Ex-Hubspotters reveal 5 SEO insights about HubSpot’s traffic woes

HubSpot’s SEO collapse has been the talk of the SEO world for the last several days.

As a reminder, here’s a screenshot of HubSpot’s organic traffic drop, based on Semrush data:

Among the endless reactions and perspectives, two former HubSpot employees shared five good reminders about SEO strategy.

1. SEO takes time

Pruning content and focusing on E-E-A-T were among the many obvious remedies SEOs pointed out following the news of HubSpot’s apparent organic traffic decline.

Well, these aren’t simple tweaks for a brand the size of HubSpot. They’re massive undertakings, according to this LinkedIn post by Bianca Anderson, HubSpot’s former SEO strategist (who is now manager, organic growth for hims and hers):

• “When HubSpot began optimizing for EEAT, it required overhauling processes in a way that significantly slowed the output of net-new content AND optimizations. Additionally, pruning a blog at HubSpot’s scale, with thousands of articles, is no small task and takes extensive effort to execute effectively (and SMARTLY).
• “…fixing this kind of thing isn’t an overnight process. It’s not as simple as mass redirects. This type of work can take YEARS to properly execute.”

Dig deeper. How long SEO takes to work

2. Google’s algorithm is extremely volatile

This may feel like an obvious observation for many of you reading, but Anderson made an important point about how volatile Google’s algorithm has been lately:

• “Algorithm updates over the past two years have been unprecedented in their volatility (I know we all know this, but just want to emphasize) — it’s been an onslaught. Major brands like HubSpot and WordStream, are feeling these changes deeply.”

Dig deeper. Google algorithm updates.

3. There is no shared definition of ‘content quality’

Google is not the sole arbiter of quality, according to this LinkedIn post by Braden Becker, former principal growth marketing manager at HubSpot (who is now the global SEO lead for Faire):

• “I believe their quality standards are vastly more sophisticated than they were when I was working on the HubSpot Blog, and the company is surely paying a little for that. But just because Google makes a grand decision on a big website doesn’t mean the victim objectively deserved it.”

Becker highlighted another key point about quality:

• “There’s a difference between ‘quality’ and ‘the most helpful answer’ to a given search term. I think Google consistently focuses on the latter, despite not always being clear about that.”

Dig deeper. Mastering content quality: The ultimate guide

4. SEO strategies must always evolve

SEO strategy is fluid, Becker said:

• “You try to do what’s right for the business at the time. What worked, we kept doing. And what didn’t work, we stopped doing.”

Anderson added:

• “From what I’ve seen, TOFU (top-of-funnel) non-ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) targeting content seems to be the most impacted. Is this partly the result of a wide-scale strategic de-prioritization? Maybe. I don’t know.
• “What I do know is this: HubSpot has been actively working on this long before these traffic declines became more publicly known.”

Dig deeper. Evolving SEO for 2025: What needs to change

5. Traffic is not a leading metric of success

Traffic and revenue are not the same thing, as Anderson pointed out:

• “Traffic is cool, but it should rarely be a leading metric of success (especially now). Conversions or other core KPIs that drive business matter far more.”

Dig deeper. SEO KPIs to track and measure SEO success

Bottom line. Peter Rota, senior technical SEO manager, HUB International, made several great points in this LinkedIn post. Of note:

• We can only see a portion of what happened – we don’t have Google Analytics or Google Search Console data.
• We don’t know how many of these keywords brought meaningful visitors.
• We don’t know whether any of this lost traffic impacted their sales/revenue. We might get more insight Feb. 12 – that’s the date when HubSpot is expected to release its Q4 results.

Rota added:

• “In SEO, you can literally do everything right, and one day, Google could be like know what, we’re changing things. No site is truly ‘white hat,’ and everyone thinks they’re doing amazing SEO until you get hit.
• “We all have access to the same public data, but the reality is that the SEOs who are working/ worked at HubSpot only know the true story of what happened.
• “So, stop giving advice, stop thinking you know better. They literally wrote the book on inbound marketing and have taught many of us SEO or we’ve learned something from them.”

More analysis. Leading international SEO expert Aleyda Solis wrote a good analysis of Hubspot’s (public) rankings and traffic data in Hubspot’s Blog Organic Search Traffic Drop: What happened? Is it really that bad? What does it mean for SEO?