discover how HubSpot implemented its own SEO strategy and download our step-by-step guide on how to implement smart architecture on your own site while tracking the impact and ROI of your content with AccuRanker.
2017 was the year of “Topic Clusters,” HubSpot’s revolutionary new way to organize website pages to make the most of internal Pagerank and maximize SEO value.
This shift in how HubSpot structured its content was georgia mobile phone numbers database a response to changes in how people search and how search results are presented.
HubSpot championed this new model as the next evolution of SEO. This approach was born not just out of theory, but as a solution to a problem HubSpot itself faced.
Before anyone had even uttered the words “Topic Clusters,” HubSpot’s SEO Team was busy behind the scenes evaluating and implementing this more topic-focused website architecture, and they were testing it on their own sites as proof of the validity of their new approach to website content structure.
Ranking Tracking and Topics
To facilitate and track this repurposing, HubSpot needed a keyword ranking tool with speed, agility, and reliable accurate performance. They began repurposing their own content using AccuRanker as their primary keyword ranking tool.
It was absolutely crucial for the HubSpot SEO team to have a tool that could track and monitor the impact of their restructuring and monitor their progress at every stage.
Padreig O'Connor
Acquisition and SEO Manager at HubSpot , LinkedIn
Things move fast at HubSpot, and we needed a tool that could keep up with our fast pace.
We love AccuRanker’s ability to refresh the position of keywords within a specific cluster group at any time. AccuRanker gives our SEO team the data they need to make the right decisions.
As with any SEO effort, it takes time to see results, and through periods of growth, decline, and ranking fluctuations, it was crucial for the HubSpot SEO team to have insider knowledge of how Topic Clusters—the primary indicators of new SEO strategies—were performing.
“ There is no standard x+y=z when it comes to SEO, ” but by tracking their keywords and terms related to their topic cluster, the SEO team was able to get closer to understanding the causality behind the successful and unsuccessful SEO strategies they tried.
Using the cutting-edge features found in AccuRanker, they were able to monitor the health of their “Topic Clusters” and, most importantly, adjust and improve their strategies based on the results they saw.
The Goal Posts Are Moving in SEO
The blog restructuring was the final excuse they needed to get the wheels turning to implement the new approach long advocated by HubSpot’s Chief Acquisition Officer, Matthew Howells-Barby.
While changes in behavior are the main driver behind the Topic Cluster approach, the reasons behind the need for change are much broader.
More more more
There was once a school of thought that led marketers to believe that all they needed to rank higher was more content. However, piling more content on top of an already weak site architecture doesn’t help search engines find and rank content.
It turns out that the problem wasn’t a lack of content, but rather the way content strategies were developed and organized.
Matthew Howells - Barby
Director of Acquisitions at HubSpot , LinkedIn
If you’re producing content at the speed that HubSpot does, information architecture is incredibly important. Creating an editorial calendar that follows a topic cluster model is not only better for organic search, but it also makes the entire process of thinking about and creating content much easier.
Conversations with Google
Over the last few years, there’s been a huge shift in how people search for things online. Search queries are more conversational, full sentences with a few keywords thrown in, details refined on the 2nd or 3rd try.
In response, search algorithms have become more sophisticated, with numerous updates focused on understanding and interpreting these queries. The 2013 Hummingbird update began analyzing phrases rather than individual keywords.
It’s no longer enough to focus on your top 10-20 keywords, there are now hundreds or thousands of semantically related variations being searched for in a given niche. The HubSpot Pillar/Cluster model organizes your site into topics and clusters to better serve searchers. Tracking and ranking for a handful of keywords is no longer enough.
Old Content
HubSpot as a company has seen tremendous growth in recent years, and that growth is reflected in the size and amount of content on its website.
HubSpot’s main blog is more than a decade old, and the team was faced with a common problem for sites that have been around for more than a few years: stale content. Numerous web pages were spread across blog subdomains without a consistent or cohesive linking structure.
Brittany Chin
Customer Marketing at HubSpot, LinkedIn
At HubSpot, we realized we had a lot of content on a lot of topics, but we were struggling to organize and prioritize where to focus our efforts next.
Reorganizing our content into Topic Clusters allowed us to not only give all of our well-performing content an extra boost in search results, but also to audit our existing content and refresh our content strategy.
Very few companies start a blog with a plan for how it will relate to the overall architecture of the site, how it will maximize its link structure for SEO gains, or even how it will measure ROI. There are huge advantages to planning this from day one, and you can reap the rewards of a Pillar/Cluster strategy right from the start.
topic cluster hubspot
Old content with no structure
As a company like HubSpot grows, and with it its blog, more content is added that, while inherently valuable in informing readers, ultimately lacks direction and cohesion, further complicating the problem and not leveraging the internal Pagerank that the site has built over time.
Scattered Connections
In the above scenario, links can be temporary and sporadic, you never know if the reader will find what they want, and you end up spreading your authority haphazardly rather than being more strategic and linking to content you want to feature in search engine results pages.
In addition to losing potential organic traffic due to insufficient or non-existent internal links, content-heavy sites, especially those with large back catalogs, often have numerous pages covering the same or similar topics. These pages compete directly with each other in search engines.
Download the Guide Now!
If you’ve heard of HubSpot’s Topic Cluster SEO Strategy but aren’t sure how to implement it on your own site or track your Content ROI, read on!
Discover how HubSpot implemented its own SEO strategy and download our step-by-step guide on how to implement smart architecture on your own site while tracking the impact and ROI of your content with AccuRanker.
2017 was the year of “Topic Clusters,” HubSpot’s revolutionary new way to organize website pages to make the most of internal Pagerank and maximize SEO value.
This shift in how HubSpot structured its content was georgia mobile phone numbers database a response to changes in how people search and how search results are presented.
HubSpot championed this new model as the next evolution of SEO. This approach was born not just out of theory, but as a solution to a problem HubSpot itself faced.
Before anyone had even uttered the words “Topic Clusters,” HubSpot’s SEO Team was busy behind the scenes evaluating and implementing this more topic-focused website architecture, and they were testing it on their own sites as proof of the validity of their new approach to website content structure.
Ranking Tracking and Topics
To facilitate and track this repurposing, HubSpot needed a keyword ranking tool with speed, agility, and reliable accurate performance. They began repurposing their own content using AccuRanker as their primary keyword ranking tool.
It was absolutely crucial for the HubSpot SEO team to have a tool that could track and monitor the impact of their restructuring and monitor their progress at every stage.
Padreig O'Connor
Acquisition and SEO Manager at HubSpot , LinkedIn
Things move fast at HubSpot, and we needed a tool that could keep up with our fast pace.
We love AccuRanker’s ability to refresh the position of keywords within a specific cluster group at any time. AccuRanker gives our SEO team the data they need to make the right decisions.
As with any SEO effort, it takes time to see results, and through periods of growth, decline, and ranking fluctuations, it was crucial for the HubSpot SEO team to have insider knowledge of how Topic Clusters—the primary indicators of new SEO strategies—were performing.
“ There is no standard x+y=z when it comes to SEO, ” but by tracking their keywords and terms related to their topic cluster, the SEO team was able to get closer to understanding the causality behind the successful and unsuccessful SEO strategies they tried.
Using the cutting-edge features found in AccuRanker, they were able to monitor the health of their “Topic Clusters” and, most importantly, adjust and improve their strategies based on the results they saw.
The Goal Posts Are Moving in SEO
The blog restructuring was the final excuse they needed to get the wheels turning to implement the new approach long advocated by HubSpot’s Chief Acquisition Officer, Matthew Howells-Barby.
While changes in behavior are the main driver behind the Topic Cluster approach, the reasons behind the need for change are much broader.
More more more
There was once a school of thought that led marketers to believe that all they needed to rank higher was more content. However, piling more content on top of an already weak site architecture doesn’t help search engines find and rank content.
It turns out that the problem wasn’t a lack of content, but rather the way content strategies were developed and organized.
Matthew Howells - Barby
Director of Acquisitions at HubSpot , LinkedIn
If you’re producing content at the speed that HubSpot does, information architecture is incredibly important. Creating an editorial calendar that follows a topic cluster model is not only better for organic search, but it also makes the entire process of thinking about and creating content much easier.
Conversations with Google
Over the last few years, there’s been a huge shift in how people search for things online. Search queries are more conversational, full sentences with a few keywords thrown in, details refined on the 2nd or 3rd try.
In response, search algorithms have become more sophisticated, with numerous updates focused on understanding and interpreting these queries. The 2013 Hummingbird update began analyzing phrases rather than individual keywords.
It’s no longer enough to focus on your top 10-20 keywords, there are now hundreds or thousands of semantically related variations being searched for in a given niche. The HubSpot Pillar/Cluster model organizes your site into topics and clusters to better serve searchers. Tracking and ranking for a handful of keywords is no longer enough.
Old Content
HubSpot as a company has seen tremendous growth in recent years, and that growth is reflected in the size and amount of content on its website.
HubSpot’s main blog is more than a decade old, and the team was faced with a common problem for sites that have been around for more than a few years: stale content. Numerous web pages were spread across blog subdomains without a consistent or cohesive linking structure.
Brittany Chin
Customer Marketing at HubSpot, LinkedIn
At HubSpot, we realized we had a lot of content on a lot of topics, but we were struggling to organize and prioritize where to focus our efforts next.
Reorganizing our content into Topic Clusters allowed us to not only give all of our well-performing content an extra boost in search results, but also to audit our existing content and refresh our content strategy.
Very few companies start a blog with a plan for how it will relate to the overall architecture of the site, how it will maximize its link structure for SEO gains, or even how it will measure ROI. There are huge advantages to planning this from day one, and you can reap the rewards of a Pillar/Cluster strategy right from the start.
topic cluster hubspot
Old content with no structure
As a company like HubSpot grows, and with it its blog, more content is added that, while inherently valuable in informing readers, ultimately lacks direction and cohesion, further complicating the problem and not leveraging the internal Pagerank that the site has built over time.
Scattered Connections
In the above scenario, links can be temporary and sporadic, you never know if the reader will find what they want, and you end up spreading your authority haphazardly rather than being more strategic and linking to content you want to feature in search engine results pages.
In addition to losing potential organic traffic due to insufficient or non-existent internal links, content-heavy sites, especially those with large back catalogs, often have numerous pages covering the same or similar topics. These pages compete directly with each other in search engines.