When there are new topics to write about and new keywords to target, we often see companies immediately think that their blog is the best place for the content. Instead, there are often tremendous opportunities and a lot of value that can be gained from leveraging a resource hub.
A resource hub in this case would be defined as a content repository integrated into the core of your site, with organization by category, theme, or topic, rather than time. Conversely, a blog is typically organized in a chronological manner. Blogs can, and should have a strong category structure, but even those categories are then organized by time. This can have several pros and cons:
Pros
- Less organizational upkeep: You simply post the content into its most relevant category. There doesn’t have to be an in-depth categorical strategy if you don’t want one.
- Timely content doesn’t remain front-and-center: Older and outdated content is replaced by new and more relevant content over time.
Cons
- Valuable content is buried and hard to find: When you do post evergreen content that is really valuable on your blog, it will be very difficult to find for users who are on your website once new content has been written and posted.
- Less organizational hierarchy: Blogs generally lack a clever organizational structure, meaning that you can only group your content in a few different ways.
So, both blogs and resource hubs can be good options, but it depends on your strategy and the content you are creating. Let’s take a look at an example from REI. Being born in the Pacific Northwest means that I am forever a fan of REI. They have managed to stay a dominant force in e-commerce even in the age of Amazon. Part of this is due to the great job that they do with their content marketing and branding, making them more than just a store. You can see this on their website, where you’ll notice that they don’t have a blog in their main navigation:
Instead, they have options like Expert Advice and their Co-op Journal. Let’s take a look at their Expert Advice section.
Here, you can see that they are covering many “How to” related topics and evergreen concepts. Rather than burying these in a blog, they have chosen to take a specific content type (Expert Advice) and build it into its own resource hub. This will help them with both technical SEO (through improved internal linking) as well as content strategy and organic visibility (through improved content organization and topical hubs).
So, the next time you are thinking about placing another piece of content in your blog, consider if building out a resource hub would be a more effective long term strategy for your company and content.
If you would like advice on content strategy from our team, don’t hesitate to reach out. You can email us at [email protected] for more information.