If you’re a business owner, then you know that content is key to driving growth. But what kind of content should you be focused on? The answer is pillar content! What is pillar content?
Pillar content is the foundation of your online presence and it’s what will help you attract new customers and grow your business. What is pillar content exactly? Here’s everything you need to know about pillar content and how you can use it effectively.
What Is Pillar Content?
Pillar content is a type of content that is used to attract and engage an audience. It is typically long-form and informative, and it is used to establish a brand or company as an authority in a particular industry.
Pillar content can be used to drive traffic to a website, generate leads, or build relationships with customers and prospects.
Pillar content is a specialized approach to developing deep, informative content. The goal of pillar content is to raise search engine traffic by delivering a comprehensive response to a “burning question” your audience has.
Pillar content can be very long, anywhere from 2000 to 10,000 words, and covers a broad topic.
With pillar articles, you focus on one topic, such as reducing the cost of commercial buildings, and approach it from different angles.
It links to dozens of past posts you have written, covering topics like HVAC systems, exterior building envelopes, and interior lighting systems.
By condensing all of your knowledge into one place, you make it easier for potential customers and leads to access the information they need.
Pillar content is the kind of content that helps your audience resolve their pressing business problems while clearly articulating your company’s value proposition in a non-interruptive way.
Benefits of Pillar Content
Pillar content can be extremely beneficial to your website for a number of reasons.
1. Search Engine Visibility
For one, it is optimized for others to link back to, which can help increase your visibility in search engines. Additionally, pillar content can help you attract new visitors and keep them engaged with your site.
Pillar content is an excellent resource for influencers to share, which will raise your visibility significantly.
2. Thought Leadership
Publishing pillar content is an effective way of establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
Content that falls under the umbrella of pillar content is oftentimes more substantial, such as whitepapers and ebooks.
3. Drive Traffic to Your Site
Pillar pages are an excellent way to drive traffic to your site because they are packed with high-quality content. By strategically placing keywords throughout your pillar page, you can attract visitors and direct them to your site.
This not only results in more traffic but also helps improve your search engine ranking.
It provides opportunities to remarket to an audience who, for whatever reason, may not have engaged long enough to convert. This could be a chance to send retargeted ads or links to other pillar pages they might find useful.
You can retarget them with banner ads or links to other relevant articles.
These marketing efforts drive traffic to your site, giving you another opportunity to woo your prospects into becoming paying customers.
4. Increase Engagement
When you create a lot of content that your readers find useful, they’ll want to consume all of it.
The more quality information you post on your blog, the more people will stay on your web page.
Because your visitors won’t have to look elsewhere for information, your bounce rates will decrease.
By providing your readers with valuable information, you establish yourself as an authority in your field. This, in turn, results in higher search rankings.
If you want to create content that will really resonate with your readers and help boost sales growth, you need to dedicate some time and effort to it. By doing so, you’ll be setting yourself up for continued success.
How Does Pillar Content Work?
What Google thinks matters. When search engines think your valuable content is worthy, you are rewarded with higher rankings.
Every year, search engines like Google make hundreds of changes—always keeping us on our toes.
Good news! The better your content, the better your chances of ranking well in Google. Even startups and teams with tight budgets can still rank if they produce great content.
Pillar content is your chance to show Google that you’re an authority on a certain topic. By producing quality content, you demonstrate to Google that people value what you have to say. In turn, this can lead to increased traffic and backlinks from other websites.
Articles of 3000+ words are 3x more likely to receive traffic, 4x more likely to be shared, and 3.5x more likely to get links than shorter posts.
Content marketing offers plenty of chances to make an impression.
Search Engine Rankings
Pillar pages and their supporting sub-pages offer the best answers to queries across the web. When you become the authority on a topic for multiple search queries, your brand is likely to rise above competitors in the search rankings.
Link-Building
Because your subpages and your cornerstone page are interconnected, your link structure will be properly optimized for search engines.
If your pillar content is useful to others, you will receive many external links.
Engagement
High shareability is one more way your pillar content can make a bigger impact than a shorter, one-off piece. From a conversion perspective, it’s the same old story.
If you show that you know your stuff, people will sit up and take notice when they’re looking for a solution.
Why Should You Use Pillar Pages?
Pillar pages are an essential part of any marketing strategy.
Pillar pages help you organize your content in a way that is convenient for your readers. This makes it easier for them to find the information they are looking for quickly and easily.
Pillar pages are the ultimate form of convenience and people love convenience.
They compile all of the most important information for users in one central place.
It’s like finding buried gold.
But, in addition to those benefits, companies can also gain even more from creating and using their own pillars.
Pillar content is a goldmine for search engine optimization.
Eliminate Clutter
To make sure that users get the most relevant search results, Google has to know what’s going on with your content.
When Google sees your articles linking back to pillar content, it’s clear what the subject matter is. This allows Google to rank your pages more accurately.
The more your website mentions a certain topic, the better you will rank for that topic. This is beneficial for not only Google, but also for clarifying your website’s relevance.
It’s not just good for SEO, but for your overall business as well.
Having a clear navigation menu helps visitors find what they’re looking for on your site, and also helps users better digest your content.
This, by the way, helps boost the SEO of your website.
By providing pillar content that answers important questions, you help Google place you in a more visible spot in search results.
Develop Quality Content
Pillar pages, which are longer blog posts, are 2,000 to 5,000 words long. They create lots of content for Google to index.
Pillar content is the foundation for future pieces of content. The shared research allows for new ideas and perspectives to be born, which in turn creates more content for search engines to index. This makes pillar content an essential part of any SEO strategy.
Your pillar content is versatile enough to become videos, blog posts, and social media posts.
Pillar content is in-depth, so it requires extensive research.
This improves the quality of your message by aligning your key points throughout.
4 Common Types of Pillar Content
Content pillars are pieces of content that deliver valuable information in a lot of different ways.
When creating your pillar content, there are two things to remember:
- How can you most effectively cover your subject matter?
- How would your audience prefer to consume the information?
There is a difference between teaching people how to do things and explaining general concepts.
Some information is better suited to being read as lengthy, detailed sentences, while other pieces of information are better digested as short, concise bullets.
As you plan out your content strategy, here are 4 different types of content that you should consider.
1. “What is” Pillar
Thanks to the internet, people are more educated than ever before.
People today can research anything they want at the click of a button.
A commonly searched for question is “What is ____”.
If a prospect doesn’t understand something, they can simply enter a phrase into a search engine to learn more.
A pillar page can address this issue by providing an in-depth explanation of a topic.
The “What is” pillar content is a stand-alone piece of content that links out to other helpful resources.
Pillar content can help you to align your page with a popular interest, something that people have heard about in the news or from friends and want to explore further. This can generate organic traffic to your page.
If you can communicate to your audience that your content is important to them, you can drive more traffic to your website.
2. “How to” Pillar
When readers find a “how-to” article, they expect to find instructions on how to accomplish something.
Pillar pages are great tools for creating specific content that answers your target audience’s questions.
Find out what it is your audience wants to know.
Then, you can create content that breaks down information into digestible chunks that are easy for readers to understand.
3. Guide Pillar
Another way to provide authority is by offering free, downloadable, and actionable information through guides.
As someone who is new to the concept, I am drawn to beginners’ guides because I know they will contain the basic information I need to learn about the topic. These guides are essential in helping me understand complex concepts and giving me a foundation on which to build my knowledge.
A more experienced audience enjoys reading guides that refine the knowledge they already have.
Guides provide readers with comprehensive information on a given topic. They are a great resource for those who want to learn more about a subject.
A timely, relevant, and well-written blog post can attract attention and drive traffic to your website.
Most importantly, it nurtures your prospect and converts them into a customer.
4. “Best of” Pillar
Not all educational materials are best presented as full, in-depth guides.
There are already tons of “ultimate” guides out there.
Make your article stand out by compiling a list of all the best information, tips and tricks about your topic.
Use this information to create helpful, informative content that highlights the main points that your readers need to know.
By using bullet points and categorical lists, readers can quickly skim your content until they find a point that resonates with them. This makes your content more manageable and less of a time investment for the reader.
As a result, readers are more likely to check it out and find value in what you have to say.
When it comes to educational content, the “best-of” format is easy to scan and more manageable than a full guide. This makes it seem like less of a time investment to potential readers, who are more likely to check it out.
How to Choose Pillar Content For Your Business
It’s important to choose topics that you know well, and that you also want your site to be ranked for.
In order to write a long, in-depth article about a specific subject, you will need to have extensive knowledge about that specific subject matter.
Pillar content is the key to a successful marketing strategy. By breaking it down into smaller pieces, you can easily create content for all your channels that will attract new viewers and keep them engaged.
Content pillars are a great way to create content that can be shared across multiple marketing channels. These pieces of original content can be broken down into multiple types of media, such as blogs, social media posts, and infographics and videos.
If you’ve done any searching online for the past decade, you’ve seen a lot of sites with ‘The ultimate guide to…’ whatever you’re looking for.
This is not a coincidence.
This strategy of publishing long-form, in-depth blog posts on your company’s website is a deliberate one used by many companies to increase their online presence and search engine rankings.
The approach towards getting ranked highly on Google has drastically changed and evolved from the days where SEO was much simpler.
A pillar page is a type of long-form content that generally has 500+ to 10,000 words and is practical in nature. It has ‘how to’ lessons and is very long.
It is evergreen content that offers valuable insights to readers.
Risks of Not Creating Pillar Content
If you’re not creating pillar content, you’re not giving your link building and SEO efforts the best chance to succeed. Without pillar content, it’s more likely that your ROI will be lower than it could be.
In general, short pieces of content that cover less ground won’t rank as well in search results as detailed, long articles.
While “short evergreen” content is useful in your overall marketing strategy, “pillar” or “cornerstone” pieces of content that focus on a specific topic or theme have the potential to give you a major boost in SEO.
Develop Pillar Content Today to Invest in Your Future
Pillar pages are more than just a way to generate leads or drive traffic to a website.
Pillar content is a key way to understand your audience, what you want to be known for, and the value you bring to potential customers. By creating this type of content, you lay the foundation for success now and in the future.
Your pillar content is not just for your current customers.
It’ll help you shape your future plans as well.
Pillar content is more in-depth than your average post, and requires more effort.
But then again, you’re not running your average company.
Pillar content is like an investment.
When you create pillar content, always keep your audience in mind. This will help you solidify your position as a valuable resource to your followers.
It helps to build trust, establish customer loyalty and develop lasting relationships with your followers.
Conclusion
What is pillar content? Pillar content is a critical piece of any online strategy and can help you attract new customers and grow your business. If you’re not already using pillar content, then now is the time to start. It’s an essential part of any successful marketing campaign and it’s something that every business should be focused on. Thanks for reading!
