Here’s How to Master the Hub and Spoke Strategy for SEO Success
Hub and spoke SEO is a content architecture that organizes a website around comprehensive hub pages (main topics) and supporting spoke pages (subtopics), connected by deliberate internal links. The structure builds topical authority: search engines read the cluster as evidence of depth, and LLMs cite sites that cover a topic completely. It is the same model some teams call pillar and cluster.
When building content on a website, a hub and spoke SEO strategy can help you develop topics. The “hub” is your main topic, and the “spokes” are all supporting topics. This approach helps you organize your content for SEO and provides a useful and informative experience for readers.
For example, let’s say you have a B2B SaaS company that sells human resources software. You might have a product page (hub) for your main topic (HR software) that you optimize with top-of-funnel keywords. Your spokes would be supporting feature pages or blog posts that target MOFU and BOFU audiences looking to solve a problem, like: “How to onboard employees remotely.” The spokes and hub connect with internal links, which helps human users and Google bots understand and navigate your site.
In this post, we’ll talk about how we approach hub and spoke SEO and why it’s helpful for websites.
Key Takeaways
- Hub and spoke SEO organizes content into hubs and connected spokes; the internal links are the architecture, not an afterthought.
- Topical authority was the single strongest predictor of performance in our December 2025 core update analysis.
- The same clusters feed AI search: models retrieve and cite sites with complete, structured topic coverage.
- Plan clusters from keyword research, give every spoke a hub link, and give every hub a next step.
- Measure the cluster (rankings, citations, and conversions together), never a page in isolation.
Benefits of Hub and Spoke SEO
Here’s how hub and spoke SEO can help B2B SaaS businesses:
Better internal linking
The first benefit of the hub and spoke model for SEO is that it improves your internal linking structure. Instead of randomly adding internal links every time you create content, you can plan how spokes will interconnect with the hub and even map out the linking plan in a spreadsheet for quick reference.
Improved authority for search engines
The hub and spoke model also helps you improve your authority on specific topics for search engine algorithms. When you have supporting topics for your main hub topics, you’re demonstrating the depth of your knowledge to search engines, which can boost your search visibility. Our December 2025 core update analysis confirmed that topical authority was the single strongest predictor of algorithm update performance.
Specific keyword targeting
A hub and spoke model allows you to target specific long-tail and short-tail keywords together. Short-tail keywords, like “human resources software,” tend to be more competitive. With a hub and spoke model, you can still create content around short-tail keywords but use long-tail keywords to drive higher-intent traffic.
Upgraded user experience
The hub and spoke model helps your site visitors understand your product. People can easily explore topics and follow internal links to drill down into use cases.
Hub and Spoke SEO for AI Search
The hub and spoke model was built for Google, and it turns out to be the right architecture for AI search too. That matters because the two now run on the same foundation: Google AI Overviews cite top-10 organic results over 93% of the time, and the pages LLMs retrieve are overwhelmingly the pages that already rank.
Three properties of a well-built cluster map directly to how models select sources:
Complete coverage earns retrieval. When a buyer asks ChatGPT “best HR software for remote onboarding,” the model synthesizes an answer from sources it trusts on that topic. A site with a hub and eight interlinked spokes covering onboarding, compliance, payroll integrations, and implementation reads as an authority on HR software. A site with one orphaned blog post does not.
Chunked structure earns citations. Models lift self-contained sections, and content structured in 75-200-word blocks under descriptive headings gets cited at more than twice the rate of long unstructured pages. Spoke pages are naturally chunked: each one answers a specific question completely, which is exactly the shape an AI answer wants to quote.
Internal links guide the crawlers that feed the models. AI crawlers follow the same link graph Google does. A deliberate hub-to-spoke structure means every page in the cluster gets discovered, and the anchor text tells the model what each page answers.
This is why we treat cluster architecture as a shared foundation for SEO and generative engine optimization (GEO). Our SaaS GEO practice starts from the same hub and spoke map the SEO program runs on.
How We Use Hub and Spoke at Virayo
We run this model on virayo.com, so here is the live example.
Our hubs are the service pages: SaaS SEO and SaaS GEO. Each one covers the full topic (methodology, services, pricing, FAQs) and links out to its spokes: guides like our LLM SEO playbook, B2B SaaS SEO steps, and GEO strategies. Every spoke links back to its hub and sideways to related spokes, and case studies act as proof spokes: when a guide makes a claim, the linked case study shows the result.
Two practical lessons from running it on our own site:
Orphans are the failure mode. When we audited our link graph this year, several high-impression posts had exactly one inbound link. Content that ranks but sits outside the cluster contributes nothing to the hub’s authority, and models rarely cite it. The fix was mechanical: every orphan got two to three inbound links from its natural hub and sibling spokes.
The hub has to earn its spokes. A thin hub with rich spokes inverts the model; the hub page must be the most complete resource in the cluster, because it’s the page you want both Google and the models to treat as the definitive answer. When we rebuilt our service pages, the spokes were already strong; the hubs were the pages that needed the depth.
Best Practices for Hub and Spoke SEO
Here’s how to get the most out of your hub and spoke organization and structure:
Define your topics
Come up with a list of topics based on keyword research. That includes looking at keywords your competitors are ranking for and finding a mix of high-value terms that may be difficult to rank for, as well as terms with lower search volume that you could rank for quickly.
While you may have existing content you can use to support your hub topics, there are likely keywords and spokes that you don’t have content for. Find these opportunities and create the content to support them.
Determine your content types
Think about what types of content work best for the keywords you’re targeting. Generally, product pages should include your short-tail, high-value keywords. Using the example of human resources software, here’s what an initial hub and spoke SEO plan might look like:
Provide helpful CTAs
Calls to action, or CTAs, are hyperlinks that guide readers through the buyer’s journey and onto the next step in the conversion funnel. At the end of each piece of content you create, you should have a CTA to help the reader move on to the next conversion action you want them to take. It could be a downloadable resource, a form to speak to a salesperson, or a how-to video guide, depending on your path to conversion.
Map internal links deliberately
Write the link plan down before you write the content. Every spoke gets a link to its hub in the opening or closing, every hub links every spoke it owns, and sibling spokes cross-link where a reader would genuinely move between them. Use descriptive anchor text that names the target’s topic: “SaaS SEO strategy” tells crawlers and models what the destination answers, “click here” tells them nothing. A spreadsheet with one row per page and columns for hub, inbound links, and outbound links is enough to keep a fifty-page cluster honest.
Measure the cluster, not the page
Individual page metrics undersell the model. A spoke that ranks for nothing might still be the reason the hub ranks, so evaluate the cluster as a unit: combined rankings across the topic’s keyword set, total organic conversions attributed to any page in the cluster, and, increasingly, AI citations. Run your buyers’ prompts through the models monthly and note which cluster pages get cited. When a cluster stalls, the diagnosis is usually structural: a missing subtopic competitors cover, or a hub too thin to hold its spokes together.
Level Up Your SEO With Virayo
At Virayo, we’re experts in helping SaaS companies improve SEO and shorten their sales cycles. To learn more about how we can help you improve your SaaS SEO, schedule a quick strategy chat.
Related reading: SEO Guide for Trucking and Logistics Companies.
Frequently asked questions about hub and spoke SEO
What is hub and spoke SEO?
Hub and spoke SEO is a content architecture that organizes a site around comprehensive hub pages for main topics and supporting spoke pages for subtopics, connected by deliberate internal links. The structure builds the topical authority that search engines reward with rankings and LLMs reward with citations.
Is hub and spoke the same as pillar and cluster?
Yes, they describe the same architecture. “Pillar page” and “topic cluster” are HubSpot’s terms; “hub and spoke” is the older name. In both, one comprehensive page anchors a topic and interlinked supporting pages cover the subtopics.
How many spokes does a hub need?
Enough to cover the topic completely, which for most B2B SaaS topics means five to fifteen spokes. Coverage matters more than count: a hub with six spokes that answer every question buyers ask beats a hub with twenty thin posts. Map competitor coverage and People Also Ask questions to find the required set.
Does hub and spoke SEO help with AI search?
Yes. Models cite sites with complete, structured coverage of a topic, which is exactly what a well-built cluster produces. The hub and spoke map that drives your rankings is the same foundation a GEO program builds on.
