How to construct a site around hubs

overhaul of site architecture

[lonestarkitty]

Which is better....creating a site where every page that is one step away from the index page is optimized for a keyword and having articles that link to all secondary pages....or....creating hubs around each 'secondary page' with content related to that topic?
Can someone give an example of a website that does this well? Thank you

[mack]

Unfortunately we cant share examples as per TOS. I will try to offer some opinions though.

I think it can work in both ways, depending on how competitive an area you are targeting.

Lets assume you have a homepage with very general info about your niche, then on your first level pages you have specific info about a certain area of your niche. As we move down the directory structure we are getting more and more specific.

What you will probably find is that the further down you go the easier it is to get your pages to rank, this is because they are ultra specific to one specific area of your niche.

In a situation like this I would recommend using breadcrumb navigating to allow bots to fully index your directory structure. This will also greatly help your users locate the exact info they are looking for.

Mack.

[httpwebwitch]

You're asking about information architecture.

Some topics are wide and shallow. Others are narrow and deep. A dictionary or glossary is an example of the wide & shallow shape; and a blog usually has only one level beneath the home page - a big load of single uncategorized posts.

A site about american history or house repair would go down many many levels from general to very specific.

The most in-depth content sites I have run 7 levels deep in their architecture. I have one that dips into an 8th level for a few pages. Most are 3 or 4 levels deep, and that is average for most topics. Very few are only 2 levels deep - and these are almost invariably "dictionary-esque" kinds of sites.

Deeply organized topics do very well with hierarchical & breadcrumb navigation, while for the very large shallow sites the ability to search is essential. Including both in your navigation is a good idea.

It's a little misleading to say that shallow sites won't rank as well... it's not the shape of the navigation architecture that matters, it's the configuration of relevantly interlinked pages that is the hallmark of excellent SEO. Having a deeply organized site just makes it easier to create that rich link structure because it's intuitively built into the navigation links.