by Marianna Muscat | Aug 26, 2020 | Content Marketing
The hub & spoke content model is incredibly powerful and simple enough to implement in your content marketing strategy. Take a look at how this model works:
What is the hub & spoke content marketing model?
Simply speaking, the hub & spoke model refers to the way that your content can be organised to create the maximum value for your audience. You will have hubs and spokes for different topics that you’re covering, but for now, let’s look at the two distinct parts:
The hub
This is the overview of the topic that you’ve chosen to write about. It needs to cover most aspects that your audience may be interested in without going into too much detail about each of these aspects. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, you might have hubs that cover the following topics: strength training, injury prevention, and weight management.
Your hub should have informative content as the body and needs to provide links to the spokes that apply to the hub. This can be done through embedded links in the text or by providing a table of contents or list at the end of the hub content that makes it easy to find the relevant information. Make this piece of content as valuable, relevant and thorough as possible so that your audience will want to bookmark it and use it as the starting point of their reading journey. You want to show Google that your hub helps people to discover a topic and navigate it.
The spokes
While your hub gives your audience an overview of the topic, your spokes will address the different aspects within that topic that are relevant and useful to your audience. Using the example of a personal trainer again: the hub will be weight management, and possible spokes can be training for weight management, nutrition for weight loss or gain, common myths about weight management, how to identify your issues with weight management and so on.
Your content needs to address each of the spokes in detail, providing an in-depth look at the topic, referring to other relevant sources of content that you’ve created including videos, podcast episodes and other blog posts that relate to the topic.
As you create detailed spokes, you need to update your hub content to include links to the new content. This will strengthen your entire content model and simplify navigation for your audience. Your spokes should also link back to your main post.
Why is this model effective
The hub & spoke model helps you to establish your writing as authoritative on your chosen subject. By creating content that is linkable, focussed and relevant, and that satisfies the user intent, you’re going to be able to climb the rankings in SERP. Because the model makes smart use of links, it will guide audiences from one piece of content to another on your website or blog without letting them leave to find another source somewhere else. All of these factors indicate to Google that you’re creating good content that will be relevant for a specific set of search queries.
If you need help with creating your hub & spoke content marketing strategy, contact the digital marketing team at WSI OMS today.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 25, 2020 | SEO
Due to the popularity of our previous blog post on SEO tips, we’ve created a part 2 to provide you with even more relevant, actionable advice to drive organic traffic to your blog. Here’s what you need to know.
Link to your own content
If you have a lot of valuable information to share about a specific industry, niche or subject, make it easy for readers to find everything they could need with internal links that are organised in a hub and spoke model. Let’s suppose that you’re writing about gardening. You may have already created a library of useful content that your readers could find valuable. Now go through your posts and see if you can link words or concepts in one post to others, for example: if you’re writing about “water-saving plants” it could form your hub, and you could link to other articles like “caring for succulents” or “ground coverings that keep your soil moist” as spokes.
The idea is to keep your reader on your site as long as possible by providing them with content they want to consume in a way that is easy to navigate. This will help Google to see that your content is relevant and useful and can help to boost your page ranking.
Keep your content updated
It’s incredibly annoying to find a great resource that answers your question only to realise that the source is out of date. Revisit your content often and update it so that it remains relevant and applicable to your audience for as long as possible. Update broken links and add new information if you can – this also allows you to tell your audience that your great resource is now even better, which leads us to the next tip.
Repurpose your content
Be sure to get the most out of your content by adapting it to be suitable for different formats and platforms. Your audience members may come from a variety of different sources, so you need to make it available for as many people as possible. Unfortunately, this means that you will have to put some work into adapting it for different purposes. Although it takes a little longer, it will give your content the best possible chance of getting seen, which will indicate to Google that your content is valuable for a broader audience.
Let people know about your content
In addition to your regular audience from social media and newsletter sign-ups, you also want to reach a broader audience in your network. You can do this by letting people know that you’ve mentioned them or their resources in your writing. You can even go a step further and reach out to people who have written about the same topic or who have linked to articles that cover your topic. This can help you to create a network of writers and websites in your niche, something that you can further use to improve your organic traffic.
Share your knowledge
If you’ve got unique insights, experience and expertise in your industry or niche, you can create more organic traffic to your blog by sharing your knowledge on someone else’s platform. If you’ve built a network of like minded writers, reach out to them and offer to create a guest blog for their website.
You can find guest writing opportunities in your field by searching for blogs and websites who accept guest posts and pitching your content to them. Search for “guest blog” and your niche or “write for and your niche. Then look up any details they might have for accepting pitches and be sure to follow their guidelines for the best chance at getting your writing accepted.
For more resources on SEO, blogging and digital marketing, visit WSI OMS website and click on “blog” to access our library of articles.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 17, 2020 | SEO
Having a blog is a useful tool for businesses looking to increase their online visibility and connect with customers. However, to stand out in the competitive world of digital content, you need to implement SEO tips in your blogging. Here are five traffic-boosting SEO tips to use:
1. Keyword Research
Research keywords of what your customers are searching for and what is currently trending, as this will save you a tremendous amount of time and effort towards driving more traffic to your blog. There are several useful tools that you can use, for example, Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
2. Optimise Images for SEO
Including images on your blog makes it easier to read, but also offers an opportunity to add keywords to the page. Use the image file name, alt text, and caption text to do further search engine optimisation on your blog.
3. Add internal links
Linking internally on your content helps search engines know the validity or relevance of your page and will keep your readers on your site for longer. Having a link building strategy will raise other related pages to search engines and boost your blog’s performance.
4. Mobile-friendly
Hitwise reported that almost 60 percent of online searches are done on a mobile device, and Google will first display mobile-friendly results. Ensure that your website design is responsive to mobile and only has one URL to help your SEO come back to your site.
5. Evergreen content
Focus on writing content that won’t go out of date within a few weeks or months. Plan your content marketing in a way that it is dateless and always relevant. Also, recycle your old posts by updating them once a year.
It is essential to use good SEO practices in your digital marketing strategy for your blog to get more traffic and will give you that edge over your competitors.
Contact us today to help you with your SEO or to update your blog web design that WSI OMS offers.
by Marianna Muscat | Aug 12, 2020 | Facebook, Social Media Marketing
Despite the recent boycotts against it, Facebook is consistently the most popular, most visited, and most widely used of the social media platforms. The network still boasts 74% of the social media market share, so it would be foolish to turn your back on it altogether – especially with the mass disruption of COVID-19.
Christmas Marketing 2020
We don’t yet know if the upcoming festive season will be a virus-free celebration with family and friends or an isolated one for the history books. Either way, the build-up to the holidays requires a sound internet marketing strategy that will not only weather either option, but also recoup possible revenue losses.
Facebook has analysed data and created an informative guide to global shopping in 2020:
- Gen X and Baby Boomers have been forced to rely on mobile and e-commerce thanks to lockdowns. These groups dominate the growth of online shopping – increasing by 50% or more year on year.
- New products and services stand a better chance of being explored during Christmas shopping at the best of times. Add to that receptiveness fuelled by imposed disruption, and the coming shopping season is the ideal time to make new connections.
- Mega sales will appeal to shoppers more than ever in light of the economic downturn. Key factors this year will be price and avoiding crowds (i.e. online shopping). Those who shop the mega sales tend to shop on mobile, spend more, and splurge on items for themselves.
Sale dates to plan for:
Black Friday – 27 November
Cyber Monday – 30 November
Last shipping day 21-22 December
January sales 1-31 January
- Shared values have become more important to consumers now that we have come to realise what is really important to us. Along with affordability, brands need to be authentic and take action.
Award-Winning Solutions
If you need advice on your digital marketing strategy, including social media marketing for Christmas, contact WSIOMS for more information.
by Marianna Muscat | Jul 24, 2020 | SEO, Website Design
If you want the best eCommerce website, you need to ensure that quality web design, quality images, and excellent product descriptions form part of your content marketing strategy. Your product descriptions need to tantalise your audience with emotive language that highlights the details, features and benefits of your products while keeping it easy to read.
Aspects to consider when crafting product descriptions for your eCommerce site:
Write for a specific buyer persona
Create a buyer persona by breaking down the characteristics of your potential customers and define the product features they would be most interested in.
Show some personality in telling your product story
Telling the product story should fill any gaps the customer has about the product. Write where and when the product should be used, how it works and what benefits it will provide.
Watch your tone
The product description should use natural language, like a conversation you would have with someone else. The tone must also be natural and in line with the general tone of your brand.
Make it digestible
Make the product description easy to scan by using short paragraphs, bullet points, different size fonts and lots of white space.
Never forget SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is one of the best ways to attract new customers to your pages and product. Use great keywords for quality SEO.
Amp up the quality of your visuals
A great image draws the eye faster than a great product description. Use quality images to show the customer the key features of the product and complement the product description.
While web design and content marketing go a long way to present your products and information in a readable and visually pleasing manner, your product descriptions are essential to convincing the audience to buy your product. For more information, visit WSIOMS to create an eCommerce website that has web design, SEO, and content marketing at its core.
