HubSpot Blogging: All about Pillar Pages and Topic Clusters

A few years ago, HubSpot announced a substantial shift in SEO positioning strategy and it's still a great tactic for Marketers dedicated to content creation.

The formula for searching has changed. It is no longer necessary to create tons of content in order to rank on the first page. With a good Content Marketing Strategy, you can be much more effective with less quantity, but with more quality.

Here's the HubSpot formula:

1. Change the strategy, focus on the "topics" instead of "keywords"

Search algorithms have long stopped focusing solely on keywords. Therefore, your content strategy for SEO should not focus solely on keywords either (although it's still good to keep the SEO basics in mind). These days, search engines reward websites whose content is organized into topics, called "Topic Clusters" in HubSpot. 

Hubspot's content strategy tool facilitates the process and helps you discover the topics that you are really interested in publishing, and that interest potential customers. You can add your ideas into their SEO tool to see monthly search volumes and difficulty, making it easier to choose between similar topics. 

Image source: HubSpot

So how does this HubSpot blogging tool work?

First, it links to your website and suggests topics based on relevance, competence and popularity. Based on this information, it helps you organize the content into clusters that define and improve the influence of your website pages on search engines.

You must always make sure to link your sub-topics to your main Pillar Page (more about that below!) This tells search engines that these topics are related. You will see which topics are linked to the main page because the linked pages will have a green branch, while the pages missing a link will have a red branch.

Implementing this structure of Topic Clusters for the content of your website and blog translates into an improvement in search positioning and an increase of quality visits to your site. In short, you define what audience you want to attract through valuable content and the HubSpot platform helps simplify the entire process.

Image source: HubSpot

2. Create content that generates business with Pillar Pages

Don't waste time on content that doesn't work.Instead, offer content that your customers want to read and that search engines want to position.

Hubspot's SEO tool offers templates for creating "Pillar Pages" for your website about the main topics you have previously identified through your Topic Clusters. You can also use the HubSpot blogging platform to create relevant and well-positioned blog posts that link back to a related Pillar Page. 

Image Source: HubSpot

3. Your content strategy should always have ROI in mind

The method is simple: Identify the content issues that really work and those that don't. The good news is that the HubSpot platform offers a wealth of reporting tools, so you can directly measure the influence of your content and Topic Clusters on traffic generation, contacts, and even customers. After all, without analytics to reinforce your content strategy, you won't know how to improve and grow. 

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us. mbudo is a HubSpot Partner Agency and we would be happy to help you start implementing HubSpot tools like Pillar Pages and Topic Clusters or work on your entire Marketing Strategy.