Pillar-Based Marketing is the Key to SEO Success
By investing time and effort into crafting exceptional pillar content, you can attract and retain a loyal audience, boost your search engine visibility, and drive traffic to your website. Ultimately, high-quality pillar content forms the backbone of your marketing efforts, leading to increased brand awareness, credibility, and business growth.
May 4, 2023
Doug Sabanosh

Pillar-Based Marketing is the Key to SEO Success

If you want your business to succeed, you need to make sure that your marketing efforts are on point. In today’s digital world, that means having a solid SEO strategy. However, with so many different aspects to consider, it can be difficult to know where to start. That’s where pillar-based marketing comes into play.

Pillar-based marketing focuses on creating evergreen content that covers all the key topics in your industry. You can find key industry topics by searching for valuable organic keywords pertinent to your industry, and looking at the “People also ask” section of the Google search results. Answering these questions and writing about the topics will not only  help you rank higher in search engines, but it will also position you as an authority and thought-leader in your industry. That’s great for SEO and your reputation as a solution provider.

What is pillar-based marketing?

Pillar-based marketing is a content and SEO strategy that focuses on creating evergreen content around key topics related to your industry. To be successful with this approach, you need to plan and write content that is helpful and highly relevant to both users and search engines. Thus, it’s important to research topics and create content that is fresh, useful, and well-structured.

The goal of pillar-based marketing is to create content that not only ranks high in search engine results, but also serves as reference content to which other pieces of content can be linked. These ‘pillar’ pieces of content should be a few thousand words long and contain as much useful and detailed information as possible.

You can also incorporate other forms of content such as images and videos into your pillar-based content. After all, “people rarely read web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites, Nielsen and Norman found that 79% of test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16% read word-by-word.” Using different forms helps make you mix-up your content and makes it more interesting and engaging. Additionally, you should use internal and external linking to other useful, relevant content in order to improve the visibility of your own articles about similar topics.

By following the strategies outlined above, you can set your business up for SEO success by creating content that both users and search engine crawlers find informative and useful.

How to use pillars to improve your SEO

The key to success when using pillar-based marketing is to focus on creating quality content that is detailed and helpful. This content should be properly structured using headings and small paragraphs in order to make it easy to read and digest. Content should be written with the target keyword in mind and should provide useful information to readers. Additionally, make sure to use internal and external linking to other relevant content to further improve the impact of your content.

Once a pillar piece has been published, it should be regularly updated. This will help improve its visibility as well as its search engine rankings. It’s also important to create multiple pillars of content and link them to one another. This will help create a network of useful and helpful content that will boost website traffic and drive more people to your business.

Finally, making sure that your content is optimized for SEO is essential. This includes focusing on creating content that is written, formatted, and structured properly, as well as making sure that your content is SEO-based and is linked to other content. By following these steps, you will be able to create quality and informative content that will help improve your website’s SEO and boost your business.

Example of Pillar Pages and Clusters

An example using “SEO” as the topic.

How pillar-based marketing can improve your reach

The final step when using pillar-based marketing to improve SEO is to promote the content and get it in front of the right audience. Promoting the content can be done in many ways such as through forums, social media, or even sending out newsletters. Additionally, you should look into potential partnerships and collaborations with other websites that may have a related audience.

These partnerships and collaborations will also help improve your SEO in two ways:

  1. Increased website and content visibility
  2. Improved backlinks

Backlinks are one of the most important SEO factors and by having a network of relevant websites linking to yours, you will be able to boost your search engine rankings.

Making sure that the content has the right keywords is another important factor when trying to use pillar-based marketing to improve SEO. This includes researching and choosing the best relevant keywords that are related to the topic, and using them in the content. Additionally, you should look into using long-tail keywords, as they are more targeted and have lower search volumes, and are therefore, less competitive.

How to get started with pillar-based marketing

Getting started with pillar-based marketing is not as hard as it may appear. Here are five steps that you can follow to easily get started:

1. Identify the main topics for your content pillars

The first step is to identify the main topics for your content pillars. These topics should be related to your business and industry. You should also be aware of the trends and topics that your audience is interested in. This will help you create content pillars around the topics that are of interest to your target audience.

2. Put together a content plan for each pillar

The next step is to put together a content plan for each pillar. This plan should include the topics, the target audience, and the sources of information you’ll use to research and create the content. Additionally, it should include the goals of each pillar.

3. Research and create content around each topic

The third step is to research each topic and create content that covers each point. The content should be detailed and quickly convey the message to the reader. Additionally, it must be engaging and provide value to the readers, so it resonates with them.

4. Optimize your content

The fourth step is to optimize the content. This should include research and choosing the right keywords and using them throughout the content. Additionally, you should also optimize the title and description to ensure that your content appears in search engine searches.

5. Promote your content

Promoting your content successfully involves a multifaceted approach tailored to your audience and goals. Utilize social media marketing to share your content and engage with your audience on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Collaborate with influencers or industry experts to expand your reach. Submit your content to reputable websites or publications through content syndication. Leverage email marketing to connect directly with interested subscribers.

Optimize your content for search engines with SEO techniques. Engage in online communities to provide value and build a loyal following. Diversify your content formats to cater to different preferences. Analyze data to refine your strategies and continuously improve your content promotion efforts.

What are some best practices for pillar-based marketing?

Once you have identified the topics and have created content around each topic, you need to ensure it reaches your target audience. To make the most of your content pillars, here are some best practices you can follow:

1. Leverage Social Media

Social media is an effective platform for reaching a large audience. You can use your channels to promote your content pillars and drive more traffic to your website. Additionally, you can use social media for engaging with your customers and building relationships.

2. Leverage Email

Email campaigns are an effective way to engage your customers and promote your content. Email campaigns give you the capability to target your customers with relevant content. You can also track the performance of your campaigns to see how effective they are. Remember, email still remains the most cost-effective way to promote your business and products, communicate with your customers and reach your business goals. On average, email marketing returns $42 for every $1 you spend.

3. Monitor analytics

To ensure that your content pillars are successful, you need to monitor the performance of your campaigns. You can do this by tracking the analytics of your campaigns. This will help you understand which content is performing better and optimize your campaigns accordingly.

4. Focus on Quality Content

The key to successful pillar-based marketing is to create content that is informative, interesting and engaging. Content that is useful to your readers will help you build trust and credibility in your industry.

5. Update content Regularly

The success of pillar-based marketing depends on how often you update your content. Updating your content regularly can help you keep your content relevant and fresh.

 

The benefits of pillar-based marketing

Pillar-based marketing is a great way to increase your website’s visibility and reach a larger audience. Here are some of the benefits of using this type of marketing:

1. Increase SEO Rankings

Using pillar-based marketing can help to improve your SEO rankings by driving more organic traffic to your website. This is because the content you create will be focused on a particular topic, allowing you to create more targeted content.

2. Boosts Engagement

With targeted content, you are more likely to engage with your readers and drive more engagement to your website. You can also use social media, email campaigns, partnerships and other mediums to promote your content and drive more engagement.

3. More Content Opportunities

Creating content on various topics gives you plenty of opportunities to create different types of content which can help to attract more readers. For example, you can record a product demo video, transcribe it and post it as a blog article as well. Additionally, you can create a step-by-step guide from the video and copy and use it as a downloadable lead magnet or physical brochure. This will help to expand your reach and gain more exposure.

4. Improved Visibility

Pillar-based content can help to improve your visibility on search engine result pages. This will help you to reach a larger audience, generate more leads and increase your website traffic.

The benefits of using pillar-based marketing are clear. It can help to improve your SEO rankings, achieve more visibility and reach more people. With these benefits, it is no surprise that more and more businesses are turning to pillar-based marketing as a way to reach their target audience.

Tips for Success with Pillar-Based Marketing

Here are some simple approaches that can help you to implement the pillar-based methodology and ensure your success.
  • have a clear understanding of the goals you are aiming to achieve
  • create a well-defined marketing strategy
  • identify the silos of content that will make up your pillar page
  • create high-quality, informative content
  • use visuals and multimedia to enhance the user experience
  • focus on SEO, such as optimizing keywords and providing useful backlinks
  • give importance to internal linking
  • use a consistent voice throughout all your content
  • get feedback and monitor your analytics to continuously improve your results

Pillar-based marketing is a great tool for businesses looking to increase their visibility online. It can help to boost engagement, create more content opportunities and ultimately, help you to grow your business. It allows you to organize your content into buckets so you better understand what types of content you have for each target market. By implementing pillar-based marketing techniques, you can achieve SEO success increase organic website traffic and boost conversions.

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