One of the best things you can do for your online presence is publish fresh content consistently. Although it’s great to post regularly on your blog and your social media accounts, there’s so much more content you can create to communicate your message and increase your website traffic. One of our favorite content pieces to create is the pillar page.
What Is a Pillar Page?
A pillar page is a website page that dives deep into a specific topic. These pages curate all of the information your audience needs to understand a topic through on-page copy and links to supporting blog content.
Take a second to visualize a bridge crossing a lake or a river. Most bridges are supported by pillars to keep them from crumbling. Like those bridge pillars, a pillar page supports your website by acting as a bridge between pieces of content. Cool, huh?
Pillar Pages and SEO
When your audience enters a query into Google, it’s most likely not a single keyword. In fact, most queries are longtail keywords or phrases. To ensure search engines deliver the best content for a query (regardless of its length), they rely on topic clusters or hubs of relevant information.
That’s where pillar pages come in. They act as hubs of information, making them a perfect fit for a wide range of keywords and topics. As a result, search engines will prioritize these pages, which may boost your organic (search-related) website traffic.
How to Create Your Own Pillar Pages
Creating your own pillar pages is quite simple once you get the hang of it. So simple, in fact, that we’ve broken the process out into three simple steps.
1. Brainstorm Pillar Page Topics
First, brainstorm topics that fit your niche and specific audience. The topics you consider should be ones you wish to rank for in search and broad enough that they require supporting content.
For example, a topic about writing a website might work as an in-depth pillar page with links to blog posts about writing headlines, creating a sitemap and more.
2. Write Your Main Pillar Page
Once you have a broad topic, start researching questions your audience might have about that topic. As for our writing a website example, some questions might include:
- How do I write my home page?
- What do I put on my contact page?
- How do I create a sitemap?
After you have a list of applicable questions, break those out into sections for your pillar page. Create answers to your questions but keep them simple. The goal is for the reader to click on links to your supporting content for an in-depth answer to their question.
3. Create Your Blog Posts and Add Your Links
In some cases, you might already have existing blog posts to link to from your pillar page. If not, you’ll need to write them. Take each question you came up with and write a blog post that answers it in an in-depth way. Finally, link to your blog posts from each applicable section of your pillar page.
There you have it! Once you create your pillar page and publish it to your website, be sure to place it in your navigation so it’s easy to find.
Having Trouble Creating Fresh Website Content?
If you’re struggling with creating fresh content for your website, it’s time to ask for help. Our Word Nerds are ready to help you create the content your unique audience craves to build connection and increase conversions. To learn more, send us a message!
