Hub Pages – the Center of your SEO Universe

In my never-ending quest to improve Binary Moon I have investigated hub pages, an easy way to link relevant content.

Hub pages are a single page on your site that is targeted to one specific keyword or key phrase. This keyword should be something you want to rank well in, and that you have written about a lot.

In my case I decided to target TimThumb. Since I have taken the development reins from Darren I thought it would be good if people could find my site more easily.

Why?#

A hub is used to create a central point for all things on a specific topic. You want your hub to be a place that people will find useful which in turn will help establish your expertise on the subject. In addition it will be a single point for search engines to focus on when ranking your chosen keyword.

Part 1 – Create Your Hub#

The first step is to create the hub page. This page explains what your keyword is about and links to the articles you have written about the keyword. There should also be an intro explaining what makes you an expert on the subject.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, however my most basic checklist for hub pages is:

• Firstly create a stand alone page for your keyword
• The keyword should be in the page title, page heading, and page url
• The page should contain an intro to the topic explaining why you are an expert on the subject and what benefits the reader will get by reading your content.
• Finally the page should link to your best content on the subject. Make sure the links are to strong relevant content, and not just every single you have mention of the keyword.

Part 2 – Promote Your Hub Page#

Promoting my hub is currently the topic I am most involved with, and I am following the outline below.

1. First things first – I am linking to the page from different strongly ranked, relevant (very important) pages on the site. In the future I will be doing even more of this.
2. Next I go to other websites I control on the subject and link to my TimThumb hub. For instance I have linked the TimThumb docs on Pro Theme Design to the hub, and I have also linked the Google Code TimThumb page. These are highly relevant and nice easy improvements for little effort.
3. Next I am contacting webmasters and asking them to link to my hub page. With TimThumb this is nice and easy. I simply Google for TimThumb and then contact the people in the top results. Mostly the results are relevant and, even better, my new TimThumb hub resource is helpful to them and their sites visitors.
4. Rinse and repeat with new keywords.

With a relatively small amount of work I have managed to get to around number 4 or 5 in the Google search results for the keyword TimThumb and this is reflected in my keyword rankings.

Ben

Ben is a lifelong Nintendo fan who likes to build websites, and make video games. He buys way too much Lego.