how HubSpot builds topical relevance in the last few years at HubSpot we've
evolved our approach to content creation on the HubSpot blog a long wind the
evolution in search we use to create content only around specific keywords
but now we create around broad topics to build topical relevance in fact in
several cases we've built topical relevance around topics we didn't have a
product for you but we knew we would in the future
that's the story on topical relevance I'll share with you today more than a
year before HubSpot ever had a customer service product we started building
topical relevance around the topic of customer service we weren't ranking for
anything related to customer service at the time but we knew we'd eventually
want to be known for that topic and it would take time to build relevance when
we started we were ranking lower than position 500 for all our target topics
took several months for us to move the needle on our search ranking but by
using blogging to build topical relevance we were able to capture a spot
on the first page of Google for 5 out of our 10 target topics we also saw a
massive spike in beta requests for our customer service software as a result
here's an overview of what we did to make this happen our very first step was
to identify which topics we wanted to be known for that we weren't already known
for to find these topics we started by identifying topics that were closest to
the bottom of the funnel and then moved our way up bottom another funnel topics
for us were things like customer feedback software and help desk software
topics that had high purchase intent we started here because at the end of the
day we wanted to Center our strategy around getting people to sign up for our
software product from there we expanded with more middle and top of the funnel
topics like customer feedback customer satisfaction surveys and NPS once we had
a list of topics we prioritize which of these
topics wanted to rank for where we wanted to rank and by when like I said
when we started we weren't ranking for anything not even in the top 500 let's
take the topic customer feedback software as an example this is one of
the bottom of the funnel topics that we wanted to rank for the first thing we
did was build a product page for our upcoming customer service software which
we said was coming soon and provided an email field where someone could sign up
to be notified when the product was ready that way by the time the product
launch the signup page was already gained search Authority next we wrote a
long canonical piece of content which we call a pillar page on the related topic
customer feedback we hosted this on a site page titled customer feedback
strategy the only guide you'll ever need and linked it to our product page to
give it some SEO juice a next step was to break down the topic of customer
feedback into questions that our target customers might ask about that topic
here are a few questions we came up with how should I go about asking for
feedback from customers how can I improve my customer feedback survey how
do I measure customer satisfaction and what should I do
with the customer feedback I get on social media then we turned every one of
these questions into blog posts we prioritize which ones to write first
according to search volume and we linked every one of these blog posts back to
that pillar page to help build topical relevance and boost that page of search
or thorry and our product pages search authority to make our blog posts more
attractive for others to link to we added what we call linkable hooks to
these posts linkable hooks are things like original charts and images unique
data and research quotes from industry experts and pro's and con's tables which
we find people like to link to next we prepared an outreach strategy
help build links to these posts we identify blogs and communities relevant
to our topic and reached out to them using link building tactics like
offering to write a guest post on their blog when it came to actually doing the
outreach we found it was easier to get backlinks from companies that were tan
gently' related to our target topic like survey tool companies for example rather
than businesses that were borderline competitors after just a few months our
product page is ranking in the number 3 spot
on page 1 of Google for a target topic customer feedback software before the
product had even came out our pillar page on customer feedback was also
ranking in the number-two spot for customer feedback so they have it this
process is effective straightforward and most importantly repeatable we've done
it for other products and tools and I've seen great results too the key to
success with this approach is the move past short-term thinking and put a lot
of work into building a thoughtful strategy key relationships that will
help you build links and create great content with linkable
books
you