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Content pillars are a great search engine optimization (SEO) content writing strategy. Between the high volume of keywords and organic traffic, you can boost your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) rankings using content pillars. However, you need to understand how content pillars work and strategies that make for a good content pillar in order for this SEO writing technique to work effectively. The following insight on content pillars can help you understand how to boost your SEO. We will define content pillars, discuss why they are important and how to build them below.
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What is pillar content in SEO?
Pillar content is long-form core content that provides authoritative, broad-topic information for keywords that are relevant to your brand focus. Pillar content is expressed through pillar pages and topic clusters.
For example, a content pillar on home furniture designs may have a long-form pillar page that provides comprehensive how-to guide information on different types of home furniture designs. From the pillar content, topic clusters such as wooden home furniture designs and home furniture cleaning tips can be generated as separate topic clusters from the home furniture keyword pillar content.
The main thing to note about pillar content in SEO is that the information given must be comprehensive, authoritative and elaborate. Pillar pages are usually the main landing pages, and they contain links to the topic clusters to improve the site’s engagement rate.
Now that you know what content pillars are, let’s discuss why they are important. Content pillars are great for boosting SERP rankings and SEO performance because they are loaded with keyword search information, creating a good user experience. This can increase your website traffic and establish you as an authority with relevant information. Also, this can create more confidence in your brand for users and improve your conversion rate.
So, how do you build a content pillar? Here are three ways to do it below:
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1. Choose a theme
A theme determines the direction of your content pillar. This is where your ideas are formed for your content pillar. However, it requires a little groundwork to get the ball rolling. The following tips are helpful for choosing a content pillar theme:
- Know your audience: You are creating for an audience, so it is important to understand the people you are creating content for. This includes the knowledge your target audience is looking for and their content preference in terms of content format. For example, a B2B audience may prefer content in the form of data reports and studies, while a B2C audience may prefer how-to guides content.
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Brand-related content: You are part of an industry, and you need to choose a theme that promotes your brand’s credibility. You can add a CTA button to direct users to your product and services or create direct brand awareness content. For example, a tech service brand can create content pillars that talk about tech issues, which makes it easy to include their product or service solutions within the content.
Pro tip: Content pillars work with topic clusters. Therefore, your choice of topic should be broad enough to enable you to create as many topic clusters as possible.
2. Create content pillars and topic clusters
Aside from the long form and broadly informative nature of content pillars, there are other important things that ought to feature in your content pillar: content linking and identifying keywords.
- Identifying keywords: Keywords are important for SEO content. This is why you must ensure your content pillar is keyword-friendly. To identify keywords that are sought after in searches, you can use keyword research tools like UberSuggest, Google Keyword Planner or SEMRush. Using keyword research tools lets you determine which keywords have less competition and a high search rate.
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Content linking: To boost the performance of your pillar content, your audience should be able to access the pillar page and topic clusters when they land on any of your pillar content pages. This means that you have to include links to other relevant pages in your content pillar. You can do this with in-text internal linking as a part of your content, or you can include links as an independent CTA within the content page.
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3. Promote your content
You should know that the work doesn’t end with creating. One thing that makes for a great performing content pillar is the popularity the content enjoys. This means you have to promote your content well enough so it can be seen by as many people as possible. You can promote your content through guest posting, generating backlinks, influencer marketing and posting on social media.
Content pillars can be very beneficial to your SEO performance, you simply need to figure out what works and take action. And the best part is that you can start executing right away. The competition to appear on Google’s first page organically is getting stiffer, so start building!