topic Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018 in Content Strategy & SEO

[Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Jeffrey — Mon, 05 Feb 2018 14:02:28 GMT

Hi All,

Jeffrey from the product marketing team at HubSpot here. We’re planning to sunset the Keywords tool within HubSpot this year, and I wanted to start a discussion here about why and answer any of your questions.

For a full timeline and background information, I recommend reading this post.

That said, here are 3 high-level reasons we’re sunsetting the Keywords tool:

Search has moved beyond just Keywords. Search engines now base results on user intent and topics, and our exact match keywords tool was not ideal for telling you what to write about, or how you were doing.
Rank is not a proxy for success. Many of the marketers that I speak with still want to “rank better” or “rank #1” for their content. While those aspirations are commendable, the fact is there is no consistency in search and back in 2011 Adam Lesnik, a Google search evangelist at the time, said that “rank checking is largely overrated and a gross waste of time.” It’s clear based on the personalization of search by localization, individual, device, and more than rank is becoming an irrelevant metric and is not a measure of success. Instead, we believe you should focus on attracting actual visitors, leads, and customers.
Content Strategy is a new SEO tool that can help set you up for success. The topic cluster model works. We’ve seen a remarkable increase in traffic at HubSpot, and customers like IDS Agency, Townsend Security, and others have also experienced remarkable success. This tool not only helps you plan what to write, but also helps structure content in a way that is optimized for search engines and humans alike, and gives you insight into how many visitors, leads, and customers you are generating.

With that said, let me know if you have any questions or concerns. I’ll try to hop into this thread throughout the next few days to answer questions.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Phil_Vallender — Fri, 09 Mar 2018 09:03:58 GMT

Hi @Jeffrey

Thanks for inviting a discussion on this.

While I understand the challenges HubSpot has had with the keyword tool, and I agree that search has changed dramatically in favour of localised and personalised results, I'm sad that the keyword tool is leaving HubSpot altogether.

I know I can not affect this decision, I don't intend to try, but I do believe that there is value in a keyword research tool within HubSpot for its users - even in an era when topics, pillar pages and content clusters are the path to success.

Afterall, topics are simply head terms, or short-tail keywords. But what we still see time and time again is that businesses can fall into a trap of choosing the wrong topics. Internal language often differs from buyer language and egos result in the use of brand names over search terms, meaning a content strategy could easily miss the mark. As an agency, we often have to educate our client on this.

Keyword research that combines search volume, difficulty and an indication of current and competitor rank, combined with some lateral thought, can help users to select the right topics to go after.

I whole heartedly agree with the topics and content clusters approach to SEO. In fact we've be operating along those lines for some time. But keyword data helps us to ensure the success of that approach.

Of course, we can go and get data from other suppliers, but it was nice to use HubSpot as a one-stop-shop.

Oh, and I thought it was interesting that in that case study on IDS, there is a screenshot of their first page Google ranking as a measure of success 😉

Here at Blend we absolutly love HubSpot; the product, the people, and the company. And this will not change that. But I wanted to share some thoughts with you.

Cheers, Phil.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Jeffrey — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 03:28:10 GMT

Phil - this is an excellent point and a great place to jump into a discussion. As you correctly state "Keyword research that combines search volume, difficulty and an indication of current and competitor rank, combined with some lateral thought, can help users to select the right topics to go after” we agree.

The problem is, our own Keywords tool has had its limitations in tracking rank and difficulty for some time, so much so that a significant number of partners and users have elected to use their own keyword tracking tool of choice (SEMrush for example) on top of the Content Strategy framework. We see this in feedback and declining usage of the Keywords tool. Because we want to deliver the unique value of topical performance over time so marketers can understand the true impact of their content (since we built on top of our own CRM and reporting platform) we are 100% are in favor of turning to solutions specifically tailored to keyword research for that job.

Finally, we will definitely continue to explore and build new and innovative ways to connect topic discovery to content efficacy within the Content Strategy tool. That way, HubSpot can still be a one-stop-shop for planning, validating, executing and measuring your content marketing. In full transparency, this update gives us the focus to build something remarkable for the next 20 years of SEO, rather than the next couple. Thanks again for the discussion and feedback.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

JohnNiggl — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 07:57:48 GMT

Hi @Jeffrey,

I share Phil's sentiments about Hubspot choosing to discontinue the Keywords tool.

From the perspective of a direct consumer, rather than an agency, keyword ranking continues to play a decisive role in stearing our content campaigns in the right direction. Similar to Phil, we use keyword metrics, in large part, to ensure we're using the right language in our content--both in terms of what our personas are searching for and ranking competition.

Keyword strategy goes very much "hand-in-hand" with our topic cluster strategy we've used. And to say topic clusters signal the end of keyword strategy doesn't match my experience seeing both work well together in practice.

I've not seen issues with the accuracy of keyword reporting from Hubspot. And I'd remind users that Hubspot claims to get their data directly from SEMRush--it says so explicitly in the tool. So I'd reconsider switching to that service if you had doubts about Hubspot's reporting accuracy.

One free tool I used before adopting Hubspot is SEO Centro keywork rank checker. I found it to be very similar in data when compared with Hubspot's tool about 1.5 years ago.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Bri_Stauffer — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 17:30:30 GMT

Hi @Jeffrey - While I share the sentiments of others who find the keyword tool's simplicity helpful, and am frustrated with the generalization that a keyword based approach is no longer relevant, I have a few specific things to bring up:

1. How will this impact the optimization information on pages and blog posts? I know right now that is linked with the keyword tool. Will the optimization feature still exist once keywords are removed from HubSpot?

2. The Content Strategy Topic Clusters (a tool I have been mostly happy with so far) often runs extremely slow. With this push to get more people to use it, I hope the devs are working to make that tool run better.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Bri

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

JohnMorgan — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 15:03:43 GMT

Jeffrey,

Like the others I can't say I'm happy about this decision. It's like a good friend enthusiastically announcing that he is dropping out of medical school to go live in a commune and grow organic pineapples or something. He's very excited about the change. He provides all sorts of rationalizations for his decision, but you're left thinking, "Hmm, I don't think that's really a good decision and I'm having a hard time telling him that I support him."

Specifically, I never really noticed any issues with the keyword information that Hubspot was providing. It seemed to be pretty accurate to me and gave me an understanding of how some of our content was performing. Occasionally I would run keyword searches to verify the information provided and it seemed to match what was being reported. For instance one of our e-guides changed our search results for a particular keyword phrase from about 40 to #3. I could do the search myself and verify that information. To me that sort of data was very valuable.

OTOH, if I go to my topic clusters I see that topic cluster A has increased search volume of 22% versus last month, but I don't know how you reached this conclusion. Had those pages all existed and not been connected together by hyperlinks would they (as a whole) have had the same traffic? Is the mere act of linking them together in a cohesive format the sole reason for this reported increase in performance or did one of the pages simply creep up in search results on its own and up the volume for the topic cluster as a whole?

I simply don't find this data to be as useful and actionable as the keyword data.

So, Jeffrey, quit medical school if you must, but I don't support your decision. Sorry.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

seanpomory — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 15:22:43 GMT

Phil,

I completely agree with your points. I find that the KW tool in HubSpot, even if not the most accurate, provides illuminating color to my research and topic ideas. If the topic clusters are supposed to be doing that, I don't feel they do it well yet.

I take issue with one of the screen shots as well. Adam Lasnik specifically states that he doesn't, "speak for Google officially in this area anymore." This indicates that he wasn't Google's rep for quite sometime seven years ago. This is not what the post indicates in the sentence that immediately follows, "This image is important because even 7 years ago Google was directly telling us we shouldn't focus on rank." (emphasis mine).

Google wasn't telling us rank checking was a waste of time. An employee at Google was sharing his personal experience and thoughts.

I hope that HubSpot reconsiders their decision, or gives us more information on what they'll be doing in the future. This is quite disappointing for a new customer.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

jc — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 16:14:32 GMT

Bottom line is we PLAN content strategy by topic clusters but we MEASURE it with keywords. I feel Hubspot is using the wrong narrative to justify a rather questionable change.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

ashleywr — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 17:45:43 GMT

I totally get and agree with the premise of this decision. However... it feels like a decision that was made based more on philosophical ideals than practicality, if that makes sense?

First, a large majority of the arguments made here are very focused on a B2C audience. There aren't going to be a ton of manufacturing prospects searching for "manufacturing near me"... while I'm sure it happens, that's not really the be-all-end-all of B2B marketing.

Second, the decision to COMPLETELY remove an in-house keyword research tool seems just... odd(?) for a platform that sells itself as a fully integrated marketing tool. We're even being directed to use third party sources to replace this thing that was a part of HubSpot? Odd.

Finally, while best practice isn't to define your marketing by keywords, the data provides helpful direction for choosing topics. It kind of feels like someone taking your glasses and telling you to "feel your way around in the world" instead. Why? Because we feel it will make the world a better place.

I'm a bit frustrated by this decision for a number of reasons... As you can tell. We'll all get over it eventually, but man this seems like such a wacky decision.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

TRowe — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 23:11:14 GMT

Hi Phil,

I wanted to offer a solution to you and anyone else that repsonded here that they were upset by this descion. Like you, we are an agency partner, and while we have been implementing content pillars, cluster topics etc for a while now, it is still important to us and our clients that we track and measure progress.

For that reason, we have created our own technology called Clickx.

We have been moving all of our clients KW data over to Clickx, in order to track rankings and additional SEO data at the page level.

To be clear - this is not a replacement for HubSpot, but it will replace (and improve) the way you are currently tracking keywords and on-site seo data.

As I mentioned, we are a hubspot partner - so we built Clickx with hubspot in mind, in an attempt to supplement what HubSpot had to offer.

We can offer these SEO tools, including the keyword tracker to agencies, as well as users. Please let me know if you are interested in learning more about features, pricing etc.

Thanks,

Taylor

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

TRowe — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 23:20:25 GMT

JC -

I responded to Phil's comment as well but here is some information that I thought you'd find valuable.

Like you, we are an agency partner, and believe it is still important to track and measure progress.

For that reason, we have created our own technology called Clickx.

We have been moving all of our clients KW data over to Clickx, in order to track rankings and additional SEO data at the page level. We have also implemented features that we know are important to SEOs like, ranking updates daily instead of weekly, geo-modifying search results, keyword tagging or grouping, backlink analysis, and in depth competitor tracking.

We can offer these SEO tools, including the keyword tracker, to agencies, as well as users. Please let me know if you are interested in learning more about features, pricing etc.

Thanks,

Taylor

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

global22 — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 23:27:24 GMT

Hello All,

I have been a Hubspot user since 2009. I am disappointed and confounded by the announcement that Hubspot is removing the keyword tool. I cannot see any reason why the tool cannot be left intact with a reminder that cluster architecture and AI rule the day.

Anyone who is serious about SEO understands the proper way to deliver content and wouldn't solely rely on old-school keyword stuffing, etc. If agencies are still using SEMRush to investigate keyword rank it indicates that keyword volume and difficulty is relevant.

If you look at competitive platforms to Hubspot you will see that they have not discredited their keyword tool and make it part of their offering.

My vote is to continue educating your users about the state of SEO and let your users use the tool as they see fit. What is the harm in leaving our beloved Keyword Tool?

Who is with me on this?

Thanks

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Simone — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 23:30:01 GMT

It is really disappointing to hear about this decision. While we do plan content around pillar pages and topic clusters, the keyword tool helps us decide what topics we should write about and ensure we are developing our content with the right language and terms for our readers. Furthermore, it provides us with a way to measure the performance of our content and relay it to our clients in an easy and understandable way. Honestly, the keyword tool played a major role in why we chose HubSpot and perhaps we will have to look elsewhere.

Time for Changes in SEO Tools

jmiddlebrook — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 23:35:14 GMT

Team,

Your current tool for META suggests under 170 characters for META description. Moz has recently published an article that up to 300 can be included so we may want to revisit this and make some changes in gradeing sites.

https://moz.com/blog/how-long-should-your-meta-description-be-2018

Thanks

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Jeffrey — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 11:29:21 GMT

Hi All,

Thank you for the feedback. I want to take a few minutes and try to address all of your points.

Before that though, I want to be clear at HubSpot we are not saying that keywords are no longer relevant, in fact, a topic is generally made up of hundreds or even thousands of individual long-tail keywords. Indeed, part of the difficulty with this transition has been keeping keywords as a function to a higher standard, while deprecating the Keywords tool.

That said, @jc summarized it well that keywords are primarily used to plan what to write and then measure the success of content. In order to cover all of your feedback and comments we’ll break this down slightly further into planning what to write, validating what to write about, executing that you are on the right track, and finally measuring how you are doing. We’ll dive into each of these in more detail below.

Planning

The product updates blog post, and numerous other research and resources across the web have talked about how a keyword-based approach is no longer as effective as it once was. One of those reasons can be seen within our own customer base. Many Keywords tool users end up spending hours of time first finding the right list of keywords (from outside of HubSpot to begin with), gathering about 300 or so that may or may not be relevant to their business, and attempting to writing blog posts for each. That takes a lot of time and energy and scatters content across numerous topics that don’t provide a clear signal to Google (or your prospective customers) what your business is an authority on or should be known for. With the move to focus on topics first, we can start with a topic a business wants to be known for in a planned and straightforward manner that is not spread across numerous keywords. By starting to answer a question, “what does your business want to be known for?” the answer to that question is likely a core topic, and Content Strategy can help you holistically plan around that topic, and suggest additional topics that relate to longer-tail keywords.

Validating

Next, you need to validate the terms you’ve chosen will be competitive, relevant, and popular enough to spend time creating content on. Admittedly, this is where the Keywords tools shines at first. For example, you could log into Keywords and get information on difficulty, search volume, and more in a simple format as many here have mentioned. That’s hard to find across other Keyword tool vendors largely because it’s simplifying a lot out of the equation for search in 2018. The Keywords tool has unfortunately not been able to reliably get non-SEMRush data for some time, the data that comprises difficulty and rank.

As we continue to work on being the one-stop-shop in Content Strategy (which currently gives you Monthly Search Volume, Relevancy, and Domain authority) we recommend using a tool like SEMrush to conduct keyword research validation within an overall topic should you find more information necessary.

Executing

Once you have planned and validated content, it’s time to actually start writing. This is where the SEO optimization panel that integrated with Keywords comes-in. Within this panel, we would ask for Keywords and then recommend using it numerous times through the page, and other on-page SEO advice -- much of which is outdated.

If we wind the clock back 8-10 years ago it would be common for marketers to choose a keyword and then sprinkle the exact same term through a post to signal to Google the page was relevant for that term. Today though, Google no longer operates like that or evaluates results using the same criteria.

We are in the process of rebuilding the SEO optimization panel now and will release it to all customers as soon as possible. This new version will refocus on incorporating topics, and ensuring that content fits into your overall topic cluster. This, combined with SEO recommendations in the actual topic cluster editor, allows for clearer “next steps” then the Keyword tool currently does; add in the execution play of creating pillar pages/internal links and that’s where we start to see customers displaying measurable increases in quality and quantity of traffic.

Measuring

We all know that since late 2013 Google has encrypted search results, which means that we no longer get specific data on which keywords people are searching for, and clicking on to land on our site. So, the Keywords tool and even Sources report diverged from measuring exactly what content brought what leads, and ultimately customers.

In place of this, many people have turned to rank as a measure of success. And yes, we have used it as well at HubSpot.

But the fact is, with the localization and personalization of search today rank is simply not a metric that we should solely define success on. One study showed that there is 0% consistency in rank. In addition, there have been numerous articles around the problems with rank tracking like this one, and even a Whiteboard Friday from Rand Fishkin.

While this is hardly a black and white issue, we do strongly believe that measuring the success your content by what topics generated sessions, leads, and ultimately customers is a more future-proof approach. This is possible today with Content Strategy, and we are investing more into in the future as well to clearly display the efficacy of the content generated across a marketing teams efforts - all efforts - not just blog posts and website pages!

Answers to a few other questions…

What about the SEO optimization panel within Website Pages, Landing Pages, and Blog?

We’re in the process of refreshing this panel now and plan to release a refreshed version shortly. The new version will focus more on topics and linking your content into topic clusters within Content Strategy, while also recommending on-page best practices.

I see that topic cluster A has increased search volume of 22% versus last month, how did you reach this conclusion?

There are two parts to this. The act of internally linking numerous pages/posts back to a central topic-based pillar page can in-fact increase your visibility in search results. This ties back directly to the execution step discussed earlier. When you look at two case studies from IDS Agency, and Townsend Security, these are both customers that have been creating content for a considerate amount of time now and when they adopted this approach have seen a remarkable increase in traffic.

The second part is that we are tracking traffic to any post, or page, within the topic cluster. The actual report that displays this change in sessions is the Topic Clusters report found in Reports > Analytics tools > Traffic Analytics.

Here are also some additional resources around this:

I hope this helps. I and the team here at HubSpot know this transition isn’t easy so my hope is that the context here describes how we’re thinking about SEO and supporting all customers, partners, and ourselves for the next generation of content creation.

If you have any other questions let me know. The product team and many others are listening and appreciate the feedback. Thank you.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Onur — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 12:14:05 GMT

Such a shame,

I agree with the topics and content clusters approach to SEO.

This is the whole premise of longtail and Latent semantic SEO. However, keyword data keeps everyone honest and helps us to ensure the success of that approach.

Proper Keyword research and tracking when cross-referenced with Content clusters combine search volume, difficulty and provides both a benchmark and an indication of current and competitor rank.

This is essential to selecting the topics to go after. Without the Keyword tool we will be forced to go elsewhere for this data.

It was nice to hold everything within HubSpot as a one stop shop.

Here at Commino, we base all content not just on Persona interest by search interest for the topics. Using the Keyword tool allows us to write content using the same words that our audience uses to identify with that topic.

Onur

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

jmiddlebrook — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 13:37:52 GMT

Jeffrey,

First of all thanks for all you do there at HubSpot. I too have to echo with most of the folks on this post and reflect my frustrations with this change. I have been using your platform for almost 5 years now, both in a large agency setting and a small, my own.

For the larger agencies, I would imagine this means little to them. They have 5-10 extra tools that they pay for on top of HubSpot. Tools for billing, tools for spidering web site data, tools for task and project management, tools for data agregation and reporting, tools for web analytics, tools for advertising, etc, etc. They pack those fees into their client billable and margins.

However, for the smaller agencies, these tools that you offer that may feel insignificant, aren't. Another tool for a small agency to purchase and drop another $100-$300/mo. We can't go to our clients that, that are also all HubSpot clients, and tell them we are raising our prices for this change, at least not after they all re-signed in January.

On the practicality side of this, I agree with what most have said. Keyword ranking and keyword data, does not matter like it did in the past and I applaud the content strategy tool, it's coming along. However it is almost 30 days of an initial onboarding for us. We need a baseline and starting point and the keyword tool is just that. At the root of all success is qualified traffic, when I build a solid content and keyword strategy, and see a 90% increase in traffic in year one and a double in sales for that same client, don't tell me that keywords aren't as important.

The bigger question is when does your product team wakeup one morning and decide social is dead, use Hootsuite? When do they decide email is no longer a effective and chat is better, move to Mailchimp for email?

I think this change is bigger, personally. You've had a message on the keyword tool for months about data inaccuracy, I believe this is related to money, sorry. On a side note, if you want to drop our portal fees to reflect a third party cost, that is really the only way to make this feel any better.

Regards,

John

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Kt — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 15:38:03 GMT

This is bittersweet for me. Asking me to log into another source for reporting/reference takes time away from maximizing HS's fullest potential for our business.

Squirrel....

The more time I'm logged into another systems, I won't be logged into HS.

Suggestion: If there is enough interest, perhaps a roundtable at Inboud this year?

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Jeffrey — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 16:27:37 GMT

Hi @Simone - Thanks for the feedback. I think there may be some answers in my reply above (here's a direct link), but I wanted to specifically reply here to address your concerns about measuring performance and communicating it with clients.

While rank is an easy way to visually see success, it's not a direct proxy for success. If I wrote a post that ranked #1, but ultimately got very little traffic and did not generate leads or customers, then by my definition that's not a win. Instead, if I track the views/sessions, leads, and customers generated from that content then I can speak directly to the value it's providing. By setting up topic clusters in Content Strategy you can use the new Traffic Analytics report to see this exact information.

Hope this helps.

Re: [Discussion] Sunsetting the Keywords Tool in 2018

Jeffrey — Thu, 08 Feb 2018 17:01:57 GMT

Thanks for the comment and feedback, @jmiddlebrook. I'll try to answer some of your points below:

Cost of tools:

I, and the team, at HubSpot certainly understand there is a cost to dedicated SEO tools that may not be feasible for everyone. As mentioned in my response above (direct link here), I think the Content Strategy tool can help you plan content to create, execute on that content, and measure the success of that content via Traffic Analytics. That said, if you are looking to validate keywords via rank tracking or deep keyword research there are a number of inexpensive tools on the market, like AccuRanker and ranktracker.

Importance of Keywords:

I want to be clear at HubSpot we are not saying that keywords are no longer relevant, in fact, a topic is generally made up of hundreds or even thousands of individual long-tail keywords. Indeed, part of the difficulty with this transition has been keeping keywords as a function to a higher standard, while deprecating the Keywords tool.

That said, we believe that marketers and agencies should now look to measure the success of content based on metrics like sessions, leads, and customers generated rather than individual keyword data like rank.

Hope this helps.