topic Re: Blog topic best practices in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Blog topic best practices

dbarbara — Sun, 22 Jan 2017 21:59:07 GMT

Hi,

A client has defined blog topics along with sub-topics, and also wants to assign more than one topic per post. Are HubSpot blog best practices to assign just one topic per post, or are two or more topics common?

Also, I haven't found answers in the documentation for these other questions:

- is there a way to nest topics?

- is there a way to add labels to blog posts? (this would be a great solution)

It would be ideal to be able to refer the client to a Best Practics for defining blog topics in the documentation. Any links or other input would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

Re: Blog topic best practices

Phil_Vallender — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 09:25:20 GMT

Hi dbarbara,

Good questions.

There isn't really much in the way of topic best practice, espeically in the HubSpot context.

Many clients create complex topic structures becuase that's what WordPress has encourged them to do with Categories and Tags in the past.

In HubSpot curently, topics can only have one layer, so it is not possible to nest topics.

Assigning multiple topcis to a single blog post is fine - that post will simply appear on the topic page for both topics.

FYI - you currently can not edit topic pages, hence they do not contain any unique content and are therefore unlikely to provide any significant SEO benefit.

There is no label component in HubSpot but, with development knowledge, you can of course display topics on the post layout somewhere, which may achieve the result you are looking for.

Hope this helps.

Re: Blog topic best practices

dbarbara — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 14:13:04 GMT

Thanks so much! This is exactly the confirmation I needed.

And yes, the client is coming over from WordPress, and what they really want is a category/topic AND a tag/label structure. They are basing their categories on input from the SEO member of the team, so your comment below is particularly helpful:

FYI - you currently can not edit topic pages, hence they do not contain any unique content and are therefore unlikely to provide any significant SEO benefit.

As the designers/developers, we have to send information back upstream that HubSpot has a flat category structure. Hopefully, they adjust their direction on the UI for categories based on that.

Thanks again,

Barbara

Re: Blog topic best practices

Jess_171 — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 20:12:07 GMT

As a content strategist, I really worry about the impact of having no nesting or layed topics. Perhaps this is simpler for the audience, but it does seem like it's going to make it flat.

Re: Blog topic best practices

Phil_Vallender — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 08:06:13 GMT

Hi Jess,

I agree that a content strategy needs strcuture, but what's your worry in the context of the user?

Regards, Phil.

Re: Blog topic best practices

Jess_171 — Sat, 29 Apr 2017 23:30:46 GMT

Hey Phil!

Thanks for asking!

My biggest concern is my readers not finding what they want fast enough by not having enough topics categorized. The problem with our old blog was that readers had to go from page to page to page (annoying for them I can imagine), unless they clicked on a tag that they saw and liked. Technically we had pages as well, but it was limited - for example - in case studies, there was no way for someone to find a case study vertical fast if they were looking for a specific one.

That would be something that I wish Hubspot could do. We were able however to create a topics page, like the Hubspot blog has, so I'm hoping that will definitely help. I'm going to start monitoring. Nesting topics and giving heirarchy seems like it would also provide us more detialed information on what they were looking for, but perhaps I'll be able to see this with the info from cookies. We are still new to Hubspot after all!

Jess

Re: Blog topic best practices

Phil_Vallender — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 20:59:22 GMT

Hey @Jess_171

I don't tend to worry about complex topic structures as I find that most visitors don't use them to discover content. I suppose this is because topics don't answer a specific question, whereas a Google search will.

Case studies are a different matter and do benefit from being filterable, by vertical for instance, but a single layer of topics is normally sufficient for this.

Monitoring what your visitors do is a great idea. I suggest using Hotjar heatmaps/recordings as well as Google Analytics and Page Performance in HubSpot.

Good luck 🙂

Re: Blog topic best practices

lulupearse — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 10:51:25 GMT

Is there such a thing as having too many / too little blog topics?

Re: Blog topic best practices

Phil_Vallender — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 11:06:24 GMT

Hi @lulupearse

No, I don't think so. The right number of blog topics depends on your application.

If topics are used, they are normally present as a navigational aid to help people discover content (though I'm not convinced this works). If this is the case, I think it is important that the layout can display the full list of topics - often not the case.

When topics are in use like this, I tend to apply the same rataonale as I would to other navigation design - the minimumm number that still achieves the vistor's objectives being best. To that end, I would normally recommend sticking to 5 or 6 key topics.

This is all in the context of B2B marketing websites of course, not ecommerce stores on online publications.

Hope this helps.

Re: Blog topic best practices

prince — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 12:32:41 GMT

@Hubspot this is a feature that will be very useful for us

Re: Blog topic best practices

aniek_2 — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 13:50:41 GMT

I would love to have this feature available.

We use the blog structure for our resources page.

It would be very usefull if the user can filter on f.e. industry + type of content, and it combines the filters in the search results. The tags should really work like a filter, not linking to a seperate page as it is right now.

When the content on a website is increasing, filters are very useful for the user experience.

Re: Blog topic best practices

Phil_Vallender — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 15:11:44 GMT

Hi @aniek_2

While a blog can work well for a simple resources centre, for a more complex one I would strongly recommend using HubDB. With a HubDB table, you can create multiple columns of metadata that can work as multiple filters.

Hope that helps.

Re: Blog topic best practices

awwaldesign — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 20:53:02 GMT

Hi @Phil_Vallender,

I'm really late to this thread but I'm creating something similar for my Resources page. Can you please explain how do I do that with HubDB. I can create a table with all the information but how do use it to create multi-layered filters?

I'd really appreciate if you help me out 🙂 I'm kinda stuck.

Something like this?