In the evolving digital marketing landscape, content remains a core driver of organic traffic and visibility. HubSpot’s blog strategy offers valuable insights into how SEO, audience targeting, and content optimization can lead to measurable traffic growth. By analyzing HubSpot’s approach to SEO content creation, keyword research, URL structure, and historical optimization, U.S.-based businesses and marketers can adapt these techniques to improve their own content performance.
This article explores key components of HubSpot’s 2019 SEO strategy for its blog, including how it identifies topics, leverages keyword research, and refines content over time to maintain relevance and ranking strength. The insights are drawn from HubSpot’s own blog posts and strategies, offering actionable guidance for businesses aiming to increase their organic reach.
SEO Content Strategy: Topic Selection and Research
A strong SEO content strategy begins with identifying relevant topics that align with a business’s offerings and audience interests. HubSpot emphasizes starting with a list of 10 core terms or keywords associated with the business or service. These terms are used as the foundation for expanding into more specific sub-topics and variations.
To gather insights, HubSpot recommends using SEO tools such as Google’s Keyword Tool, Ahrefs, SEMRush, and GrowthBar. These tools help identify the search volume and competitiveness of keywords, allowing businesses to target terms that are both relevant and achievable in terms of ranking.
For example, if a business operates in the marketing software space, it might begin by researching the head term "marketing software." While head terms often have high search volume and are difficult to rank for directly, they provide valuable context for developing related sub-topics and long-tail variations.
HubSpot also recommends using tools like its own Blog Ideas Generator. This tool generates topic ideas, subheadings, and even draft content based on a given keyword or content description. It integrates with SEMRush to provide high-performing keyword suggestions, helping businesses optimize content for both users and search engines.
Audience-Centric Content Creation
According to HubSpot, a successful blog strategy must focus on the audience. Understanding the target audience’s needs, behaviors, and preferences allows businesses to create content that resonates and drives engagement. HubSpot emphasizes the use of buyer personas—detailed profiles based on demographics, psychographics, and buying behaviors—to guide content development.
By aligning content with audience expectations, businesses can increase the likelihood of their content being clicked, read, and shared. This approach not only improves user experience but also enhances SEO performance, as search engines prioritize content that satisfies user intent.
A critical component of this audience-focused strategy is keyword research. HubSpot advises identifying keywords that are not overly saturated or too obscure. Keywords with high search volume (e.g., 10,000+ searches per month) are often too competitive for new content to rank well. On the other hand, keywords with little to no search volume may not provide significant traffic value. The ideal keywords are those with moderate search volume and competition, offering an opportunity to gain visibility with well-optimized content.
Technical SEO and On-Page Optimization
Beyond content strategy, technical SEO plays a vital role in ensuring that content is accessible and indexable by search engines. HubSpot highlights the importance of creating user-friendly URLs. A clean, descriptive URL structure not only improves user experience but also aids search engines in understanding the content of the page.
For example, HubSpot’s blog uses URL structures such as http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing and http://blog.hubspot.com/sales to clearly indicate the sections of the blog. These URLs are easy to read and provide contextual clues about the content, which can positively impact SEO performance.
In addition to URL structure, on-page optimization includes the use of topic tags and keyword mapping. HubSpot recommends selecting 15–25 topic tags that are relevant to the blog’s focus and using them consistently across posts. This helps avoid duplicate content issues and ensures that each post is properly categorized for both users and search engines.
The company also employs a systematic approach to content creation through a Search Insights Report. This report maps specific keywords to content topics, allowing the team to plan posts strategically throughout the year. This method ensures that content is aligned with both audience needs and SEO objectives.
Content Production and Guest Contributions
HubSpot’s Website Blog has seen significant traffic growth due to a combination of content creation, guest contributions, and historical optimization. In 2019, the blog benefited from the acquisition of SourceWP.com, a WordPress-focused blog that brought existing search rankings and organic traffic. This acquisition allowed HubSpot to quickly gain visibility in competitive spaces while also optimizing the acquired content to align with its editorial standards.
Guest contributions have also played a key role in expanding the blog’s reach. By inviting external writers and experts to contribute, HubSpot has increased both the quantity and diversity of its content. These non-organic posts often cover niche topics with lower search volume but high relevance to the audience. This strategy helps establish thought leadership and provides additional value to readers who may not find these topics covered elsewhere.
A related strategy is the use of non-organic content, such as posts on WordPress trends or bad website design. These posts target topics that are not primarily driven by search volume but are still of interest to the audience. This helps diversify the blog’s content and attract readers who are looking for insights beyond traditional SEO-driven topics.
Historical Optimization and Continuous Updates
One of the most important aspects of HubSpot’s SEO strategy is historical optimization. As content ages, it becomes less relevant to both users and search engines. Search volume for keywords can change, trends can emerge, and outdated statistics can reduce the credibility of a post.
To combat this, HubSpot regularly revisits and updates its existing content. This includes updating statistics, refining keyword usage, and ensuring that the content remains in line with current best practices. By continuously improving older posts, the blog maintains its relevance and competitiveness in the search results.
This approach is especially important for long-form content, which often ranks for a wide range of related keywords. By keeping these posts up to date, businesses can maintain their rankings for a broader set of search queries and continue attracting traffic over time.
Website Acquisitions and Strategic Expansion
HubSpot’s acquisition of SourceWP.com in 2019 is a notable example of how strategic website acquisitions can boost SEO performance. The acquired blog brought with it existing search rankings and organic traffic, allowing HubSpot to quickly expand its reach into the WordPress space. This acquisition also provided a foundation for further content development, as the team optimized the existing content to better align with HubSpot’s editorial guidelines.
This strategy highlights the potential benefits of acquiring blogs or websites that already have an established audience and SEO presence. For businesses looking to expand into new niches or improve their organic traffic, acquiring existing content assets can be a valuable way to accelerate growth.
Conclusion
HubSpot’s SEO-driven blog strategy offers a comprehensive model for businesses seeking to increase their organic traffic and visibility. By focusing on audience-centric content, strategic keyword selection, and technical optimization, businesses can create content that is both valuable to users and optimized for search engines.
Key takeaways from HubSpot’s approach include:
- Conducting thorough keyword research to identify high-opportunity terms.
- Creating clean, user-friendly URLs that reflect the content of the page.
- Using topic tags to organize content and avoid duplication.
- Incorporating guest contributions and non-organic content to diversify the blog’s offerings.
- Regularly updating and optimizing existing content to maintain relevance.
- Exploring strategic acquisitions to quickly gain visibility and traffic.
By applying these principles, U.S.-based businesses can develop a robust SEO strategy that drives sustainable growth and improves their online presence.