Affiliate Site Hub Pages: What Goes on One and How to Write It
Every affiliate site structure post, including ours, says to build a hub page for each topic. Fewer say what one looks like, and the result is a lot of sites where the "hub" is a WordPress category archive with a two-line description. That isn't a hub, Google doesn't treat it as one, and the cluster underneath it has no centre.
This post is the hub page itself: what it is and isn't, the five sections it needs, how long it should be, where the links go, what keyword it targets, and how to keep it current as guides are added. It fills in the part of the site-structure post that said "build a hub" and moved on.
The short answer
A hub is a written page for the head term of a topic. It opens with who the topic is for, explains how to choose in a few hundred words, lists every guide on the site for the topic with a line on who each one serves, names the top picks across the cluster, and answers three or four questions.
It links down to every guide and review, across to the other hubs, and every guide links back up to it. Start it short in week one and grow it as the cluster fills.
Why an archive isn't a hub
A category archive lists posts by date, with no text and no order. It changes every time you publish, it says nothing about the topic, and the links on it carry no context. Google reads it as navigation, the same as a tag page, and rarely ranks it for anything.
A hub is the opposite on every count: written by you, ordered by what the reader needs, stable in structure, and with every link in a sentence that explains it. The reader who lands on it from "bike lights" finds out in thirty seconds which of your twelve guides is theirs. That's the job.
The five sections
| Section | Length | Job |
|---|---|---|
| Who this is for and what's here | 100 to 150 words | Orient the reader; name the topic in the first sentence |
| How to choose | 300 to 600 words | The three or four decisions that split the category (use, budget, size, feature) |
| The guides, by reader | One line per guide | Route each reader to the right guide |
| Top picks across the cluster | 3 to 5 products | The short answer, with tagged links |
| Questions | 3 to 4 | The People Also Ask questions for the head term |
1. Who this is for
A short opening that names the topic, says who the site's guides serve, and tells the reader what's on the page. Not a history of the category. "This is our bike lights hub: guides for commuters, night riders and mountain bikers, how to choose between them, and the lights we'd buy first."
2. How to choose
The heart of the page. Walk through the three or four decisions that split the category, and for each one say which guide handles which answer. "Riding in traffic or on unlit roads? Traffic wants a light to be seen by; unlit roads want a light to see with, and those are different guides."
This section is what makes the hub rank for the head term, because it's the content a searcher of "bike lights" who hasn't narrowed down yet actually needs.
3. The guides, by reader
Every buyer guide in the cluster, as a link with one line on who it's for. Group them if there are more than eight (by use, then by budget). This is the section that makes the hub a hub: the only page on the site that links to all of them, with context on each.
4. Top picks across the cluster
Three to five products that are the top picks of the main guides, with a sentence each and a tagged button. This gives the reader who wants the short answer somewhere to click, and it's where the hub's own commission comes from. Keep it short; the guides do the comparing.
5. Questions
Three or four from People Also Ask for the head term, answered in two or three sentences each, with a link to the guide or post that goes deeper. FAQ markup is fine here.
Which keyword it targets
The head term, plain: "bike lights", "air purifiers", "standing desks". You probably won't rank first for it; that's fine. The hub's ranking value is mostly in making the guides beneath it rank, by being the page that links to all of them with the topic in every anchor. If it also picks up some "bike lights guide" and "how to choose bike lights" traffic, that's a bonus.
Where the links go
- Down to every guide, from the guides section, with the guide's keyword in the anchor.
- Down to reviews, from the top picks section, where a review exists.
- Across to the other hubs, once, at the end, for a site with several topics.
- Up from every guide, in the first few paragraphs, with the topic as the anchor. This is the link most sites forget; the internal linking post covers the wording.
- From the navigation: the hub is what the menu item for the topic points at, not the archive.
Starting small and growing it
In week one of a new topic the hub has two guides to link to and a how-to-choose section written from what you know. Publish it anyway; it's the page the first guides link up to, and Google needs it to exist.
Then, each time a guide goes live, add its line to the guides section and, if its top pick is strong, update the top picks. At the end of the first quarter rewrite the opening and the how-to-choose section with everything the guides taught you.
The content calendar post has that rewrite in weeks 11 and 12.
Hubs go stale faster than guides, because every new guide changes them. A hub that's missing its three newest guides is a cluster with three orphans.
Mistakes
- Making it a buyer guide. Ten product sections on the hub, competing with the guides under it. The hub routes; the guides compare.
- Making it a listicle of links. No how-to-choose section, so it's an archive with a different URL.
- Letting the menu point at the archive. The hub gets no navigation link and the archive gets all of them.
- Never updating it. See above.
Doing it with AffSERP
The hub is the one page in a cluster that AffSERP doesn't generate from product data, because it's written from your view of the category rather than from a product list.
What it needs from AffSERP is the cluster beneath it: the Keyword Grouping tool gives you the guides-by-reader list before the guides exist, and the X Best Review tool writes each guide with its top pick named, which is where the hub's top picks section comes from.
Write the hub with the Informational Article tool as a starting draft if you want the how-to-choose section roughed out, then make it yours.
FAQ
What is a hub page on an affiliate site?
A written page about one topic that introduces it, explains how to choose, and links to every buyer guide and review on the site for that topic, each with a line on who it's for. It targets the head term ('bike lights') and is the page Google sees as the centre of the cluster.
Is a WordPress category page a hub page?
No. A category archive is an automatically generated list of posts by date with no text, no reasoning, and no order. Google treats it as navigation. A hub is a page you wrote, with a point of view and a deliberate structure, that happens to link to the same posts.
How long should a hub page be?
1,200 to 2,000 words once the cluster is full; shorter at the start. It's not a buyer guide, so it doesn't need ten product sections. It needs enough to introduce the topic, explain how to choose, list the guides with a line each, and name the top picks.
Should the hub page have affiliate links?
A few, on the top picks section, with the tag. The hub's job is to route readers to the right guide, and most of its clicks should be internal. Three or four product links at the end for readers who want the short answer are enough.
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