Maintaining a blog and creating regular creative content is not an easy thing to do. In fact, producing meaningful and quality content regularly is one of the biggest challenges for most businesses.
Most people are also concerned about the quantity of content that they’re generating. However, that is where many businesses go wrong. Instead of merely focusing on quantity and pushing out short but ‘surface’ content, quality is so much more essential in generating traffic and creating a loyal community.
Pillar content is a strategy that fits in with this mindset. Focusing on long form, in-depth, high quality content is the way to go if you want to build up the credibility and consistency of your brand. But first, let’s find out what pillar content is and how it can make your business and website stand out.
What is Pillar Content?
First things first, you have to understand what pillar content is to use it efficiently. If you don’t know what you’re using or how it is designed, it’s almost like building a house out of toothpicks and being surprised when it falls flat.
Sometimes referred to as cornerstone content, pillar content is essentially a specific, well defined topic that the bulk of your writing focuses on. It is the pillar for your content; the thing that holds it up.
Pillar content provides a structure and theme for your writing and can be visualized as the foundation upon which your writing is built. If you don’t have a basic structure or foundation, your writing is going to fall apart easily.
Pillar content is not a new phenomenon – quite the opposite actually. It’s been mentioned in articles since the early 2000s as a vital part of content writing. Of course, pillar content has evolved a little since it was first mentioned, but the main idea behind it has not.
As the internet changed and SEO tools became more well defined, pillar content has actually become more important.
How Pillar Content Makes You Stand Out
Pillar content is designed to benefit your website, not detract from it. If you know how to utilize pillar content correctly and can construct your writing to reflect it effectively, you’ll see more users visiting your website and reading your content. Search engines often favor your website and articles over other pages that don’t have pillar content.
You Can Use Different Media Forms
One of the great things about pillar content is that you can use just about any form of media you want. Once you know what information you want your content to be about, you can divide it up into little subgroups or sections.
Almost like a how-to guide, pillar content needs to be broken up into smaller sections so it is easier to read. Not only does no one want to read an article that resembles a thesis or lengthy paper, it can be difficult for some readers to follow and draw the attention away from your content.
For example, if your pillar content is about blogging for a business, you can separate your content into multiple blog posts, a handful of Tweets or social media posts, a few videos, and maybe even a short email newsletter.
Better Navigation and Longer Time Spent
With more focused content that revolves around a main evergreen topic, your website visitors will stay longer. They’ll spend more time navigating your site, going from each related topic to the next, flowing from each relevant page to the next.
Since there’s so much more focused and elaborate content that your visitor is interested in, they’ll enjoy just diving deep into the topic on your website. In a way, it’s almost like bingeing on your quality content and allowing your visitor to consume as much information as possible and get all their questions answered.
Social Media Sharing
Pillar content is known to be elaborate, in depth and high quality. Thanks to these traits, it’s a lot easier to get people sharing your high quality content on social media. You might even start receiving organic backlinks from other websites referring their readers to your content.
Better SEO Rankings
With so much more meaningful information, data, words and media, it’s no wonder that pillar content tends to rank higher on search engines. Together with the backlinks and shares you might receive, pillar content can help your website do a lot better on search engines.
Consistency
You want your brand to come across as being solidly consistent and focused. With pillar content, you’re doing just that. Your business will come across as being extremely knowledgeable about your industry and your message to your visitors will be consistent. Pillar content helps you to align your brand and message with your overall goals.
In Summary
Pillar content can be used for any website. It isn’t specific for business writing or how-to guides, which is what makes it so fantastic. It simply provides an easy way to ensure all your website’s content is related and you keep a consistent format.
In essence, pillar content gives a solid structure to your overarching content strategy. No one wants to visit a video gaming blog and see something about purchasing kitchen supplies. This way, you’ll be able to narrow down and be focused on what your business or website revolves around.
Need our Tampa SEO services to help you leverage pillar content for your brand? Don’t hesitate to give us a call!
Stephan Boehringer is the CEO of Get The Clicks, a web marketing company. Stephan has over 20 years of experience in the field of web marketing, and has been a speaker and consultant for many years. Stephan is passionate about web marketing and helping their clients be the best they can be.
Stephan Boehringer graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Business, Management, Marketing, and Related Support Services.
