Content & SEO
What is a hub and spoke content strategy for e-commerce?
The short answer
Pick one problem or journey your customers go through and plan an ultimate guide around it. Each stage gets a long hub article of 2,500 to 3,000 words, surrounded by short spoke articles of 500 to 750 words that answer specific questions and link back to the hub. You rank for dozens of easier long-tail searches first, and that authority builds toward the big search term you actually want.
How does hub and spoke work?
Hub and spoke is a particular SEO strategy. The idea is that you have a content theme, and you build everything around it.
The hub is one long-form article, two and a half to three thousand words, that covers a customer problem completely. It then references five to ten smaller articles, more like 500 to 750 words each, that answer narrower questions within that theme. Every spoke links back to the hub.
The hub tells Google you own the topic. The spokes catch the long-tail searches, the specific questions people type when they’ve got a real problem and want an answer.
Why not go straight for the big keyword?
Because you won’t get there directly. Every store has a dream search term, often something like “best [your product]”. Lots of people search it, and that’s exactly why it’s so hard to rank for.
On one store, my goal was just to get to page one for the biggest search in its category. But the way to get there is to rank for a bunch of other search terms first. Each long-tail article you rank for adds a bit of authority to the site, and that compounds toward the head term.
So you aim at the questions you can win now, and let them carry you toward the one you can’t win yet.
How do you plan it?
Do it on paper first. Sticky notes are perfect.
- Map the journey your customer goes through, from first noticing the problem to choosing a fix and getting the most out of it.
- Break that journey into phases. Each phase gets its own long-form hub article of around 2,500 words.
- Under each phase, list the short questions people ask at that stage. Each one becomes a spoke article or FAQ.
- Draw the links. Every spoke points back to its hub.
Put it in order and that becomes your 12-month content plan. You’ll know what you’re writing every month and how each piece fits with the rest.
What goes in the spokes?
Specific answers to specific questions. FAQs, problem-by-problem articles, “which one should I choose” pieces and honest comparisons with bigger competitors all work as spokes.
Don’t underestimate the narrow ones. On one store, a customer found the brand through an honest review of a bigger competitor, and the pages on very specific problems were the ones that turned readers into buyers.
How often should you publish?
Steady beats bursts. If you’re writing everything yourself, two good pieces a month is a solid rhythm, and it’s enough to work through a 12-month plan.
With AI drafting and a human reviewing every piece, you can go much faster. Where we run it that way, the target is closer to a blog a day, and we’ve seen organic traffic move within days of a batch going live.
Either way, quality decides whether it lasts. If it’s slop, it won’t rank on Google long term. If it’s really good content, it will.
Every time you publish, do two things. Email the piece to your list, and submit the new URL in Search Console so Google knows it exists.
Do you need an SEO agency for this?
No. You don’t need an SEO agency to do any of that. What you need is the plan on the wall and the discipline to keep publishing, one hub and its spokes at a time.