How to Fix: Hub and spoke model

Hub and spoke model is a medium-priority check in the Internal Site Architecture category. It will not make or break you this week, but it is one of those structural decisions that quietly compounds: get it right and every new article you publish makes the whole site stronger.

What this check is really about

The hub-and-spoke model — also called topic clusters or pillar-and-cluster — is a way of organising content so that one comprehensive “hub” page covers a broad topic, and a set of focused “spoke” articles each cover a sub-topic in depth. The hub links out to every spoke, and every spoke links back to the hub. Done properly, it tells search engines you have genuine depth on a subject, not one thin page.

The check is looking for that structure: are your related articles connected into clusters with a clear central page, or are they a flat pile of posts that never reference each other? A site where fifty articles about the same topic never link to one another is leaving its strongest ranking signal on the floor.

Why the internal links do the heavy lifting

Internal links are how authority flows through your site and how Google understands which page is the definitive answer for a topic. When ten well-written spokes all point at one hub, they concentrate relevance on that hub — which is why pillar pages tend to rank for competitive head terms the individual spokes never could. The spokes, in turn, catch the long-tail searches. It is a division of labour, and the links are the wiring that makes it work.

The mistake I would warn you off is building the structure once and never maintaining it. A cluster is a living thing: every new spoke needs to be wired into the hub the day it publishes, or it becomes an orphan that benefits nothing.

How to fix this in WordPress

Difficulty Level: MEDIUM – This fix requires some technical knowledge or familiarity with WordPress settings and plugins.

Estimated Time: varies

1. Map your existing content into topics. Group everything you have already published by subject and identify, for each group, which page is (or should be) the hub.
2. Build or designate a pillar page for each topic — a comprehensive overview that introduces every sub-topic and links out to the spoke that covers it in full.
3. Go back through every spoke and add a contextual link up to its hub, using descriptive anchor text (the topic, not “click here”).
4. Cross-link related spokes where it genuinely helps the reader, but keep the hub as the centre of gravity.
5. Make it a publishing rule: no new article goes live without being linked into its cluster in both directions.

Recommended Tools & Plugins

• Yoast SEO – Comprehensive SEO plugin with built-in checks
• Rank Math – Feature-rich SEO plugin with detailed analysis
• Google Search Console – Free tool to monitor your site’s search presence
• SEO Roadmap – Complete SEO audit and action plan tool

Common mistakes I see

• Publishing lots of related articles that never link to each other, so no page emerges as the authority.
• Building clusters once and never wiring new posts into them.
• Using generic anchor text that tells Google nothing about the target page’s topic.
• Creating a hub page that is a thin table of contents rather than a genuinely useful overview in its own right.

This guide is part of the SEO Roadmap knowledge base – your complete resource for WordPress SEO optimization.