Why every business needs a content hub

Highlights

You’ll learn about why your business needs a content hub:

• Improves authority: Establishes your brand as an industry leader
• Enhances SEO: Improves search rankings with organized, interlinked content
• Increases engagement: Encourages users to explore more pages
• Streamlines operations: Centralizes content management for efficiency
• Facilitates team collaboration: Align efforts across departments

Transform your content strategy and stand out in the digital landscape with content hubs.

The competition for online attention is fierce, and if you’re not keeping your audience educated with helpful content and up-to-date information, you’re losing revenue and customers. For this reason, more than a million blogs or articles are published online. 

With established companies fighting for the same keyword, how do you show Google you’re better and more relevant to your audience? Some companies have probably invested years in their content strategy to reach the top spot. Fighting with these players is challenging. So, how do you compare and win against these players for topics that matter to your audience?

The answer lies in a content hub. 

A content hub structures your content for search engines and your readers. 

Let’s understand what a content hub is and how it benefits your company.

What is a content hub?

A content hub is organized around an overarching topic connected through internal links. Each content hub contains videos, podcasts, infographics, articles and other types of content your customers can explore. It gives them a better understanding of your content and portrays you as an expert or industry leader. 

These pages are sometimes called pillar pages or cornerstone content. 

Typically, a content hub consists of a hub (main) page that provides an overview of the topic and cluster pages (sub-pages) that allow your readers to explore more specific subtopics. The primary purpose of content hubs is to inform, not to convert. It’s not part of the sales funnel. This hub builds your authority, increases your brand visibility and expands your online presence, leading to higher conversion. 

A simple, clean, easy-to-navigate content hub works for your search engine optimization (SEO) and increasing awareness.

Types of content hub

Hub-and-spoke

A content hub-and-spoke focuses on the main pillar page, providing a brief overview of the topics you are discussing. Spokes are the cluster pages covering one of the subtopics in depth. These cluster pages offer in-depth details that cannot fit on the central hub page. Using the hub-and-spoke model, you give your readers full knowledge about a topic. As the content hub is searchable, it draws your readers deeper into your website.

Content library

A content library is a type of hub that organizes a wide range of topics in a structured way. Contrary to the hub-and-spoke model, a content library focuses on various topics covering different subjects. Each subject has its blogs, pages, videos or infographics. Companies that publish content across various subjects and categories use a content library. Platforms like Contentstack integrate with a digital asset management (DAM) system that works like a content library. 

Topic gateway

The topic gateway includes a hub page that covers a specific topic. In this format, each topic has a dedicated webpage, which includes a summary of the topic and links to resources and related content. Topic gateway is similar to Wikipedia. The focus on covering a single topic extensively helps you teach beginners about something new. Whereas content libraries are ideal for organizing content with multiple topics, a topic gateway is ideal if you have extensive material on a single topic. 

Content database

A content database organizes a large volume of content so that it’s searchable and filterable by users. Your main pillar page helps you find more specific content. It works best for directories and glossaries. Content databases filter your assets based on characteristics like blogs, guides, topics or other factors. It ensures your team can find digital assets. 

Benefits of a content hub

Improves your topical authority 

When you connect your hub page and subpages using relevant internal links, you build semantic relationships with your content, improving your topical authority. Topical authority means Google sees you as authoritative. Plus, search engines like Google prioritize pages with relevant internal links. 

Increases customer engagement

Hubs increase the likelihood that your readers read multiple content pages because many relevant pages are connected or linked. While this improves customer engagement, it also sends good signals to Google as more people engage with your hub and subpages. 

Higher chances of ranking for difficult keywords

Creating sub-pages focused on non-competitive and specific keywords builds ranking. When sub-pages rank higher, it becomes easier for the hub page to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). 

Higher collaboration across teams

A content hub brings teams together by offering a central place where everyone can access, share and contribute to content. It helps marketing, sales and customer service work seamlessly to ensure the content aligns with business goals and reaches the right audience across different channels. 

Optimized user experience

Since you carefully curate each content hub, you can provide optimized user experiences that cater to and answer your customers' specific pain points, needs and challenges. Offering a personalized experience via content hub increases leads and enhances conversion rates.

Role of a content hub in managing digital asset

A content hub manages all your digital assets, ensuring everything runs from start to finish. It creates, stores, organizes, finds, shares and archives or deletes digital content. 

The hub works like a shared workspace for creative teams during creation, providing tools and templates that keep branding and messaging consistent. As content is stored and organized, the hub's tagging and categorizing systems make it easy to find what you need. As a result, you stay productive and avoid the chaos of a disorganized content library. 

In the final archiving stage, the hub offers version control and auditing, keeping assets’ history and integrity intact while allowing easy retrieval of older versions. With built-in analytics, the hub provides insights into how content performs, helping organizations fine-tune their strategies and improve content management over time. 

A content hub is necessary for today’s digital asset management. It increases efficiency, ensures compliance and aligns strategies throughout the content lifecycle.

Case study: How did Contenstack enhance Extu's Efficiency?

Extu, specializing in through-channel marketing, faced challenges with their previous content management platform due to a lack of integration and multi-language capabilities, increasing campaign delivery inefficiencies. By using Contentstack, Extu overcame these challenges, enabling seamless integration with their proprietary technology, DAM solutions and efficient multi-language content management. The implementation, carried out in three stages, improved Extu's operational efficiency. They experienced a 21% reduction in workflow steps, a 53% faster market delivery of translated content and a 21% faster delivery of English content. Contentstack has empowered Extu to scale their operations and expand into new regions.

After using Contentstack, Tara Yukawa, VP of Marketing Solutions, said:

“Simply put, Contentstack met all of our requirements. As a headless CMS system, it integrates well with our full stack of technology and services, including a DAM, a translation provider, as well as our through-channel marketing platform, that’s our proprietary technology. We also loved the fact that we could manage user workflows across multiple teams in Contentstack itself without having to have a separate project management tool. And I have to tell you, we made the right choice.”

Read the complete case study here.

How to create a content hub

Know your hub’s main topics

Start by identifying the main topics that will serve as the foundation of your content hub. Ensure these topics align with your business goals and target audience interests. Before finalizing your topic, conduct thorough market research and use keyword analysis or keyword research tools to determine which topics resonate with your audience. These core topics will form the pillars around your entire content strategy.

Identify your subtopics

After identifying the main topics, break them down into more specific subtopics. These should explore the details of each main topic, offering thorough coverage that tackles different angles and concerns your audience might have. This approach helps organize your content logically, making it more accessible and relevant.

Design a UX-friendly hub

Next, design a UX-friendly hub. To do so, you need a DAM or a headless content management system (CMS) like Contentstack. These tools ensure you create a content hub offering intuitive navigation, responsive design, search functionality, consistent layout and interactive elements. 

Organize your content hub

After creating a UX-friendly hub, decide on the hub type. Do you need a content library, content database, hub-and-spoke or a topic gateway? To identify the type, determine:

• How complex will your topic be? A hub-and-spoke model is ideal for complex or broad topics.
• How many individual pieces of content are you likely to create? A content library or database is ideal for managing large volumes of content and information. 
• How are your content pieces related? A library is ideal for content with a broad theme but multiple categories.
• How will users interact with your content? A topic gateway or hub-and-spoke are great if your readers like to explore a topic.

You’re likely to choose a hub-and-spoke or topic gateway if you’re new to creating a content hub. 

Create your content

You’re now ready to create content. When you create content, add internal links to your other hub pages. Internal links help your readers navigate from one page to another, improving your SEO performance. Linking your content hub to different pages builds topical authority and conveys that you’re an authority in your space. Ensure:

• Your pillar pages link to each cluster page
• Each cluster page links back to your pillar pages
• Related cluster pages link to each other

FAQs

What are content hubs?

A content hub is a centralized platform that manages all content assets, facilitating efficient content lifecycle management.

What is an example of hub content?

Hub content includes infographics, guides, e-books or blog posts offering detailed insights on specific topics.

What is the difference between a content hub and a website?

A website is a public-facing digital space, whereas a content hub is an internal tool for managing and distributing content across different platforms.

How can I improve my content hub?

Regularly updating relevant content, using analytics for insights and integrating with the latest digital marketing tools can enhance the effectiveness of your content hub.

Learn more

You want to become a trusted source of information for your readers, one that they will keep returning to for more information. Focusing on a content hub drives engagement, informs your customer base, and nurtures leads like never before. For your content hub to work and be managed, you need a headless CMS like Contenstack and a DAM solution. 

If you want to understand why your business need a content hub, talk to us today.