How we created a content hub to send sales, traffic and search visibility soaring

When looking to purchase timber products, most people have many questions and queries. Perfect for exploring and answering by creating useful content — particularly as Google is increasingly rewarding websites that provide users with helpful information.

But to outrank competitors and bring people to the Duffield website, the content we created needed to be highly targeted, informative, engaging — better than anything out there, in a nutshell.

To get in front of Duffield’s target audiences — home improvers, architects and designers — we knew we needed to delve deep with keyword and topic research, getting behind the searches.

What language are customers using when looking for Duffield’s products? What content do these people consume before deciding to purchase? What topics, sub-topics and themes did we need to explore?

Rather than relying on a conventional blog, we created a content hub focused around key topics that guides users through relevant information with a clearly defined structure.

Connecting the pages in this way helped to build the semantic relationships between them, improve topic authority in Google's eyes, and unlike blogs where content gets buried deeper and deeper into the site over time, a content hub helps surface important content to the top of the site.

The result? Perfectly-structured, highly-informative, search-optimised content. Each page we created satisfies user search intent and establishes Duffield as a trustworthy, authoritative voice in their industry.

Take just one example of the sort of user-first content we created. With prices for Western Red Cedar climbing drastically, it's no longer a viable cladding species choice for some customers running a tight budget.

Our blog — discussing the topic of Western Red Cedar alternatives — is a top-ranking piece of content, currently holding a featured snippet and responsible for many enquiries.

Year-on-year organic traffic has almost quadrupled, with the content hub directly responsible for over over 700 enquiries in one six-month period.

That’s all as a result of Duffield’s excellent search engine visibility for the queries that their customers are performing, with many pieces of content holding that coveted featured snippet top spot for important, sales-driving searches.

The best part? We’re just getting started!