How HubSpot’s SEO Took a Hit And How to Avoid the Same Mistakes

The big news this week?

HubSpot’s SEO traffic has taken a significant hit. As an industry leader in inbound marketing, HubSpot has long been known for its vast content library and strong search presence. But this drop serves as a reminder: content that has the potential to drive traffic but has limited relevance to your brand, isn't all that valuable. This is a prime example of the “cast your net wide” strategy. For a while, HubSpot’s approach of creating content across a broad spectrum worked. But as search evolves and users become savvier, Google appears to be rewarding content that is more contextually and topically relevant, while deprioritizing content that stretches too far from a site’s core purpose.

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SEO experts have been quick to analyze HubSpot’s recent traffic drop, but as Peter Rota, Senior Technical SEO Manager at HUB International, points out - most of these takes miss the bigger picture. While third-party tools show a decline, the real data is locked within HubSpot’s own analytics. Were these traffic losses even meaningful? How did it impact revenue? And what about alternative traffic channels? SEO is unpredictable, and even industry giants aren’t immune to Google’s whims. Before jumping to conclusions though, it’s worth remembering - HubSpot literally wrote the book on inbound marketing.

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How This Trend Impacts SaaS Businesses

This all aligns closely with what we’re seeing across brands we work with. Bottom-of-funnel content, content that’s tightly related to a site’s primary topical authority, is improving. At the same time, top-of-funnel or tangential content is seeing declines.

Gaetano Nino Dinardi’s analysis of HubSpot’s traffic drop offers some key takeaways that SaaS businesses could think about regarding SEO.

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To stay competitive, SaaS companies must prioritize content relevance, regularly audit for quality, and remove low-value pages. Maintaining brand strength and adapting quickly to search trends can also help mitigate the risks of major algorithm shifts. In general, diversifying traffic sources is a good idea as well - SEO should always be part of a broader growth strategy.

Offers.HubSpot.com Still Ranks High

Despite the sharp decline in organic traffic, HubSpot's "offers" subdomain (offers.hubspot.com) continues to rank well in search results. This suggests that while their main blog content has taken a hit, their lead-generation and gated content strategies remain strong.

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It highlights the resilience of subdomains in SEO and raises the question of whether HubSpot's shift toward product-led content will compensate for losses. For SaaS businesses, this reinforces the importance of diversified content strategies that prioritize high-intent traffic over broad, informational reach.

Learnings from Our Portfolio

For a vacation rental site, content like “What does a property manager do?” is performing better. Why? It’s directly relevant to the site’s core topical authority - vacation rentals and property management. On the flip side, content like “pet-friendly vacation ideas” is losing ground. While it’s still a useful topic, it’s too broad and overlaps with content from other niches, such as pet blogs or travel sites.

This illustrates a key point: topical relevance and authority matter more than ever.

Takeaways for SaaS Decision-Makers

1. Focus on contextually relevancy for new content - New content should align closely with your brand’s expertise and primary purpose. Avoid chasing every keyword if it doesn’t directly contribute to your topical authority.‍
2. Audit Tangential Content - Identify existing content that may not align well with your core topical authority. Consider improving its focus or pivoting resources to content that reinforces your site’s expertise.‍
3. Review bottom-of-funnel content opportunities - Evaluate whether your site is meeting the needs of users that are ready to make decisions. The data shows that these type of pages are being increasingly favored by Google.
4. Continue Creating Helpful Content - Google claims their algorithms prioritize content that provides genuine value and directly answers real user questions. Either way, keeping your audience's needs at the heart of your strategy is always a smart move.