how HubSpot builds topical relevance inthe last few years at HubSpot we've evolved our approach to content creationon the HubSpot blog a long wind the evolution in search we use to createcontent only around specific keywords but now we create around broad topics tobuild topical relevance in fact in several
cases we've built topicalrelevance around topics we didn't have a product for youbut we knew we would in the future that's the story on topical relevanceI'll share with you today more than a year before HubSpot ever had a customerservice product we started building topical relevance around the topic ofcustomer
service we weren't ranking for anything related to customer service atthe time but we knew we'd eventually want to be known for that topic and itwould take time to build relevance when we started we were ranking lower thanposition 500 for all our target topics took several months for us
to move theneedle on our search ranking but by using blogging to build topicalrelevance we were able to capture a spot on the first page of Google for 5 out ofour 10 target topics we also saw a massive spike in beta requests for ourcustomer service software as a result
here's an overview of what we did tomake this happen our very first step was to identify which topics we wanted to beknown for that we weren't already known for to find these topics we started byidentifying topics that were closest to the bottom of the funnel and then movedour
way up bottom another funnel topics for us were things like customerfeedback software and help desk software topics that had high purchase intent westarted here because at the end of the day we wanted to Center our strategyaround getting people to sign up for our software product from there we
expandedwith more middle and top of the funnel topics like customer feedback customersatisfaction surveys and NPS once we had a list of topics we prioritize which ofthese topics wanted to rank for where wewanted to rank and by when like I said when we started we weren't ranking foranything not
even in the top 500 let's take the topic customer feedbacksoftware as an example this is one of the bottom of the funnel topics that wewanted to rank for the first thing we did was build a product page for ourupcoming customer service software which we said was coming soon
and provided anemail field where someone could sign up to be notified when the product wasready that way by the time the product launch the signup page was alreadygained search Authority next we wrote a long canonical piece of content which wecall a pillar page on the related topic customer
feedback we hosted this on asite page titled customer feedback strategy the only guide you'll ever needand linked it to our product page to give it some SEO juice a next step wasto break down the topic of customer feedback into questions that our targetcustomers might ask about that topic
here are a few questions we came up withhow should I go about asking for feedback from customers how can Iimprove my customer feedback survey how do I measure customer satisfaction andwhat should I do with the customer feedback I get onsocial media then we turned every one of these
questions into blog posts weprioritize which ones to write first according to search volume and we linkedevery one of these blog posts back to that pillar page to help build topicalrelevance and boost that page of search or thorry and our product pages searchauthority to make our blog posts more
attractive for others to link to weadded what we call linkable hooks to these posts linkable hooks are thingslike original charts and images unique data and research quotes from industryexperts and pro's and con's tables which we find people like to link to next weprepared an outreach strategy help build
links to these posts weidentify blogs and communities relevant to our topic and reached out to themusing link building tactics like offering to write a guest post on theirblog when it came to actually doing the outreach we found it was easier to getbacklinks from companies that were tan gently'
related to our target topic likesurvey tool companies for example rather than businesses that were borderlinecompetitors after just a few months our product page is ranking in the number 3spot on page 1 of Google for a target topiccustomer feedback software before the product had even came out our pillarpage
on customer feedback was also ranking in the number-two spot forcustomer feedback so they have it this process is effective straightforward andmost importantly repeatable we've done it for other products and tools and I'veseen great results too the key to success with this approach is the movepast short-term thinking and
put a lot of work into building a thoughtfulstrategy key relationships that will help you build links and create greatcontent with linkable books you
