It’s important to make sure your content is seen by customers as often as possible, as most people only need to interact with a brand 7 times before they become customers.
If your website is not receiving the traffic it deserves and has lots of SEO-optimized content, it may be that your internal linking strategy doesn’t work as well as it should.
Pillar pages can solve this problem. These pages are the ones that have the greatest influence on your search ranking. If they are handled well, they will drive the most traffic to your site and expose you to qualified leads.
Learn more about pillar pages and how they can help you improve your SEO.
What is a pillar page?
A pillar page is the central piece of content that forms the foundation for a topic cluster. A topic cluster is a group of articles and blog posts that are related to a subject. They provide an overview of the subject.
Your topic cluster’s pillar page is its central hub. The pillar page is the hub of your topic cluster. All other pages within the cluster link to it.
“SEO:The Complete Guide” is in the middle. It contains the pillar, or hub page, and all the articles surrounding it (On-Page SEO checklist, Google Ranking Factors etc.). These are the spoke or cluster articles that allow readers to discover everything they need to know about SEO.
Because these types of searches indicate that a user is searching for a solution to a problem, it is common to see pillar pages treated as an “ultimate Guide”, a page explaining “what is X”, or a page showing how to do Y”.
If you can provide a solution for them, it is a benefit to invest in a page that demonstrates your expertise on the subject. This will also show them why you are the best candidate to solve their problem.
How can pillar pages and topic groups improve SEO?
It is crucial to build trust with searchers and increase your visibility online. This is how it can improve your SEO.
1. Site structure improvements
Topic clusters can improve the structure of your website. This technical SEO optimization makes it easier to crawl by Googlebot and other search engines. Google will rank pages that are easier to crawl if they can index and find them easily.
How can you make your site more accessible? The ideal site structure should allow you to access any page within three clicks from the homepage.
Because Pillar pages are intended to be a destination, they can often be accessed from any site’s homepage or one level down.
2. Improve user experience
It makes sense to group related pages together if they are easily found under a single umbrella term. This way, people searching for “how do X” will find all the relevant information in one place.
This improved user experience will keep people on your website longer and give Google’s algorithm additional data to indicate that you are more. Your site is optimized to rank high on Google.
3. Competitive keywords rank
Because pillar pages are hub pages for a topic, they can target broad keywords. And broad keywords are very competitive in the SERP.
Ranking for a broad keyword requires a long-form piece that covers the keyword and links out to other pages that cover its child keywords, also known as a pillar page.
When pillar pages rank, they gain traffic, backlinks and SEO power. They also pass on “link juice” to the cluster pages that they link out to, which improves their rank.
4. Your reputation is important
It is important to realize that search engines are designed to give the most relevant results to the query entered by the user. Bad results could lead to a negative user experience, which can cause a loss of faith in the search engine.
It would be horrible.
Google doesn’t want to rank people who aren’t experts for any reason. They have put a lot of effort into their algorithm’s ability surface the most relevant information, regardless of who typed it.
Google’s three core concepts are expertise, authority, and trust. These concepts help Google rank its various ranking factors. You can demonstrate your knowledge of the subject by creating a topic cluster around one pillar page. You can’t ask an expert to just talk about a topic once.
Google will trust your expertise enough to rank you on the first page . Users will follow suit.
How to make a pillar page for SEO to increase your rankings
When you are able to create topic clusters you can use them to build new content and make changes to existing content.
Here’s how it works:
1. Choose the topic that you would like to rank.
A pillar page that ranks well is only possible if you have a clear understanding of the topic you are trying to rank for. You can choose the topic you want to focus on by looking at your target audience. Then, aim to cover all relevant topics that they are interested in (and also applies to your business).
There will be many topics you wish to rank for. One site may have multiple topic clusters. It’s important that you only focus on one topic at a given time. This can confuse your audience and dilute the effectiveness of your efforts.
2. It can be used in a keyword research tool
Once you have a topic in mind for your pillar page you will need to input it into a keyword search tool. These tools allow you to see the keywords that have the highest number of searches within a certain timeframe (usually monthly) and how competitive each keyword is.
3. Identify your pillar vs cluster keywords
Your hub/pillar page should target a broad topic keyword with high volume. The long-tail keywords related to that keyword will determine the headings and sections of your pillar pages. This will then guide you in choosing the keywords that you want to target with your cluster pages.
Our guide for keyword research provides more information. You can also hire an SEO agency that is specialized in keyword search services.
4. Create your content
Your pillar and cluster pages will be targeting keywords so you need to ensure that your on page SEO is taken care of for each one. Make sure you include your target keywords in your title and headings. Also, make sure they are included in the article’s meta descriptions, image alt tags, and other areas.
This will allow search engine crawlers find it and record that someone searches for the term in question. Your article should be ranked to show that you are a worthy response.
High-quality Content
Although keyword-heavy content may look good on paper, it won’t help anyone solve their problems. Google will eventually realize this and drop you from the rankings.
As a general rule, make your pillar pages longer and more detailed than any other articles on the subject to prove to Google that it is worth being ranked #1. Pillar pages can often exceed 5,000 words. This technique is also known as the skyscraper method.
5. Make sure you take care of cluster pages and internal linking
After you have written your pillar page you will need to link to the cluster articles which further explain the concepts.
These pages might not yet exist if you are creating a new topic group. You can search your site to determine if there is already content on the subject.
Just go to the address bar of your browser and type the following without the quotation marks: “site.mysite.com topic”.
Example:
You can write about the topic and it will appear on the next results page. It is ranked according to what the search engine considers the most relevant. To search for specific instances of a phrase, you can also use quotations. Link to the article that best explains the concept. Make sure the article links to your page on pillars and that all articles in the cluster link to one another.
5. Promote your pillar pages
You should only invest in paid ads or social media exposure to any page on your website.
A pillar page should be considered a destination. When you promote it, let it be clear how valuable it is to your target audience.
They will want to read it, so don’t forget to give it to them.
Effective pillar page examples
The URL of the page, the number of links within the article, and the depth of the resource can identify the best pillar pages. These are great examples of pillar page action:
1. Localiq’s Social Media Marketing Lab
LocaliQ’s Local Social Media Marketing Lab links to 32 other social media marketing posts at the LocaliQ blog.
- Word count: 8,068
- Number of internal links: 32
2. WordStream’s SEO Pillar Page
WordStream’s SEO page contains 69 links within the Wordstream site. This means that there are many SEO-rich resources available. This page could be accessed from any browser and one can learn all they need about the topic without having to visit another website.
- Word count: 4,390
- Number of internal links: 691
3. Shopify’s Beginner’s Guide to Selling on Amazon
Shopify’s How To Sell on Amazon page contains nearly 7,000 words with 44 links that will guide you.
- Word count: 6,759
- Number of internal links: 44
Implement pillar pages and topic clusters as soon as possible
We have covered topics clusters, pillar pages and content strategy in this article. Topic clusters and pillar pages make it easier for Google to crawl while also displaying your knowledge on the topic you have written.
These are the key points you should take away
- Choose the topic for which you wish to rank.
- It can be used to create a keyword research tool.
- You can group keywords into pillar or cluster keywords.
- SEO-optimized content is created.
- Use as many internal links necessary.
- Your pillar pages should be promoted as often as possible.
This will ensure that your traffic continues to grow over the long-term.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Justin Borge
Justin Borge is an SEO and Content Marketing professional who is passionate about helping websites get the traffic they deserve. Hire him to write for you at JustinWritesSEO.com!
