Hub and spoke content strategy
What is hub and spoke content strategy?
Hub and spoke content strategy is a content organization model that structures your website like a wheel, with a comprehensive central piece (the hub) connected to multiple related, more specific content pieces (the spokes). The hub typically covers a broad topic in depth, while each spoke explores a particular aspect of that topic in greater detail. This creates a logical content hierarchy that helps both users and search engines understand the relationships between your content pieces and establishes your site as an authority on the subject matter.
How does hub and spoke content work?
The hub and spoke model works through strategic internal linking and content organization. The hub page serves as a comprehensive resource that introduces the main topic and links out to each spoke. Each spoke, in turn, explores a subtopic in greater detail and links back to the hub, creating a two-way relationship. This internal linking structure distributes page authority throughout your content ecosystem, helps search engines understand content relationships, and guides users through a logical journey of discovery. As users navigate between related pieces, they develop a more complete understanding of the topic while spending more time on your site.
Why is hub and spoke content important for SEO?
Hub and spoke content significantly impacts SEO by building topical authority through comprehensive coverage of a subject area. Search engines recognize when websites demonstrate expertise on specific topics, and this content structure makes those relationships explicit. The internal linking architecture efficiently distributes page authority throughout your site, strengthening the ranking potential of all connected pages. This organization also improves crawlability, helping search engines discover and index your content more effectively. Additionally, the model naturally targets both broad, competitive keywords (with hub pages) and longer-tail, specific queries (with spoke content), capturing traffic at different stages of the user journey.
What's the difference between hub content and spoke content?
Hub content serves as a comprehensive overview of a broad topic, designed to be the definitive resource on the subject. It's typically longer, covers multiple aspects of the topic, and targets more competitive, higher-volume keywords. Hub pages often have a longer shelf life and require less frequent updating. In contrast, spoke content focuses on specific subtopics in greater detail, targeting more specific, often long-tail keywords with lower competition. Spoke content tends to be more tactical, addressing particular questions, challenges, or aspects of the main topic. While hub content establishes broad expertise, spoke content demonstrates deep knowledge in specific areas, creating a complementary relationship that serves different user needs and search intents.
How do you implement a hub and spoke content strategy?
Implementing a hub and spoke strategy begins with identifying your core topics and conducting keyword research to understand what your audience is searching for. Start by creating a comprehensive hub page that covers the main topic broadly while introducing the subtopics. Then develop individual spoke content pieces that explore each subtopic in detail, ensuring they connect logically to the hub. Establish strong internal linking between your hub and spokes, using descriptive anchor text that helps both users and search engines understand content relationships. Regularly update both hub and spoke content to keep information current and continue building out additional spokes as you identify new subtopics. Monitor performance metrics to identify opportunities for improvement, such as creating new spokes based on questions users are asking or expanding existing content to better address search intent.