Creating Content Hubs

Content hubs are a great way to direct your visitors to key content, and it’s a nice way to maximize your search-engine optimization efforts. It’s also a great way to drive traffic to older content that is evergreen, but doesn’t show high up on your blog because it’s older. Essentially, a content hub is one page that features links to various posts and articles that fall under one theme.

Another bonus is that developing a content hub can often times reveal gaps in your blog coverage, so it’s a great way to develop to-do lists for future content. It is also a way to go after traffic for more commonly searched terms.

While categories in blogging can do this to a certain extent, a hub page is more controlled. You can decide which post should show at the top, and which posts are less evergreen and shouldn’t be highlighted at all.

Steps to Create a Content Hub

1. Search around your blog for common themes that keep reappearing. Do you have several posts that are all related? Could indirectly related posts fit nicely under one theme? Make notes of any potential hubs, and create a list that features simple 2-4 phrase titles.
2. Do some keyword research around the focus of your blog. See what terms are commonly searched, and which you also have lots of content around. For example, if you have a blog on blogging, you can see that people often type “what is blogging,” “video blogging,” “free blogging,” “make money blogging,” and “blogging tools.” Those could easily make content hub titles.
3. As you write your content hub, keep reinforcing your hub’s theme keywords. The nice thing about a hub is it can be quite natural to restate your keywords in links, which helps boost the page’s SEO.

Content Hub Variations

Not all content hubs need to be formatted the same way. You might consider some of these fun methods for making a page into a content hub:

• Make a top 10 list. Top 10 Blogging Tips, for example, could link to ten of your prior posts on the subject.
• Use pictures. If the subject is visual, feature an intro blurb followed by pictures with short text links.
• Create a “best of” or “most popular” page. Pick a topic and feature the best posts or the posts with the most page views.

Promoting Content Hubs

Once you have the hub, be sure they are promoted in a high-profile way on your site. Consider creating a sidebar section with “must-read” links, and place your hubs here. Also promote these by seeking out links from other sites. The bonus of driving traffic to these hub pages is that they encourage people to click around your site, rather than simply reading and moving on to another site.

Written by kelbycarr from Kelby Carr
Posted on October 16th, 2007 and filed under Blogging, Search Engine Optimisation
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