the hub and spoke SEO strategy I accidentally used to scale a business

Summary

years ago I built a content site, endof3fitness.com, and stumbled into one of the most durable SEO strategies there is. it’s called the hub and spoke. I didn’t name it, I just used it without knowing.

1. a hub page. one big page targeting a broad keyword for your niche. mine was a DIY garage gym corner. yours might be a category overview, a service page, a buyer’s guide.

2. spoke pages. individual articles that each target a long-tail keyword and link back to the hub. mine were specific projects: how to build a pull-up bar, how to make plyo boxes from plywood. each one ranks for its own thing and feeds the hub authority.

3. tight niche. it only works if your site is the obvious answer for a narrow problem. broad sites with no focus do not rank, period.

set up the hub, write 5-10 spokes, link them properly, give it 6 months. the traffic compounds because Google understands what your site is about. it sounds boring. it works. try harder.

Transcript

introduction to today’s topic on effective seo strategies

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. All right, let’s get tactical today. Let’s talk about a very specific SEO strategy you should be implementing in your business, no matter if you’re brick and mortar, online only, or just even thinking about it.

This is the Better Human Business Podcast. I’m Jerred Moon. And let me take you back to a strategy I did not invent that is pretty common that I did not even know I was doing. So back in the day, how I got my start with endof3fitness.com was I was very specifically blogging when I first started about DIY garage gym equipment.

how my journey with diy garage gym equipment started and its role in my seo strategy

So that’s do-it-yourself garage gym equipment. I had no money at all, very little time, and I really wanted a garage gym. And this was before there were a thousand garage gym companies out there, like Rogue Fitness had just started. I don’t even think they were like shipping things to people yet, like I think they were only in Ohio.

None of these, you couldn’t buy weights and kettlebells on Amazon. You had to go to obscure places to even know where to buy weights. I remember the first set of weights that I bought, like an actual Olympic set, like with bumper plates and a good barbell. I had to, this was old school, like I found this guy like in a forum, some like obscure forum on the internet, and then like I had to like mail him the money and he sent it to me.

It doesn’t feel like that long ago, but it’s just crazy how much the world has developed. Anyway, he sent me the stuff, like he was a good dude, but it’s just crazy how much the world has changed. And so DIY equipment really isn’t that important anymore because you could probably buy something from Amazon that’s going to break within six months cheaper than you could build it yourself.

discovery of content impact and strategic focus on the ‘diy garage gym’ keyword

But I did everything DIY because I was just trying to save money and I saved a ton of money. Like I wouldn’t have been able to have a garage gym if I didn’t go this route. So I started just doing DIY projects. I had probably 15, 20 DIY projects on this blog, all legitimate stuff that I did. Like I made my own gymnastics rings out of PVC and duct tape and used truck straps because those were hard to find.

There were a lot of DIY articles about how to create your own. Now that’s like the easiest thing to buy in the world. I had my own squat rack made out of two by sixes. I made my own plyometric box out of a really cheap piece of plywood. Just the list goes on and on. I made all sorts of contraptions.

I made a sled, really awesome sled, just all sorts of cool stuff. I would make all these projects about these blog posts about it, to be honest, and that’s where I got a lot of this SEO traffic. But after my first two or three projects, I honestly got strategic about it. It wasn’t like I just got lucky and I was like, oh, maybe this will be good.

explanation of the hub and spoke model and its implementation on my website

But what I noticed was I would create these really awesome articles about how to do some of these things, how to create these DIY projects, and then I’d post them on social media. At the time, that was like Facebook pages and just amongst your friends, and they would get shared the most, and that’s what I would notice is, oh, these people actually like these.

These are awesome. Because I wasn’t planning on trying to be like the garage gym DIY guy. It’s just what I was legitimately doing. Other people found it interesting. What I did was I created a main page. It was called the DIY Corner. I had this DIY Corner. It was just a page on my website where you could go to the DIY Corner and you could just pick on any project you wanted, and it would take you to the blog post where you had a full set of instructions.

And then, like I said, I had 15 to 20 projects you could click on from this page, and then you could go in and build whatever you wanted. And so that was how I got started. And I tell you all that because, like I said, I was getting very strategic after the first couple, and I started to really hone in on the term like DIY garage gym.

discussion on optimizing blog posts for seo with targeted keywords

That’s what I was really going after because back then it was something that people actually searched. These days, it’s not as much of a competitive search term. I’m sure it still is to some degree, but it’s not… People aren’t searching that out because economies of scale, basically, it’s too easy to get gym equipment.

Like, why would you build it on your own? So anyway, I started to get strategic. I was going after that specific keyword. And so I was trying to optimize every single blog post for a garage gym, for DIY. And all that means is that you’re putting those keywords inside of your content. You’re putting it as the headers.

If you have headings in your blog post, you’re putting it in the text. This way, search engines can pick up on it. And then I was also putting it as alt text in the images, which is also easy to do on any website that you have out there now. But what I was implementing is called the hub and spoke method.

how the strategic seo approach transformed my business

And this is something I think every business owner should be doing. And you should go after one topic. Don’t get too crazy, too wild about it. But ultimately, there’s a hub. In my specific case, the hub was the DIY corner. It was the place you could go, the page that you could click on that was optimized for DIY garage gym, had text on there, had a place that people could click and go to other articles about the same topic, shooting off to specific projects.

These spokes are all of these different blog posts, right? So how to build a power rack, how to build a plyometric box, how to build rings, how to build a sled. All of these are the spokes, if you think about a wheel. And once the wheel is complete, you have an SEO wheel that’s going to move, it’s going to roll, and it’s going to keep your business afloat.

Now, let’s talk about that in your business, or at least you start thinking about this in your business. The hub and spoke method has been around forever. I unknowingly implemented it. It wasn’t called the hub and spoke method when I did it back then. But what you’re doing is you’re just, the reason I did it was I organized my content that way because it made sense to me.

tips on how to apply the hub and spoke method to different business models

Like, it just made sense that you go to one place, and then if you go to this one place, you can click off to all these other places. That way, you’re not like having to search my blog to find if, does he do other projects? Where can I find it? So anyway, that’s where I just did it out of logical reasons.

I thought it’d be helpful for the user. And then I found out after I was optimizing all these blog posts and everything else that it was called the hub and spoke method. So you should implement the hub and spoke method in your business. Like I said, no matter if you’re going online, online business only, or if you are brick and mortar.

And so what you need to think about is you probably have a specific niche that you are after, that you’re targeting, right? And you are probably trying to solve a specific problem for these people. In my example, I am trying to solve the garage gym, I have no money problem. That’s who I’m trying to help.

closing thoughts on the importance of a focused seo strategy and encouraging action

Because if you’ve got millions of dollars sitting in the bank, you’re not Googling, how do I build a power rack, right? You just go and buy one. But if you are someone who is trying to save money, you don’t have money, and you want these things, then you would obviously check out the DIY corner. So I was solving a very specific problem for a very specific niche.

And just think about how small that niche is for a second. It’s people who are trying to save money, don’t have money, who want to build a garage gym, and they have the skills to be able to do it, right? It’s a very small niche. So if you think your niche is small, just think about that for a second.

That’s a pretty small niche. And so whatever your niche is, whether you help CrossFitters get out of pain, like if you’re a physical therapist, or you help 35 to 45-year-old men get, dads get fit, or whatever your thing is, right? Everyone has a specific niche that you’re going after, like your target audience, your target customer.

Create a hub for these people. And let’s move out of the SEO exactly tactical how to do it, but just think about a page that you could create, almost like an outline of, hey, what is, what would be the most helpful guide or resource I could create for these people? Like for my target audience, what’s a guide that I could really help with?

That’s going to be your hub. Now start brainstorming, what are all the spokes that could go off of this hub that I have? If I’m trying to help a CrossFitter, like if I wanted to have a page that was like, let’s just go the physical therapy route right now. If I wanted to help CrossFitters get out of pain, which I just know is a common niche in physical therapy, well, I could go shoulder injury, I could go knee injury, I could go ankle injury, like all these things, like I could just talk about it.

I could even talk about progressions to all the different exercises or what to do if you are in pain. And you could probably think of 10 to 15 things that you commonly help these people with already, and now you have all your spokes. So it’s like step, like the hub is like the guide to X, Y, and Z, and then the spokes are all the how to’s, like the exact how to’s.

Now think about that in your business and who you’re going after, because to you, what this does is if you’re optimizing everything correctly, you’re telling Google, hey, this is what I do, and like I’ve made it very easy for people to click on these things and help them out, and Google actually knows these things.

They actually know the usability of your website and how useful it is to people. So think about creating a wheel using the hub and spoke method in your business. Maybe I’ve given you enough ideas for you to sit and brainstorm about what all the spokes would be and what the hub would be, just through illustrating what I did with the DIY corner and giving you some other examples, but just think through that.

And if you could implement just one wheel, you will be so much further ahead of everyone because no one else has like a true SEO strategy. All they’re doing is they’re trying to optimize for keywords, they’re not doing a great job, the content’s not that good. So don’t think of this as like a big, giant project that’s going to take years.

Just think, okay, here’s my wheel, here’s what the hub would be, here’s what all the spokes would be. Think about maybe 10 spokes, if you could do this on the wheel coming out from the hub, and just think about those things and work on it in your free time. Maybe this takes you a month, but once you have all this stuff published, give it some time and Google will start to pick it up, especially if you do this in your local area, if you’re optimizing for X, Y, and Z in your town.

Just think very specifically about what you’re going after. Don’t go broad if you’re brick and mortar. If you’re brick and mortar, go down to your local area and it will really help. And then if you’re trying to go online only, again, don’t go broad, go very specific to what people would be searching and what they need help with, and then solve that problem for people.

And then you become the person who can retarget them in ads, who can collect email addresses, all sorts of things. So become that person in your business and this SEO strategy will pay dividends for years to come, but most people will listen to this and they won’t do it because they just don’t want to try harder.