How should we internally link Hub and Spoke content for SEO?

Today’s column comes from a question submitted by Vlaardingen’s Search Engine Journal reader Melvin.

Melvin asked:

“If you have a lot of informational content, can you explain what the best content silos/link structure are?

I’m assuming you can’t link to 30 different articles from one page.

Also, it is nearly impossible to come up with so many different anchor texts. Is there a tip? “

That’s a good question and one I’ve had with clients a lot in recent years – and more so ever since topic cluster Semantics is starting to become a mainstream trend in SEO.

What is a content hub?

First, there are many names for this type of strategy, including content hubs, hub-and-spoke content, content silos, content moats, topic clusters, learning hubs, semantic clusters…

Essentially, they’re all the same premise and follow a structure that’s not too similar to:

You can read more about how to develop the idea and put the necessary keyword research in one hub and spokes content hub article.

Hub/silo internal link structure

Back to Melvin’s question.

the best Internal linking strategy For what I discovered about content hubs, I found that the three key goals of content silos themselves are:

• support and supply Domain Authority Key business search terms for other page targeting.
• arrive supply Relevance of TOFU (top of funnel) and MOFU (middle of funnel) search terms related to your product service.
• as a continuing education resource Provide solutions to the needs of users.

So these hubs need various link structures and internally link to other content (business, blog, support) on the site with the right context and perspective (to make the link useful).

This is also where classification can play an important role.

When building large information content hubs, I treat them as my own microsites and follow my own set of guidelines (even templates in some cases).

Another point that Melvin brought up was the total number of internal links on the page, what is this? Google recommends not.

In John Mueller’s statement, he addresses the problem of excessive internal linking on a single page:

…makes it harder for search engines to understand the context of individual pages on your site…

This means that search engines reduce context and signals to identify page hierarchy and content architecture.

However, from a user and search engine perspective, there are techniques that make sense in ensuring that all of your content is linked effectively.

This linking strategy starts at the planning stage as you want to make sure your “spokes” are valid for each other and the center.

One example is the Cloudflare Learning Center, the first we helped launch in late 2017, covering DDoS (distributed denial of service) topics.

These have template-level internal links, secondary navigation, custom footers, and placed internal body links.

Internal Content Links: Commercial

One of the things I emphasize when brands create large content hubs is Do not mix intentions or opinions.

Since these content areas typically target informational intent queries or TOFU/MOFU queries, interspersing shoes in merchandising, CTAs, and brand references is unnatural and devalues ​​the content from the user’s perspective.

That’s why my suggested links from hubs and spokes to business pages are:

• No over-brandingor the primary visual CTA.
• Appear at the right moment in the contentit may make sense to encourage users further down the funnel, based on the queries that have been answered in that section.
• Anchor text from hub and conversation matching query with business page Have a transactional or commercial purpose, not a general information inquiry.

Following these guidelines helps create connections between the spokes in a natural way and begins to transfer any value the hub gains through perceived expertise, backlinks, and contextual relevance to commerce/conversion-focused pages.

Template link

Using templates for your hub and spoke internal linking is a great way to increase user value and create a natural link hub to prevent excessively unnatural internal linking from causing problems for Google.

The Cloudflare Learning Center template is adapted from other page templates, including:

• Localized to the Learning Center’s secondary navigation menu.
• The Related Content sidebar section.
• Internal body link.
• Localized HTML footer.

First, let’s look at the secondary navigation menu:

This is easy to make and incorporate into page templates.

If you’re using WordPress, it can even be coded into a new menu location and modified in the CMS.

This is both user-friendly and the “hub” of natural internal linking that Google and other search engines follow.

For more contextual links to help Google learn more about the hierarchy, there is a “Related Content” section on the sidebar.

Again, this is helpful for the user, but also for interconnecting specific documents in the hub without a list of junk links.

The “Related Content” section of the sidebar helps to interconnect the different spokes.

The final custom template element is the HTML footer.

This is different from the rest of the site and is localized to each hub.

These footer sections also act as pseudo-HTML sitemaps, which are still a great asset to help with the crawlability and discoverability of your content.

Eli Schwartz explains this well in his article here.

anyhow

You can link hub and spoke content to each other in a number of different ways, and since hubs are designed by you, you can take advantage of the strategies above and adapt them to your needs.

I’m also not afraid to link outside of the hub-and-spoke model, especially if it’s other resources that add value to users (like a blog), and also helps give Google more context between your hub/spoke content and wider website.

I hope this answers your question, Melvin!

More resources:

Editor’s Note: Ask about SEO is a weekly SEO advice column written by the industry’s top SEO experts handpicked by Search Engine Magazine. Have questions about SEO? fill out our form. You may see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!

Featured image: marekuliasz/Shutterstock