Building Topic Hubs
Even with just 20 visitors daily, the website would serve over 36K visitors over a 5-year lifetime. Each of those real people, for the most part.
- The topic represents what each visitor is in the market for.
- It is what the sales conversation is about
- Added together, the audience for the topic IS the market.
Our philosophy is that the better we match the search with topical pages, the better quality opportunities we produce.
But, the range of clicks is wider than we all anticipate.
The breadth and depth of interest are more granular than we think.
There are more topics, more visitors at different stages of their research, and many different audience niches, all of which appear over time.
This simple logic of having many pages per topic and lots of topics means the traditional website structure doesn’t work very well.
And yet, the opportunity to generate new business enquiries just by writing things down makes pursuing a potential solution very worthwhile. The upside is very up.
Specificity Sells, Generality Repels
Alan Dib, Lean Marketing
You can see all the variety in visitor interest in the search terms with a free Google tool (not analytics); all your website data is freely available. Most people don’t know it’s there.
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Fix it with hubs
We help paid clicks pay you back. We also address long-standing issues with non-converting SEO clicks.
All of which means:
- Sites don’t yet have enough content to win, our future is full of content
- Content is not organised around what visitors want
- People want to know how to do that
We need a better content plan.
Our competitors
They are all creating more specific content to attract specific clicks, which will compete for our traffic. So, unless we create content regularly over time, we will gradually lose clicks due to a lack of specific content.
- Google wants to serve those searchers with content that matches.
- Relevancy wins.
- Might as well get on with it.
Website Topic Hub Guide
Consistent opportunities
Search terms have a pattern and predictability that help us identify the words that work. The lower the volume of the keywords for the click, the more likely it is to convert.
Low volume is fine; there are many different low-volume search words to go at.
You can prioritise the content, in other words. Knowing the clicks we are dealing with drives new content plans.
Content must make the case
Visitors to commercial sites are there for a reason, it’s not just browsing. Even after pages match the search, too many visitors remain unpersuaded. Making the argument is a central component to website content.
Content works better when it builds the case for decision making.
conversationware
Buyers are going through a decision journey. Before deciding which supplier to work with, they get themselves motivated and inspired to change their current situation. They conjure up and set goals. They try to decide which way to solve their problems and how to choose a path towards a much better place. It is the human condition, always in play.
The art of the possible, imagining how they can do this thing, getting confidence in the process and their ability to carry through.
They don’t just come to you for the product.
Content Planning
The muse shows up when you’re not expecting.
Write what comes
It is easy to say, “Focus on one topic before proceeding to the next.”
But it’s hard to do.
Creativity tends to have its agenda and timescales, depending on what is happening in the business on any given day. Burning issues are a great way to create content quickly.
The benefit of the topic timeline framework is that we can find a place for anything. It doesn’t have to happen all at once, even if we would like it to.
Match it to the topic timeline framework.
However, in reality, creating the digital version of your marketing and sales conversations is a messy business.
- Your strategy is always developing, and
- The deep understanding of your proposition probably isn’t written down anywhere yet.
- Explaining expertise to the layperson isn’t easy, especially for the expert.
How do we plan content?
It need not be a huge exercise. It can start with a single page. We follow a process, one foot after the other.
A process to take us from the blank page.
It’s a simple exercise to identify and map out topics for you ahead of time. A mindmap of people searching for various aspects of ‘your work’ is motivating.
The topic is a way to enhance engagement with visitors. The better we organise, the more successful the website experience.
Group by Topic
The topic is ‘the thing’, literally, the direct object in the search phrase we have in common with each set of visitors. It is what the conversation is about.
Structuring conversations comes before the messaging, but it is a combination they are most powerful.
Gather your data
The first step is to list topics buried in all the keyword data from your website. Then, we have to interpret and plan how to serve each visitor cohort.
Make more sense of Keywords
The topic is rendered invisible by the sheer number of individual keywords and combinations thereof.
By reconstituting keywords back into the audiences they represent, we gain clarity. We can see what ‘people’ as a group are looking for. We can serve them better, as a group.
Articles: Capturing content ideas along the way
Creativity and ideas don’t always follow a schedule
Explaining the value of expertise is a subtle business
A topic hub fulfils the visitor’s needs. One page at a time.
