A Quick HubSpot CMS SEO Guide

Ryan Waters | 5 September 2020

This article looks at the best practices when it comes to optimising your website for visitors and search engines.

There are different thought patterns that you should go through to come up with the right plan. Feel free to click on the links below to take you to the respective section that suits your needs.

  1. Are you looking to develop a brand new website?
  2. Are you looking to migrate your website to the HubSpot CMS Hub?
  3. Are you looking to optimise a website that is already on HubSpot?

I’m looking to build a brand new website


So it’s a brand new website that you are after. You are in the right place. We would always suggest that you consider building out your website on the HubSpot CMS Hub.

There are some significant benefits when it comes to going all-in with HubSpot. However, I’ll try and keep this article to SEO. There are some exceptions to this rule, though mainly when it comes to eCommerce.

HubSpot can be used if you are looking to sell a few small products or services but not ideal if you want to have the full functionality of an online shop.

There is a cool looking app in the marketplace called DepositFix that allows you to accept payments via a HubSpot form.

If you are looking for a full shopping cart experience, we would suggest that you go with any of the options below and integrate them with HubSpot.

  • Shopify
  • WooCommerce
  • BigCommerce
  • Magento

These systems are ideal for eCommerce and become even more powerful when integrated with HubSpot. Allowing you to build incredible experiences for your customers using strong strategy and the automation capabilities.

When it comes to SEO, HubSpot has got you covered by taking care of the technical aspects required to give your website the necessary foundation to perform in today’s market. Some of these features include:

  • Security monitoring and threat detection
  • Content delivery network and custom CDN configuration
  • Standard SSL certificate
  • Site Speed
  • Easy to build out your sitemap for the Google Search Console
  • Easy access to the Robot text file blocking and allowing crawler access
  • On-page SEO recommendations
  • Sitewide SEO recommendations

Struto has built over 100 websites on the HubSpot CMS. Let’s set up a call so we can get an understanding of your requirements and advise you on the best option to reach your objectives.

I’m looking to migrate my website to the HubSpot CMS Hub


Great choice. I highly recommend this and it’s always best to get a team of HubSpot developers to help with this. Migrating websites to HubSpot requires a fair bit of analysis to ensure that you preserve any relevant traffic. Mostly if it has built up some authority and is generating a healthy amount of traffic, if this is the case, we would always suggest that we carry out a website discover to ensure that we set the new site up for success.

We often talk to companies that are looking for a fresh new start, but it is crucial to understand how the current website performs. I have seen traffic stats in the past where the sessions look like they have jumped off a cliff.

With this in mind, it’s essential to understand:

  • What are the pages that are driving traffic from the search results?
  • What are the search terms that your website visitors are using on the search engines and clicking to your website?
  • Where do the contacts go after visiting the web page?
  • Does this traffic generate new leads?
  • Do these pages contain content that is required to help your prospect move through their buyer’s journey?
  • Does the content support a good experience for your prospects, leads and customers?

I guess the moral of the story is, you should always consider your existing content and how it supports your business before looking to create a shiny new website. The Google Search Console helps to uncover some great insights that support some critical thinking for the migration process.

We would always recommend recreating and improving content for the new website.

301 redirects go a long way for preserving traffic but is not a complete solution if it redirects to content that is not relevant to the respective search terms.

Our website discovery service is also a great place to get any SEO recommendations that will need consideration for the new website.

We are coming across more and more companies that are looking to move their website off of WordPress. There are quite a few benefits to doing this. 

I have built quite a few websites on WordPress over the years. I like the ease of use and how it helps you to solve your website SEO challenges. I would always suggest using the WordPress SEO plugin (formally known as Yoast SEO), which has helped me take care of the on-page SEO requirements when crafting your content.

WordPress has its challenges due to the nature of it being open-source, making it susceptible to security challenges. So using WordPress requires that you host your website on an excellent hosting platform, set up a CDN and security plugins to mitigate against the risk of your website site getting hacked. The cost of this (if done right) can hike up your costs of running your WordPress site, making it more favourable to get your website hosted by HubSpot.

I’m looking to optimise my website that is on HubSpot

So you’re all in on HubSpot and you want to get the most out of your investment. HubSpot has a great set of tools to help you carry out a perfect SEO strategy. There are a few pre-checks that I suggest you do in HubSpot.

  1. Take a look at your website’s SEO recommendations (Marketing > Planning and Strategy > SEO). This outlines the sitewide SEO issues that you can work through.
  2. Enable the Search Console Integration in HubSpot to see a list of the search terms that are driving visitors to your website.
    1. Look for pages/blog posts that perform well historically in the search results by looking at entrances and landing pages.
    2. Take a look at the search queries that have generated clicks to the respective page/blog.
    3. Analyse the data over different time ranges to see if any search terms have dropped in rankings leading to fewer clicks
    4. Optimise the blog for best performing search terms and ensure that you include semantic keywords. I like using SEMrush for this exercise.
    5. Try republishing the content, ensuring that you keep the URL the same.
    6. Sit back and monitor the results.
    7. Additional Tip - Monitor the call to action and form submissions to ensure that you are maximising on the traffic.
  3. Analyse your pages & blog content before publishing (It’s ok to revisit and update them based on the recommendations. You will get suggestions such as:
    1. Add image alt text to help the search engines understand what is in the image.
    2. Ensure your images are compressed and optimised for site speed
    3. Add meta descriptions to help potential visitors & search engines to understand the content of the respective web page when found in the search results. 
    4. Add internal links to direct visitors to useful information.
    5. Watch out for redirect chains adding to load speed for links in your content. Try and adjust the respective link to go straight to the final destination URL.
    6. Build out topic clusters and pillar pages. 

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