What is a Topic Hub and Why be Interested
We advocate grouping website content around Topic Hubs and Timelines. It helps develop more meaningful content around each high-value service area. With topic hubs, we can more effectively organise, articulate and automate our website sales conversations.
Convert more clicks into new sales conversations
Something weird happens when you build websites around what visitors are most interested in (the topic). They respond in greater numbers. Sometimes, vastly greater numbers. We have seen 3 and 5x the amount of leads just by moving content around so visitors ‘don’t have to think’.
There is huge room for improvement
- Many website pages convert at low numbers – 2% isn’t unheard of.
- A gain from 2% to 3% would represent a 50% increase in new business opportunities.
- By organising it into hubs, we took one website’s overall conversion rate from 6% to 15%.
- We are believers
Topic hubs also concentrate search engine attention, making it more likely that we will attract more clicks. They enable a more comprehensive treatment of the sales conversation, developing our arguments in a more structured way. In other words, planning a hub helps with the writing.
One clear sign of wasted opportunity is Blogs, not the writing – it’s where we put them.
- They don’t convert well precisely because they are not organised around the topic.
- They are not usually organised around the sales timeline
- Individual Keywords don’t cut it any more when creating content
- If they do already convert, then the upside will be even better.
Defining Topic
‘Topic’ is the entity, a literal thing, the direct object. All words in any phrase ‘relate’ to the topic word. The audience is defined by the topic. All content belongs to a topic. It is what the visit is ‘about’.
We are moving from keyword-page to topic-audience-hub. It’s more effective.
- Websites are not built in a way that serves topic audiences.
- This means chronic underperformance.
Here are some examples of topic
Cheese
Periodontal
Ramen
Door Repair
The topic is the market, in effect. A group of people all currently interested in the ‘thing’, an audience.
In search marketing, there are 17 types of words. The topic is the ‘thing’ in the visitor search to which every piece of content and every other word in the search term relates.
Why is topic knowledge important?
Very few people understand topics in a practical sense. Knowing the difference means knowing how to build content for
- “dog toy”, or “toy dog”
- or “company SEO”, or “SEO company”
In each case, what we would say on the page would be very different.
What is a Topic Timeline
The topic timeline is crucial to both marketing and sales conversations. For our visitors, it is a single journey but split into stages with different decisions at each.
This exists across all sales and marketing channels, both face-to-face and written down. The difference is that with Search, we can see it written down directly by those currently “in the market.” They start the conversation.
When we know where people are in the conversation, we know better what to say. They tell us with the words they use.
Topic hubs and timelines work when we are courteous enough to be guided by visitors.
A Topic Hub has pages for all stages
People start researching much earlier than we would like. But this represents an opportunity to reach people before they make their minds up.
Problems, opportunities, ideas and beliefs are the beginning, the heroes’ journey if you like. Innovation lives here. The existence of earlier-stage content represents an opportunity to change minds too.
It’s not a funnel it’s a ladder you can go both ways.
Informational
Problem
Opportunity
Solutions
Process
Services
Products
Provider
Hubs are a way of organising content around related concepts in a revenue-positive way.
Topic Word Importance
The topic word of a search term represents the visitor’s primary interest, the market for ‘thing’. Landing in an area of a website dedicated to a topic drives the most traction.
Topic Timeline
A structured way to unpack the value of your products and solutions in context.
Grouping content around a topic
This has stand-out benefits for both SEO and conversion rates.
The topic hub structure ensures visitors can easily navigate the sales conversation in their heads. The quality of our ideas shines more brightly if we know “what we are doing” at each stage.
About this stage
The informational stage is where the least interested ‘topic cohort’ lives. From search terms, we see ‘topic’ without any timeline words attached, we see search terms asking ‘what is’. The adage is that they are probably not close to buying if they have to ask what it is.
But that would be to ignore the chance to pique that interest. High-value solutions are not usually short conversations. We might as well automate the early stages.
People showing interest in our service areas are not without value; they are just early. It is a natural state that we all go through.
There are way more people at this stage than any other.
Information Stage Task
Our task with this page stage should be to explain ‘why you might choose to be interested’. What the value of being interested might be.
The decision we want is for them to decide they want to know more.
It stands to reason that this content, disconnected and cast away in a blog somewhere, would be ‘missing’ the rest of the conversation. The progression to more value-based discussion is the point.
As this is early-stage research, our navigation might take you to content that explains the problems that topic hubs help solve or the opportunities they bring.
Or you might skip to how we set about achieving people’s goals of improving conversion rates.
