How to Improve SEO Ranking with Pillar Pages?

Improve SEO Ranking with Pillar Pages?

Are you searching for tips to Improve SEO Ranking with Pillar Pages? And you also don’t know what the pillar pages are?

Are you really not getting the term “pillar pages”?

You might be thinking that this term is a part of a digital conversation.

Or

Your friends always bring this type of topics which you properly don’t familiar with.

In this situation, I think you are not properly aware of this term or you don’t have much knowledge about it.

Before settling myself into the depth of this article, I prefer to introduce the “Pillar Pages”. So that you can get understand all about the topic.

What are the Pillar Pages? 

Here, I’ll introduce the term “Pillar Page” and also tell you why this matters for your website.

Actually, it is not a purely technical term for which you have to understand it with lot of concentrations. It is a simple term that most of the bloggers and marketers are using for a cover page of your website.

The term “pillar pages” is derived from “Pillar Content” that was continuously used by the marketers in the early years of 21st century.

 “Pillar Content” means the comprehensive content on the landing pages of a website which can help the visitors to find out what they are searching for.

In a similar way, a “Pillar Page” is the page of your website that is the latest cornerstone of the major part of your website. It is just like a cover page of an E-book that contains a list of all the topics discussed in the book.

Every marketing strategy is changed the time to time. So the way of searching marketing or any other contents is also changed with the passage of time.

People need more short ways to get the idea about a website by just having a look on its pillar pages.

In this way, you have to be very smart to set the pillar page for your website if you want to improve SEO ranking with pillar pages.

For example, have a look at all the categories of my blog:

Improve SEO Ranking with Pillar Pages

All these categories must have a cornerstone which describes all of these categories. All these cornerstones must be united on a page, that page is basically a pillar page.

In other words, a pillar page of your website shows each small portion of all the categories available on your website.

Look at the pillar page for HubSpot:

pillar page examples

Here is how the pillar content has hyperlinks to all cluster contents.

Cluster content is a content that focuses on the sub-topics related to the pillar page.

For example, the pillar page my blog will show you all about Applications, Google, Make money Online, Mobile, SEO, and Social Media Marketing.

When I post a new article I provide a link between cluster content and pillar page which make it easy for me to navigate the new post.

And also searchers can get an easy way to the newly published article.

 

In simple, a pillar page contains all of the website’s subcategories.

For example, a blog for Home Remodeling should have a pillar page like:

top seo trends 2017

So now, you start creating a pillar and link all the corresponding categories to the pillar.

Here is the best example of Instagram Marketing by HubSpot :

seo-2017-master-search-engine-optimization

Usually, the pillar pages are longer than normal blog posts. They are just like the first page of an E-book that contains hyperlinked chapters.

If you really interested to improve SEO ranking with pillar pages, you have to organize the pillar page with all cares.

Generally, the pillar page shows all about your website content. The searchers can easily get idea about all the content you have provided on your website.

Well, now you are familiar with the term “Pillar Page”.

Next, you have to know why these pillar pages are important for your website.

Why are Pillar Pages Important for Your Website?

To know the importance of pillar page there are two things to consider:

First, it helps the searchers find out what you have written on your website. When they browse to your website they can easily pack up your posts, videos, and info-graphics.

Second, it provides a genuine SEO benefit to tie the content of your website together.

These pillar pages can also help you to improve your search engine rankings.

Actually, Google prefers those websites which have clear contents and exact hyperlinks. The internal linking in a blog post has a great impact on the rankings because:

 

More Internal Links = Higher Placement in SERPs

how to improve seo 2017

When you provide internal linking in your blog post it creates the interest in searchers to explore more within the same website.

Google notices this approach and ranks up that particular website.

When Google algorithm gets clear idea about what is written in the content, it ranks up that specific content of the website.

In the case when Google algorithm get confused with the content you provided in your blog post, Google won’t take that post to rank high.

For example, you write a blog post on Social Media marketing, Google algorithm will check it out, when it determines all the content is about Social Media marketing, in the end, result in it automatically rank up the post you recently published.

 

Most importantly, when you cover more on a single topic, the will Google rank it higher.

I took this comprehensive graph from “HubSpot” which clearly shows how the content creation works for most of the websites and how they are connected to the pillar page:

seo strategies 2017

Write comprehensively on a topic and then put it on your blog so that it can have a quick effect on your website’s ranking.

The post with little knowledge may create hindrance in the way of high search engine rankings.

The pillar page collects all the information for SEO purpose which will bring many benefits to you and also you can improve SEO ranking with pillar pages.

 

The pillar pages strategy is shown in the below figure in which the inner circles are pillar and outer circles are contents:

2017 seo

Every outer piece of blog content is hyperlinked to the pillar page and vice versa.

All this is about to organize your website which benefits into the increase in search engine rankings.

Now move to the very important section where you get to know how you can make pillar page for your own website.

How will you create your own pillar page?  

There some steps to follow which lead you to create pillar page for your own website.

 Step#1: Select the Topics You want to Rank for

 To improve SEO ranking with pillar pages, first of all, you have to select the topics for which you can achieve rank. The topics can be your main contents that you’ll show on the pillar page.

For example, you have an Internet-based technological blog for which you have to choose the topics on SEO, Blogging, Make Money Online, Mobile, and Social Media Marketing.

You have to make sure that the topics should not be narrower or broader. Middle knowledge matters here more.

There is a tool that can help you in this regards.

BuzzSumo is an amazing tool for coming up with ideas:

what does seo under the hood mean

In the case when you couldn’t get the idea for pillar page of your website, take a look on other competitor’s website and get the idea.

 

Let’s suppose you have to create a pillar page for your website which talks about E-commerce.

You perhaps know that shopify is a top-level blog for E-commerce.

hubspot pillar page example

Now, go back to the BuzzSumo and type “shopify.com” in the given bar:

hubspot pillar page examples

pillar page examples 2

Now you can see the list of most shared content by Shopify.

hubspot pillar page examples shopify

You can get a lot of things to consider for your blog.

For example, “dropshipping business” and “crowdfunding” are the two things that can help you a lot to create a pillar page for your E-commerce website and in this way, you can also improve SEO ranking with pillar pages.

 

You can filter for more contents according to the date:

hubspot-pillar-page-example-shopify

The paid version of BuzzSumo will allow you to monitor the contents of your competitors regularly. It will also show you the performance of the contents being published by your competitors.

To get the best ideas from your competitors you must have to visit at least three competitors.

In case of new topic create suitable and reasonable content for pillar page so that the searchers can get a complete idea what you are talking about.

After that, you can write in-depth about your new topic as I did before writing this article.

Step#2: Select the Keywords to Target

When you go with a strong strategy of keywords the pillar page will affect more positively on SEO ranking.

It means you have to associate target keywords to improve SEO ranking with pillar pages.

 

To get keyword phrases you can use the Keywordtool.io which surely helps you to choose the target keywords.

Start typing whatever pillar page topics you selected:

For example, you type “Social Media Marketing”:

keyword tool -pillar pages to improve seo

Now press the search button to find out the list of keywords:

keyword tool -pillar pages to improve seo organically

A list of the searches will appear in front of you:

keyword tool -pillar pages to improve seo serps

The list will also display Search Volume, CPC and AdWords Competition.

In the list, you have to pay your attention to some specific keywords for your pillar page.

For example choose social media marketing strategies, social media marketing plan, social media marketing campaign and social media marketing apps.

how-to-choose-the-keyword-with-keyword-tool

Now it is a time to use these keywords as possible as you can because it will help you to improve SEO ranking with pillar pages.

Because these keywords will help you in search engine rankings as LSI keywords do and they also provide easy link approach for future cluster blog posts.

There is another fine way to which you can search the keywords. That way is to go to the Google search:

Here, in the Google type your niche and note the pop-ups:

Google LSI generator to improve seo

These are the related keywords that are being more searched in the recent times.

If you want to create pillar page with more worth you can also use the LSI keywords that you can see at the first results page of Google:

How to generate LSI keywords by Google

Use of these keywords in pillar page can have a better impact on search engine ranking of your website.

If we talk about the Instagram marketing you have to consider the pillar page of HubSpot as we discussed earlier.

It will help you to get more followers:

hubspot content strategy

It will also provide you a link to the blog post for competitive analysis:

competitive analysis for instagram

It also explains the use of Hashtags:

how to choose an instagram tag for seo serp

In short, if you spend more efforts on pillar page you can take benefit for more time from your website’s pillar page. Then you don’t have a need to think about the topics for pillar page because you already have done much work on it.

You will find pillar page the best place where you can start the content marketing strategies.

After choosing the topics and keywords for pillar page of your website you can start creating content for each of the topic.

Step#3: create Pillar page for your Website

After doing all basic work, the time arrives to create a pillar page for your own website.

Put your all efforts to create a top class and a comprehensive pillar page for your website so that it can work for a long time without creating an issue.

So it is better to have a look at more examples of pillar pages which bring a more strong idea to create your own pillar page:

The first example is the pillar page of ProfitWell on the topic of The Anatomy of a SaaS Marketing Site:

the anatomy of saas marketing sitethe anatomy of saas marketing site

The creator of this pillar page said that before making pillar page he kept in mind who the researcher is and how he did all the research about his pillar page.

For your pillar page, you must need an introduction that will increase the credibility of your content what you are going to teach on your website.

As the pillar page is the base of your website, so you must take care to provide a quality to the pillar page.

There must be some worth in reading the introductory content on pillar page.

You can also look at the hyperlinks of this pillar page that the creator provided within the organized way:

topic-clusters-hubspot

The creator provided 2000 to 3000 fully researched words in each chapter.

In case of lengthy pillar page you perhaps not cover all the topics with all aspects. So, the pillar page should have a suitable length so that you can cover the whole content with ease.

 

There is another suitable example of a pillar page of Matthew Barby

where-marketers-go-to-grow

Matthew provides a general content in the introduction which brings the whole idea about his website.

Although he didn’t use hyperlinks still the fully organized content of his pillar page provides all senses to the searchers.

With clear visual separation he provided all the 21 points in his pillar page:

how-to-create-pillar-pages-that-strengthen-seo

 

You can clearly see that there are no hyperlinks but still, the visitors can pick up the content which they find interesting.

For Matthew, this pillar page is a way to get leading sales in his sales funnel with CTAs. For this you can notice the following screen-shots:

pillar content

Here Matthew used CTAs in this pillar page in the replacement of hyperlinks which are working in a better way for him.

All this discussion is about to achieve the goal of having best and well-organized content for your pillar page.

And if you find that CTAs can harm the worth of your pillar page, simply don’t use them in your pillar page.

 

The next example of pillar page is Typeform:

pillar-pages-content-brand-awareness

In this pillar page, there are few hyperlinks through which you can jump to the corresponding content with a click.

Its structure is like an E-book PDF format.

pillar-page-examples-content-cover

It shows number list for each topic so that the searcher can easily get that he searching for.

topic-clusters-hubspot-pillar-page-example

Hence your pillar page will be more lengthy than other pages of your website so you have to organize it in a way that the researchers can easily scan the required content.

Also, use the fine strategies for text colors on pillar page.

Use such colors that can have good readability and avoid using pinching colors that can irritate the researchers.

You can make a look at above pillar page where the creator used green and black colors for text which are providing best readability.

Let’s have a look at another pillar page Population Healthier by The Atlantic:

content-clusters

This is a fully visual pillar page which you can observe when you check it out. It is not possible to show its all visual effects here in this post.

When a searcher scrolls this pillar page the colors will be changed with all contents which make it easy for the visitor to scan out what he/she required.

The visual effects are applied on all pages of the website which bring great impact on the researchers.

Moreover, the links are provided for each topic which takes the researcher to the desired content.

topic-clusters-hubspot-example

Also, this pillar page is not so long because there are points are given for each topic which is a better technique rather than having a long pillar page with long phrases for each topic.

 

There are more links available at the end of the pillar page for related blog posts so that the searchers can get direct approach to these posts.

The strategy of using these links is to increase the SEO ranking which will also affect the overall ranking of the site.

pillar-pages-hubspot

From all the above-discussed examples, Now, I think you are able to improve SEO ranking with pillar pages.

Make sure that your pillar page must have proper links to all the contents you have discussed on your website.

The pillar page should have well-organized and quality content. The introduction must be comprehensive which describe all the things you provided on your site.

Length of the pillar page depends upon the content you are discussing in the website. it means more content will increase the length of your website.

Hope you enjoyed while reading to Improve Improve SEO Ranking with Pillar Pages creation.

Final Words

It is good to know that you can now discuss the things like how to improve SEO ranking with Pillar Pages with your friends because you have pretty much know about it.

You can also improve SEO ranking with pillar pages by applying above discussed examples.

The most important thing is that you know the importance of the pillar pages and you can create your own with some good strategies.

You have gone through many examples and tactics which make you able to create your own effective pillar page.

Actually pillar page is like a pillar for you all content of the website. A pillar page provides basics to your content marketing strategy.

If you poorly organize you pillar page it will be harmful to SEO ranking up to some extent.

So be free to talk with us about your pillar page strategy and also you can tell us about your applied strategies for your pillar pages.

Here is all about how you can improve SEO Ranking with Pillar Pages. Share your experience with us if you applied like the examples given above

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