A Change in Website Strategy:

Restoring Performance

The clicks we get today are less focused than before, and there will likely be fewer of them in the future. There has been a step change. Those who haven’t noticed, perhaps, weren’t getting the performance before.

To restore overall performance, the website and the content need to raise their game and extract maximum value wherever the click comes from. These three elements are compound; we achieve a high return on relevance when the topic, the site, and the content align precisely.

The website is a weak link.

Traditional website strategies often fall short, focusing on company-centric content rather than user-centric topics. Our innovative approach combines Holistic Keyword Market Analysis with this Topic Hub Framework to create websites that genuinely resonate with visitors and drive enhanced performance.

Making the Topic Hub Argument

Is revolutionary too strong a description? Not when you layer up all the complementary concepts.

The shape of our argument

• Introduce the problem: Visitors are not converting in high enough numbers
• Present your claim: Build content around topics, and make arguments to serve their needs better
• Support your claim: We have sometimes seen 3-5X the number of leads when we organise sites this way
• Acknowledge the other side of the argument: Other people are not yet doing it yet, testing is hard

Holistic Keyword Analysis and Topic Hub Framework

By combining Holistic Keyword Analysis with this Topic Hub Framework, websites can provide a more comprehensive and contextual experience, particularly for those selling complex and high-value solutions.

Overcoming the Limitations of Traditional Website Structures:

Introduction: Traditional website structures often prioritise creating posts and pages for individual keywords, resulting in a lack of context and limited room for companies to expand on their big ideas. This approach falls short in engaging early-stage visitors who are more open-minded in their search for solutions to their problems.

With Keyword Market Analysis and this Topic Hub Framework, websites can provide a more comprehensive and contextual experience, particularly for those selling complex and high-value solutions.

The Limitations:

1. Keyword-Focused Pages: Traditional websites often create pages targeting individual keywords, resulting in content that lacks context and fails to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic.
2. Disconnected Ideas: When content is scattered across various blog posts and pages, it becomes challenging for visitors to grasp the full scope of a company’s solutions and ideas.
3. Limited Engagement: Early-stage visitors, who are more open to exploring solutions, may struggle to find the information they need when ideas are presented in a fragmented way.

Holistic Keyword Analysis and Topic Hub Framework:

By conducting Holistic Keyword Analysis, companies can identify the various intent stages and niche audiences related to their core topics. These insights inform the creation of a Topic Hub Framework, which organizes content in a more contextual and comprehensive manner.

The benefits of this approach include:

1. Comprehensive Coverage: Topic hubs provide a complete overview of a subject, allowing visitors to explore the topic in-depth and understand the full scope of a company’s solutions.
2. Contextual Presentation: By organizing content based on intent stages and niche audiences, topic hubs provide visitors with the right information at the right time, enhancing their understanding and engagement.
3. Room for Big Ideas: Topic hubs give companies the space to expand on their big ideas and showcase how their solutions address the challenges faced by their target audience.
4. Enhanced Visitor Engagement: Hubs foster increased engagement and encourage visitors to explore the content more thoroughly by creating a focused environment where visitors can immerse themselves in a topic.

Increased Performance and Engagement:

The comprehensive, congruent, and contiguous nature of topic hubs is the key to increased website performance and visitor engagement.

When visitors can find all the information they need in one place, presented in a logical and contextual manner, they are more likely to explore the content and engage with the company’s ideas.

In contrast, traditional websites with disconnected blog posts and pages may struggle to hold visitors’ attention and fail to communicate the full value of their solutions.

Creating a Focused Learning Environment:

Topic hubs create bubbles in which visitors develop their initial interest in a topic. By providing a dedicated space for visitors to learn and explore, companies can guide them through the various stages of their journey, from problem identification to solution exploration and implementation.

This focused learning environment not only enhances visitor engagement but also positions the company as a knowledgeable and trustworthy resource, fostering stronger relationships with potential clients.

In future, the online course might be an integral part of a company website strategy. Educated clients are more bonded to the outcome.

Conclusion:

The combination of Analysis and the Topic Hub offers a powerful alternative to traditional website structures. By providing comprehensive, contextual, and focused content, topic hubs enable companies to engage early-stage visitors, showcase their big ideas, and demonstrate the value of their complex, high-value solutions.

As more companies adopt this approach, they may find that topic hubs not only improve website performance and visitor engagement but also contribute to building stronger, more meaningful relationships with their target audience.

Web marketing has always been a continuous cycle of competitive improvement, and there is plenty of room for it. If we convert enough clicks, we can afford as many of them as we want.

Converting Factors

As we develop the hub, we list converting factors here for future placement.

Hub Concepts

A hub introduces a visitor-first approach to organising topic content; it converts more and is good for SEO

• Depth of content gives us more coverage of a topic, serving more interests
• The sales and marketing timeline separates content by ‘intent’, increasing relevance/conversion
• The navigation structure promotes more exploration
  • URL’s, sidebar and mobile menus, breadcrumbs, more pages means more conversion
• More pageviews and engagement signals mean better ranking in search engines

Layouts Promote Engagement and Conversion

More pages mean more chance for the click to match the page for increased conversions

• A highly relevant section means more engagement from Google’s fluffy paid clicks
• For short attention spans, a three-in-one-page approach
  • The header banner is the short version,
  • A medium bullet pointy version,
  • A longer version and sub-pages for details
• More focused messaging in the banner, positioning is ‘in respect of’ both topic and timeline
  • What we do, who we do it for and what the value is

Developing Arguments

The topic hub framework supports the collection and presentation of the business case

• Developing arguments and building the business case is more persuasive when “on topic”
• We have unlimited space to expand the supporting information
• It suits more complex solutions, and in the future, everything will be more complex

Hub Top Page Plan

The top page is designed as a multi-purpose

• It serves provider searches which are high-value but unspecific as to what they want
• It is designed as a self-contained short version of the whole topic timeline (as shown below)
• But if a visitor reads nothing else, it is a full appreciation of the pitch
• We cover each timeline stage in a few sentences to sell the click into a more detailed treatment

The topic timeline model

Modelling the Stages:

Different content applies at each stage to meet their differing intent, their different decisions

We see indicative words added to the topic word at each stage;

The same audience needs completely different content, depending on the timeline stage.

As they get closer to picking up the phone, these word stages increase in conversion rate but decrease in numbers, cancelling out volume. In fact, lower-volume words are closer to doing business and, therefore, more valuable than high-volume words.

We use the following ‘decision timeline’ stages to figure out the job of the content

• Informational: Why should I be interested?
• Problem/Opportunity: Can I be inspired or motivated to want to do something?
• Solution: How can I decide which option or method?
• Process: What will it feel like to do this? Do I have the confidence to follow through? How do you mitigate risk?
• Service: What level of service level do I need?
• Products: What do I get if I buy this thing?
• Provider: Why should I work with you?

Topic Timeline is Intent

All visitors are there to make decisions. The topic timeline spans the buyer’s journey, and additional words in the phrase, or absence thereof, represent all stages.

• Topic word + stage SEO Company
• Stage + topic word Company SEO

These represent different intent stages. Can you tell which is which? It’s a trick question; one of these is a stage, and one is an audience.

Converting conversations.

We believe that a topical hub layout of content on the site has a massive positive impact on visitors and, accordingly, the company’s bottom line.

Organise hubs around a topic, and we get more interest.

Search visitors are automatically more interested in further information on the topic if they can find it. Hubs are to make it available at the fingertips. A resource that covers the topic in great detail infers expertise, depth of knowledge and focus. It is more attractive.

Searchers are focused on their topic word.

• A top hub page promotes the sub-pages on the topic.
• There is way more structure to the content than you might imagine.
• Not all words are topic words (there are 17 types). One word in every search phrase is the topic.

Specificity wins

The more specific the search ‘topic’, the more likely we get conversions.

• Networking is more specific than Business Development
• LinkedIn is more specific than Networking

Specifics represent our highest-value searches.

More sales pages

Most websites lack discoverable sales pitches that relate to each topic (audience).

Instead of one product sales page, think of 12 topic sales pages, each with sales pages.

The strategy is to sell what interests them right now, with the added upsell value of everything else you offer, afterwards. Meet specificity with relevance and grow from there.

Sell what people are looking for. First.

Keywords distract us

Keywords are fragments of a topic (the main word). They have additional timeline and niche words.

Any topic keyword has the potential for another subsequent search within the topic. Therefore, single pages are always inadequate. Complete topics always convert better.

• Keyword volumes are a smokescreen ignore the numbers.
• Volume is inversely proportionate to value.
• Single pieces of the puzzle tell you nothing.

Focus on the words, not the numbers.

Umbrella Terms are about choosing a topic

An umbrella term, or category word, inherently ‘contains’ several topics. It is either a signal of ‘where people are’ in their research (early) or, occasionally, a signal that their need is greater and more comprehensive.

We get comfortable with ambiguity.

The umbrella term content is often a search for ‘how to choose’ the topic.

• For example, topics within Business Development (a kind of umbrella term) might include
• Networking, Partnering, Content Marketing, Search Marketing, Sales

Strategy content covers how to choose a pathway based on your goals. This can be anything from navigation to a consultancy-focused conversation, but it is also solution sales territory.

Choice is a conversion factor

The more options or choices that cover the umbrella category and topic interests, the more likely we get conversions.

Covering them all is a plus, even if you don’t provide all the options yourself. They are considering their options. If you only sell 20% of the keyword span, then we waste 80% of the opportunity.

Topics have types;

The more specific the search, the more likely they are to convert. However, people will search for how to choose between types.

• E.G All types of Networking
• Face to Face, LinkedIn, Twitter, Conferences, Internal

Just because they search for a specific type doesn’t mean they have decided yet; but it does mean they are closer to doing business.

SEO is enhanced by topic completion,

The more words we include on the topic, the more likely we are to get search clicks for those words. That much makes obvious sense.

• Inter-hub internal links with anchor text for aspects of the topic improve coverage.
• The granular treatment of the topic in multiple pages improves engagement
• The resulting click-through rate of specific pages improves our chances.

But, many keyword variations are massively duplicated versions of the same thing. No need to stuff them all in.

The 3 in 1 Page

Short version, the medium version and the long versions

The topic audience varies in their levels of interest. They browse.

Making content more accessible:

Each page can have a short version (messaging banner), a medium (bullet-point), or a full version, further down. Each page answers the question, why should I read you?

However, each stage sometimes expands into multiple pages. It’s courteous.

We want to build the perfect resource that covers everything for everybody, without getting in anyone’s way.

Google now lands people on the wrong pages

Since the Google Flip, people often land in the wrong stage page. The hub is a useful response to the problems introduced by Google flooding paid campaigns.

As long as the topic is the same, the topic is the primary interest; therefore, landing on the wrong page isn’t quite as big a deal.

More pages mean more conversions

We have often seen, as others have remarked, that the more pages people go to, the higher the likelihood of conversion.

Selling the click is the job of content.

It follows that signals in the URL, the breadcrumbs, the sidebar, the mobile quick menu, and internal links all help to promote engagement and conversion.

We have seen 3-5x conversions by grouping into hubs.

Search is markets made visible.

Forget the engine, the people are writing down what they want. It’s the most valuable market research ever invented.

A website is a way to test your propositions.

The outcome might well be more new business.

A note on simple.

The task is to make the complex more simple, not to do away with complex.

There will be no money left in simple; simplistic messaging will obscure the more valuable conversation unless we can expand on our big ideas and take our time in having people understand the implications of what we do.

A ‘simple’ website structure only appears that way. The real problem here is unlearning what went before.