Most websites publish content randomly, a blog post here, a guide there, a product page that links to nothing. Google sees a sprawl of disconnected pages and struggles to determine which ones matter most.
The hub-and-spoke model solves this. It organises content the way a library organises books: a central pillar page on each core topic, surrounded by tightly linked supporting articles that each dive deep on a sub-topic. The result is that Google understands your site's structure, your most important pages accumulate link equity from their cluster, and you rank for both broad and specific queries simultaneously.
Here's how three real brands executed it, and what happened.
Case Study 1: HubSpot: 13 Million Monthly Organic Visitors
HubSpot is the defining example of hub-and-spoke at scale. The company ranks for 4.8 million keywords and draws roughly 13 million monthly organic visitors, with their blog subfolder alone generating 10 million of those visits (verified by Ahrefs data).
Every major topic HubSpot competes on: CRM, email marketing, sales enablement, social media: is structured as a pillar page surrounded by cluster content, all tightly interlinked. When HubSpot publishes a new post on "email subject lines," it links back to the email marketing hub. That hub links to dozens of spokes. Google sees a dense, authoritative network of content on a single topic and rewards the entire cluster with stronger rankings.
HubSpot didn't grow to 13 million monthly visits by writing randomly. They built a compounding machine where every new spoke article feeds authority back to the hub, and the hub returns it to the spokes.
Source: HubSpot's SEO Strategy to Get 13M Monthly Organic Traffic Key metric: 13M monthly organic visitors · 4.8M keywords ranked
Case Study 2: Zapier: 900,000 Monthly Visits From a Single Topic Cluster
Zapier turned their product database into a content engine using hub-and-spoke logic. Their "Best Apps" topic cluster generates 900,000 monthly visitors: 60% of their total site traffic of 1.6 million monthly visits.
Each individual app-integration page acts as a spoke. Category pages ("Best Project Management Apps," "Best CRM Tools") are the hubs. Zapier aggressively links their best-app content together to build topical authority on each app category, meaning every new spoke they publish lifts the entire cluster's rankings.
What makes Zapier's model worth studying is its programmatic scale: their spoke pages are generated from their integration database, not written manually. The underlying logic, however, is identical to any hub-and-spoke strategy. Topic authority is built through interconnection, and Zapier proved it works at a scale few teams could replicate manually.
Source: How Zapier Quadrupled Organic Growth: SEO Case Study Key metric: 1.6M monthly visitors · "Best Apps" cluster = 900K monthly visits
Case Study 3: Fintech Client: 561% Year-on-Year Traffic Growth
A mid-size financial services company had a common problem: years of blog publishing with no internal structure. Posts existed in silos. Product pages didn't link to supporting content. Organic traffic had flatlined despite a large content archive.
The fix wasn't more content. It was architecture. The SEO team mapped six content hubs, one per core product line, and rebuilt the site's internal linking structure around them. Each hub page became a comprehensive, long-form guide on its topic. Existing blog posts were audited, updated, and connected into the nearest hub. Where gaps existed, new satellite articles were commissioned.
Nine months later, organic search traffic had grown 561% year-on-year. More importantly, the leads coming through organic search were measurably warmer: they'd already consumed three or four cluster articles before filling out a contact form.
Source: SEO Stories 2024: Real Results and Strategies That Worked Key metric: +561% YoY organic traffic in 9 months · 800+ interlinked articles
The Pattern Behind All Three Wins
Across HubSpot, Zapier, and the fintech firm, three things are consistent:
- Structure precedes volume. In all three cases, the content architecture was deliberate before publishing at scale. Random publishing followed by retroactive linking doesn't work as well.
- Internal linking is the mechanism. The hub doesn't rank because it's long; it ranks because many authoritative pages on the same topic link to it.
- Hubs compound. Each new spoke makes the hub stronger. Each stronger hub improves spoke rankings. The model accelerates over time.
Try It Yourself: 6 Steps to Build Your First Hub
Step 1: Pick three topics. Choose the themes your ideal customer most needs help with. If you're a SaaS company, that might be "onboarding," "integrations," and "reporting." If you're a law firm, it might be "business contracts," "employment law," and "IP protection."
Step 2: Audit what you already have. List every blog post, guide, and landing page. Tag each one by topic. Most content already falls into natural clusters: you're making the structure explicit.
Step 3: Create or upgrade one hub page per topic. A hub should be 2,000–4,000 words, cover the topic comprehensively from multiple angles, and link out to every related spoke. Think of it as the "ultimate guide" to that topic.
Step 4: Link every spoke back to its hub. Go into each supporting article and add a contextual internal link pointing to the hub. Use descriptive anchor text, not "click here."
Step 5: Fill the gaps. Look for sub-topics within each cluster that have no existing content. These become your next publishing priorities, not random posts, but deliberate spokes.
Step 6: Measure cluster performance. In Google Search Console, filter by each hub URL and track impressions and clicks over time. After 60–90 days, you should see cluster pages rising together.
Want expert help applying this to your site? The tryansly team offers free consultations: we audit your site, identify the highest-impact opportunities, and give you a prioritised action plan. No obligations. Book a free consultation with tryansly
