Welcome to My Blog

If you haven’t already noticed, the HubSpot Blogs got a makeover this summer.

And while your last makeover might’ve included a new wardrobe or hair color, ours was different. We revamped blog.hubspot.com from the inside, out with the help of topic clusters.

And yeah, the beautiful new homepage design, easy click-to-tweet buttons, and video modules help, too. That’s all thanks to my colleague, Carly Stec, who worked tirelessly on the redesign of the HubSpot Blogs, along with talented members of our graphic and web design and SEO teams. To learn more about the new bells and whistles you can see and test out on the blog, read her deep-dive into what’s new.

Even though you can’t see it, there’s a lot that’s new going on behind-the-scenes: We reorganized our entire blog infrastructure according to the topic cluster model, which calls for the grouping of related blog posts around specific topics — instead of writing blog posts to try to rank for different long-tail keywords. It was no mean feat — over the years, we’ve published tens of thousands of blog posts across the Marketing and Sales Blogs, and we recently started publishing new content on our Customer Success Blog.

Now that it’s done — or, at least, well on the way — we’re ready to tell you how we did it. Read on to learn how we changed our blog’s infrastructure, and how the topic clusters are helping us help our readers.

How We Used Topic Clusters to Transform Our Blog

Why: We Wanted to Create a Better Experience

We’ve told you before and we’ll tell you again: search has changed. And as it turns out, the way we were creating our editorial calendar, targeting keywords, and publishing blog posts last year wasn’t optimized for the way people are searching for information this year.

So we blew up our entire blog infrastructure.

Just kidding (kind of). Here’s the story:

Before Topic Clusters

HubSpot Director of Acquisition (and general SEO genius) Matthew Barby introduced us to the idea of topic clusters — and why they’re so important to creating a good experience for searchers — as well as helping content rank in search more effectively.

You see, as technology has evolved and changed, so too has the way people search for the information they need on search engines like Google. Voice search on devices like Apple’s Siri, Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Microsoft’s Cortana has changed the way people search because, instead of typing, they’re having a conversation to find the information they need.

In fact, 20% of Google searches on mobile or Android devices are now conducted via voice search. And what’s more, search engine algorithms are getting smarter, and using machine-learning technology, now, when searchers ask questions or input keywords, search engines can interpret the meaning of terms to try to find the best possible answer.

What this all means? Well, your time spent writing blog posts designed to rank for specific, long-tail keywords could be better spent elsewhere. Namely, on creating topic clusters.

Because your blog (and ours too) was dedicated to trying to rank for specific long-tail keywords in search, the infrastructure was a little … messy. Here’s a visualization of what it looked like:

So, yeah. While we had thousands and thousands of blog posts about everything marketing, sales, and advertising under the sun, they weren’t organized — and some of the posts were even competing with each other because they were so similar. Think about it — when we had 10 different blog posts about “Instagram tips,” some of them had overlapping content and similar URL structures that started to compete with each other in search engine results pages (SERPs).

After Topic Clusters

The goal of organizing our blog using topic clusters was so our infrastructure would look a little more like this:

How was this beautiful feat of blog architecture achieved? By using pillar pages and internal links to create those topic clusters.

Under the topic cluster model, instead of creating blog posts designed to rank for specific, long-tail keywords, we organized our blog posts into specific topic areas — anchored together by one webpage that provided a broad overview of the topic, which then hyperlinked out to more specific, deep-dive blog posts that made up a topic cluster.

Having trouble visualizing it? Here’s what it looks like now:

• Topic: Instagram Marketing
• Pillar Content: Instagram Marketing
• Cluster Content: The Anatomy of a Perfect Instagram Profile, How to Write Good Instagram Captions: 8 Bookmarkable Tips for Perfecting Your Copy,

• How to Use Instagram Stories: A Simple Guide for Marketers 

And, as you’ll notice, each of these blog posts hyperlink back to the pillar page, and some hyperlink within each other. This helps share domain authority so all blog posts within a cluster start ranking for the specific keywords they’re written for — which all work to help the entire topic cluster succeed in SERPs.

But how did we actually make all of these changes? This project was spearheaded by HubSpot Senior Content Strategist Leslie Ye, SEO and Acquisition Marketer Brittany Chin, and Search Marketing Manager Victor Pan. It took many months of diligent work — in fact, it’s still ongoing on some of our blogs — and we’ll give you a rundown of how we’ve done it.

How: We Organized Our Blog Posts, Identified Content Gaps, and Manually Removed Every Internal Link We Could Find

Step One: Organizing

When the team decided how to get started restructuring our entire blog, there was a little problem: They realized that, with more than 12,000 blog posts across the Marketing, Sales, and Agency Blogs, it would take many, many hours to put this new structure into place — and even longer to start seeing SEO results to see if the topic cluster model worked.

So they started with the Sales Blog — having published roughly 2,500 blog posts when this project began, it would be a significantly faster and easier feat to restructure this younger blog — the learnings from which we could use for restructuring the Marketing Blog down the line.

The first step of this process was organizing entire Sales Blog’s database of blog posts into different topic clusters — the team identified the myriad different topic areas blog posts explored and organized them into topics that were broad enough to write about in 20-30 different blog posts, but not so broad that a pillar page couldn’t dive into the topic in any sort of depth.

For example, we don’t have a “Sales” topic cluster — that would be way too broad. But we do have a “Sales Email Templates” topic cluster — it’s broad enough that we can cover it thoroughly in this pillar page, but we can also dive deeper into it in blog posts like this one.

So, as you can imagine, this process took a little while: We had to audit all of our content and separate it into groups of blog posts that all centered around a specific topic. Then, we had to identify our pillar pages and content gaps.

Step Two: Identifying

The beauty of the topic cluster model is that it forces you to evaluate your database of content and make sure you’re providing all relevant information about a particular topic to your reader. So it’s important to conduct thorough keyword research about your topic (once you’ve identified it).

The key things you need to identify during this content audit are:

1. What is your pillar page?
2. Where are there content gaps?
3. Where are content duplicates?

1) Pillar Page

A pillar page covers the topic thoroughly and broadly, so a visitor could answer any basic questions about the topic. It shouldn’t delve too deeply into answering specific questions — that’s what blog posts are for.

Do you have a blog post that meets this criteria? If so, great — you have the content you need to create a pillar page. If not, you need to create it.

2) Content Gaps

Once you’ve conducted your keyword research, choose the keywords related to your topic that have the highest search volume. Then, determine if you’ve already written a blog post about that keyword, or if you need to write a new blog post.

Remember, you might already have content that addresses the keyword, but you might need to use on-page SEO strategies to target a blog post for that keyword.

3) Content Duplicates

You may have several blog posts that cover topics in an overlapping way that are ranking for the same keywords and competing against each other. Combine the information in these posts on the highest-ranking URL, and redirect the other blog posts towards it.

Step Three: De-Linking and Re-Linking

Possibly the least glamorous part of this process was de-linking. The team manually reviewed every blog post and removed all of the internal hyperlinks so, once the pillar pages were created, we could internally link only within the topic cluster — to improve the domain authority of every blog post and webpage in the cluster. (In fact, Barby recommends one hyperlink per 150 words.)

This took a while — and luckily, we didn’t have to do it for the Marketing Blog. We learned a lot about the topic cluster structure over the course of implementing it on the Sales Blog, and the team was eventually able to automate interlinking among topic cluster pages. (Phew!)

The Results: Slow, Steady, and Positive Growth

We’ve already started to see improvement in search rankings for various keywords across the HubSpot Blogs that we’re tracking. In our most recent analysis, we’re experiencing positive month-over-month growth in the number of keywords we have ranking on the first page of Google SERPs, and we have hundreds more keywords closing in on the second and third pages — with projected growth expected in the future.

If You Build It …

The thing is, when it comes to SEO, the results don’t come quickly, and they’re not always sticky — for example, while running this experiment, we also dealt with a seasonal downturn in organic traffic in the summer, and a decrease in traffic that we partially attribute to the growth in popularity of Google’s Featured Snippet — which eliminates the need for searchers to click on links to get the information they need.

You know, like this one:

The thing is, Google is always changing, and while topic clusters aren’t the foolproof solution to earning the number one spot in Google SERPs forever, implementing this architecture sets your blog up for more traffic — and better rankings — as more people start searching in these new and different ways.

As Ye puts it, “basic SEO practices get you on the field. Topic clusters help you level up.” This new strategy is a lot of work to implement, but it gives you a foundation for future success in 2018 and beyond.

To learn more about topic clusters, check out more resources from the team that made it happen:

• Topic Clusters: The Next Evolution of SEO
• Search Has Changed. Here’s How Your Content Needs to Evolve.
• What Is a Pillar Page? (And Why It Matters For Your SEO Strategy)
• How to Structure Your Editorial Calendar in the Age of the Topic Cluster Content Model 

As a rule, San Francisco is beautiful in October.

Yesterday was no exception. Outside of the famed SF Jazz venue, it was sunny, with a just-right amount of crispiness in the air.

But inside the venue, there was shade — lots and lots of shade.

The event had many names, ranging from the “Google Hardware Event” and “Pixel 2 Event,” to simply, “Made By Google.” By any other name, it was a large-scale unveiling of the latest generation of Google hardware products, ranging from phones to virtual reality (VR) headsets. And coming on the heels of similar events from both Apple and Amazon, that’s where the shade came in: Google

And coming on the heels of similar events from both Apple and Amazon, that’s where the shade came in: Google wanted to make sure that its new products were easier to use, more competitively priced, and not ruined by advance leaks.

Jabs were thrown. There was talk of the “other” guys, so to speak. And I have to admit: the things unveiled were really cool.

But mirror, mirror, on the wall: which product release is the most fly of all? Naturally, I have my own opinions on the matter — but I want to let you decide. That’s why we’ve recapped everything that was unveiled at the event, along with some of my own thoughts on each new release and what it indicates for future developments in tech.

Everything Unveiled at the #MadeByGoogle Event

1) Pixel Buds (My Vote for Coolest Product Reveal)

Price: $159

Bear with us, as I know that earbuds are, traditionally, far from the “neatest” thing to premiere at events like these, especially since — unlike Apple’s, for example — these aren’t completely wireless. But watch this live demo from yesterday’s event, and you’ll see what I mean:

Come on. How cool is that? And how helpful might it be in a time when businesses have a growing international presence and relationships? That is — if the technology functions as it was designed, as USA TODAY’S Eli Blumenthal put it:

Pixel Buds promise real-time translation, which if it works in real life as well as it does in this demo would be incredible.

— Eli Blumenthal (@eliblumenthal)
October 4, 2017

The Pixel Buds — as with most of the devices debuted yesterday, which you’ll see below — also come equipped with Google Assistant, which can be activated by pressing the right earbud. And, like many of Assitant-ready devices, it can remind you about calendar items and let you know if you’ve received a new text message.

Sound familiar? That’s because these features are, in a way, drawn from both the Apple Watch and AirPods.

2) The Phones: Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

Price: Pixel 2 — $649 | Pixel 2 XL — $849

Here’s where some of the shadiest remarks (to the delight of the audience, I might add) began to appear. During the product demo and explanations of the latest generation of Pixel phones, Google’s VP of Product Management casually uttered:

“We don’t set aside better features for the larger device.”

It was a jab, of course, at Apple, whose iPhone X comes with somewhat significantly better features (and a higher price tag) than its smaller iPhone 8 and 8s. But as for the Pixel’s own new features, the spotlight seemed

But as for the Pixel’s own new features, the spotlight seemed to be on its continuously impressive camera. It comes with portrait mode capabilities — which, yes, also apply to selfies — with a single lens. That also contrasts from the “other guys,” like the latest Apple device cameras, which require two camera lenses to pull off the same photo quality.

But perhaps an even more significant feature of the latest Pixel generation is Google Lens: an AI-powered visual recognition system that recognizes objects like art, landmarks, and local businesses just by having the camera pointed at them. This technology had been alluded to earlier this year, and now, Pixel owners will be the first to preview it.

Source: Google

“But wait — there’s more!” as the saying goes. Those who buy a new Pixel model will be treated to a Google Home Mini, which I’ll get to next.

3) Google Home Mini and Max

Price: Mini — $49 | Max — $399

First, let’s go over some of the new features of the Google Home and the Assistant technology that comes with it.

Google Home and Assistant Features

This portion of the event made it clear that Google has followed the recent trend of making in-home personal assistant technology a family affair. With more of these devices boasting the ability to recognize and maintain accounts for multiple users, at some point, there has to be a kid-friendly option. That was the inspiration behind a host of new features, like telling a bedtime story. But it’s not all fun and games — with the new Broadcast feature, you can also push a daily morning reminder to devices placed in kids’ rooms, for example, that “it’s time to get ready for school.”

(Anyone else really glad that wasn’t a thing when they were in school?)

The efforts to make features more seamless across various Assistant-equipped devices seem to be progressing, as well. Many of these seem to fall under the category of helping users maintain a routine using the Made By Google family of tools — for example, one presenter spoke of a feature that allows users to remotely send a voice message via their phones that will then be broadcasted on Home devices. It’s a great way to let your family know that you’re on your way home with a pizza, or to freak them out.

Plus, it sounds like a great way to freak out anyone standing near your Home device — just in time for Halloween. http://pic.twitter.com/QGct2UdTWt

— HubSpot (@HubSpot)
October 4, 2017

What didn’t come as a surprise, but was still nice to see, was the Google Home and Assistant’s integration with Nest, a manufacturer of smart home and automation devices. Now, among other tricks, you can ask Assistant to display video from a security camera feed if you’ve been alerted that there’s movement in your home. (The Nest CTO used the extremely lovable example of using this feature to find out that the movement near her front door was not an intruder, but rather, her pet pig.)

Mini

The Home Mini is essentially Google’s response to the Echo Dot. (The prices are just about equal, with the latter priced at $50.) There isn’t really much to say about its features, as I covered most of that with the Assistant recap above, but in my humble opinion: It’s a bit prettier than its Amazon competitor. According to the presentation, the design team tested about 157 shades of gray before selecting the one that will go to market, along with two other color options. Plus, it’s covered with durable fabric, giving it a bit less of an industrial look-and-feel than the Echo Dot

Max

It was only a matter of time before Google threw its had into the compact home speaker ring. Enter Google Max: the first speaker powered by Smart Sound, an AI-powered learning system that helps users play and identify songs. For example, if you hum the tune of a song that you don’t know the name of, Smart Sound is designed to recognize — a feature that I’ll believe when I see (and hear) it for myself, despite DJ Diplo’s successful experience with it.

Max can be paired with a number of music streaming services. In fact, music seemed to be at the center of several product features unveiled yesterday — including the Pixelbook, up next.

4) Pixelbook

Price: $999

A note on the price: We’d like to point out that this price tag is, while a bit higher than some might like, the same one that’s been assigned to the iPhone X. What seems different between the two, however, is that the Pixelbook is a bit of a hybrid of many of the products unveiled yesterday.First, let’s go over some of the new features of the Google Home and the Assistant technology that comes with it.

To state the obvious: Yes, it’s equipped with Google Assistant, which is really its primary appeal. It streamlines the Assistant features so that they can be seamlessly accessed from one’s laptop or tablet — however you wish to define it.

That’s also where the Pixelbook Pen comes in: a stylus device that allows users to draw on their devices, whether for note-taking or circling words and items that they want to look up. While it’s not exactly the first of its kind, it does happen to come with handwriting recognition. Like so much else that was demonstrated at the event, at its core is machine learning and AI — a reflection of one of CEO Sundar Pichai’s opening remarks:

“In an AI-first world, I believe that computers should adapt to people in their everyday lives.”

The Pixelbook Pen is priced at $99.

5) Daydream View

Price: $99

If I’m being honest, this portion of the event was a bit more lackluster than others. While the new Daydream View content library will come with more games and videos — including IMAX films — the focus here was really on the Pixel’s augmented reality (AR) features, and how, in some instances, they can be paired with the headset. Similar to some competing product reveals earlier this year, the AR technology can be used to test how furniture will look in home spaces, for example.

Plus, new AR experiences have been created in partnerships with media companies like Netflix, to help users bring characters from their favorite TV shows to life. And here’s a unique twist: Instead of the user just interacting and controlling with these characters, the technology is designed to allow the characters to interact with each other.

Source: Google

6) Clips

Price: $249

Here’s another moment of truth: This product is … bizarre. I’m not alone in that assessment:

This is a very deeply weird product https://t.co/CWCHPRMtYY

— Sean O’Kane (@sokane1)
October 4, 2017

It seems like no one is entirely sure what the Clips — essentially a square-shaped camera — is supposed to do, or what sets it apart from other devices in its category. Its main boasting point, according to the presentation, is that it allows users to capture moments while also experiencing them.

What?

Yeah, we thought you might as that. Okay, here’s how we understand it: It’s a camera, but it’s not on your phone, which means that it’ll capture moments like a baby’s first steps without you being preoccupied with trying to catch it on your mobile device. You can place it on a surface where these moments can be recorded, but it conspicuously lights up so that those around it know that it’s currently capturing visuals. So, what makes it different than, say, any other camera?

So, what makes it different than, say, any other camera? Tada! It comes with machine learning capabilities and self-adjusts according to familiar faces and subjects that you capture the most and, therefore, the device has learned to recognize.

Source: Google

And so concludes our selection of highlights from Shade — I mean — Made by Google. Did I miss your favorite moment? Feel free to tweet me to let me know.