Pillar Pages and Why You Should Care
Pillar pages. What a dull term. Off the bat, though seemingly uninteresting, a « pillar page » sounds important. It reminds me of the massive ancient greek and roman columns, holding up huge chunks of stone. Well, unfortunately for those who have no idea what pillar pages mean, they seem important because they are.
I only began encountering the idea of pillar pages quite far on in my journey as a writer. It took me a while to fully grasp how they could be useful to my clients, and how they could implement them to elevate their content.
You might have heard of pillar pages in the past, and wondered how important they could be to your content marketing strategy. In this blog post, I’m going to be explaining what pillar pages are, and how to unlock their potential when creating content. How can pillar pages help you engage your audience?
What is a pillar page?
A pillar page is a cornerstone of your website that covers a vast topic, linking to other resources throughout your website.
Erm… What does that actually mean?
Well, a pillar page is a roadmap. If you’ve produced a lot of content on your website/blog by now, you’ve probably already thought about ways to organize all this content. All you need is an index of each topic type, that redirect visitors to smaller topics under a larger theme.
Visitors like to have things laid out. They like to be carried through a seamless process of discovering a topic. They don’t want to have to struggle to understand the link between A and B. That’s how pillar pages can help.
This could look like:
Guide to Content Writing
Blog posts
Micro posts
Social media posts
Guide to Copywriting
Landing pages
About pages
Email copywriting
Product descriptions
Guide to e-Books
E-Books for businesses
E-Books for memoirs
E-Books for education
In short, pillar pages organize your website’s content and make it easier for both Google and readers to navigate through it all.
How important are pillar pages to your content strategy?
Generally, content marketers use pillar pages to accommodate SEO. Pillar pages are used to structure and organize small divisions of content on a specific topic under a larger thematic branch. Thanks to your pillar pages, search engines will more easily go through your content and find relevant information to rank high on results pages.
This means that pillar pages could make your content rank much higher. They are absolutely great for SEO.
However, the benefits of pillar pages go far beyond SEO. Of course, they make your content more searchable. But a well-organized pillar page also means more readable content that your readers won’t have to spend hours navigating through to find the right information. They will be far more likely to stay on your page for longer, go back to it in the future, and share your content. This can be even more important for you than good SEO practices.
How many pillar pages should you have on your website?
Most content marketers have less than five pillar pages on their website. However some also have more, going up to 20 pillar pages. There’s no right answer on how many you should have. It all depends on what topics you touch on.
If your niche has a lot of depth to it, you might favor using lots of different pillar pages to properly organize your content. Use as many different pillar pages as is necessary to encapsulate the different facets and sub-topics in your niche. Think of your pillar pages as a well-designed outline of what you offer on your website - a carefully planned out roadmap to your content.
Great pillar pages and how to achieve them
At this point, you’re probably thinking « Okay, pillar pages could be great for my website, but how do I make them good? » Well, let’s get into that. High-quality pillar pages have pretty clear attributes. They should:
Follow a logical and effortless structure, similarly to an article outline, like a roadmap of your site’s content
Show and define a precise summary of their topics
Use relevant and helpful internal linking to redirect readers to the content that will help them
Link to authoritative external resources
Be optimized by using primary keywords
Be clearly organized by using subheadings, bullet points, numbered lists and concise paragraphs. It’s a bad idea to include long, rambling sentences. Be short and sweet.
Have great design, always keeping in mind the user’s experience
Be easy to navigate
The bottom line
Remember that you’re creating your pillar pages as a summary of what your site has to offer. It is an opportunity for you to present your content as a credible and useful source of information. Show that you have a lot to offer to your audience, and that you’re allowing your readers to easily advance through your site.
Pillar pages are just another way of satisfying your users’ intent, and solving the pain points that could make or break how successful your content is. If you’re not at the point where pillar pages will be useful to you, don’t sweat it, they’re just another step in the process and you’ll get there at some point. It’s all about creating informative content that people will care about!
