Building High-Performing Content Pillars
Content pillars. Content hubs. Content clusters. These are far more than just marketing buzzwords.
Content pillars are an important part of a brand’s content strategy and they serve a fundamental purpose: they provide a comprehensive, authoritative exploration of a topic that a reader can get everything they need on that subject in one place. With that in mind, you then create relevant and suitable content that links to your pillar page while giving an excellent user experience and satisfying search engine algorithms.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? While the concept of cluster content isn’t really new, many marketers face the initial challenge of creating an effective content strategy to address the full scope of questions, problems, or solutions they ultimately seek to deliver. “Where do I start?” is the first hurdle — and identifying all the topics and ideas on the first go can be a bear.
We’ll dive into some prime examples of pillar content from the web that successfully incorporate cluster content into their framework. But first, we must understand how pillar pages work in order to leverage them effectively. Let’s break it down.
What is a content pillar?
Pillar pages provide a substantive amount of information that can be divided into numerous formats such as ultimate guides, longreads, hub pages, e-books, and more. For digital marketers, it is an opportunity to create a better user experience and be rewarded by search engines with high-level, authoritative content.
Think of it as a destination that provides all the key information, in-depth, enough data to refer back to, a guide, a mini-encyclopedia, a “101” guide, if you will.
Whether you’re creating an informational guide or developing a landing page for a family of products to convert to a purchase, the pillar page should be optimized for a specific keyword or phrase that satisfies the searcher’s intent.
That being said, the content pillar is the center of your content hub, where cluster pages are interlinked with the pillar. It can be dissected and repurposed into smaller pieces of content that you can promote to your audience. From social media posts to emails, landing pages, gated content, or other channels where you market your brand.
Identify your core topic and keyword(s)
Identifying your core topic and keyword (head term) should both satisfy your user intent as much as it should attract search engine algorithms. What problem are you solving? What product or service are you offering? Who is your target audience, and what are their pain points? Identify your primary keyword or topic, and make sure it’s substantial enough to build a hub around.
Consider your buyer personas, and what they need. Perform interviews with your clients to gather details about what content they’re looking for. This will help you position your strategy around serving a purpose for your intended audience so that you can start setting the content creation in motion. This will help you get a high-level understanding of what your pillar page might focus on.
Analyze your core topic and subtopics
Next, you’ll need to determine whether these topics are substantial enough to warrant content creation. For example, “Financial Distress” is one of the most efficient topics suggested. Here you can take a deeper dive to see if these subtopics would align with your core objective.
At this stage, you can also start deciding what format these subtopics will take — whether it’s a news article, blog, quiz, infographic, e-books, video, or something else. After you’ve identified your subtopics, it’s time to see if there’s already low-hanging fruit to optimize.
Audit the existing content on your website
A content audit will help you find out whether you already have pages that could be updated and optimized for your pillar content strategy.
Performing the audit can help you identify whether you already have a candidate for a pillar page, or better yet — that you already have plenty of articles that could be restructured into a central pillar.
On the other hand, if you lack existing content to support a pillar page, you may need to reverse-engineer this process. Many content strategies can begin with creating the pillar page before the supporting cluster articles. It depends on what you already have, and what you’ll need to create.
Create your content pillar
Whether you have existing articles to update and repurpose for your pillar content, or if you need to create that content from scratch, building a map of headlines with their focus keywords will be your next step. From there, you’ll be able to assess the extent of content needed, such as the number of cluster pages, as well as analyze the length of each article required.
Let’s open the subtopic card with the title “what are the benefits of going online.” You can get some useful insights on popular headlines and frequently asked questions collected from the entire web. Using this information, you can come up with your unique headline and use the questions that build out the structure of your blog post.
Now, you can start producing your most important cluster pieces, because this will immediately set you up for the best practices. By creating all the cluster content first, you minimize the potential for duplicating content or cannibalizing what you already have. It also allows you to have the links ready for when you finally create your pillar page. Remember your important headlines and keywords that you previously uncovered to determine which pages you’ll create first.
Pro tip: Add topics, headlines, and questions to your Favorite Ideas in Topic Research so you can go back to them later and use them to create content briefs with your Content Template.
Pillar pages centered on evergreen content can perform especially well with both readers and search engines, provided you have enough high-quality cluster topics to support it. Always consider your searcher’s intent and the nature of the topic you’re delving into.
Bottom line
The word “pillar” — whether used in architecture, philosophy, or content marketing — is a loaded term. It immediately conjures up ideas related to structure, strength, and the upholding of a system of information and ideas. For content marketers, it’s the ability to be more strategic, to truly consider what your readers want. To create winning content that supersedes the noise from your competitors.
