Think back to when you were in the middle of choosing a rental home, a college to enroll in, or even your blog domain name. Which posts were the most useful to you?
My guess? Those humongous posts that covered every single aspect of the topic you were researching. Those were pillar posts and they come in many forms: what is, how to, ultimate guides, and so on. These posts help the reader get a full view of the topic.
For a website owner, these pages are assets. They rank for more keywords than the average blog post, pulling in more traffic than you’d expect for the target keyword.
Read on to learn what pillar content is, the benefits, and how to create topic pillars that grow your blog traffic like a weed.
What are pillar pages?
Pillar content — also called pillar posts, or pillar pages — are meaty guides that tell readers every major thing about a topic. Then, they point them to smaller posts that explore sub-topics.
Take the seed keyword “how to start a blog”, for example. A pillar page on the topic will broadly touch on:
- What CMS to start a blog on
- The best blog hosting
- How to choose a blog name
- How to choose a theme
- How to write your first blog post and lots more
But like a 101 guide, with just enough detail to give an overview, your pillar post won’t cover those subtopics with too much depth. Instead, it will link out to more in-depth, focused posts for most of those subtopics.
Jonas Sickler, SEO Manager at Terakeet calls it a “high-level overview of a very broad topic.”
The main purpose of pillar content is to organize your content so that humans and search engine bots find it more accessible.
“It [pillar content] gives readers a sense of how all the pieces come together and provides avenues for them to dive deeper into any of the subtopics”
Jonas Sicker
Together with its sub-topics, a pillar post forms a topic cluster — a powerful SEO strategy that helps you rank faster and dominate keywords for your topic.
3 types of content pillars (with examples)
There are three main types of pillar content: the “What is” pillar, the “How to” pillar, and the ultimate guide pillar. Here’s what each looks like and what makes them unique.
The “What is” pillar page
A “what is” pillar page is a detailed explanatory post written for entry-level readers of a topic. The reader recently learned about a topic, got interested, and searched for info that helps them understand the topic better.
Independent’s recent article on the trending Wordle game is a good “what is” pillar page example.
Other examples include posts like:
- What is programming?
- What is content marketing?
- What is a topic cluster?
- What is pillar content?
The “what is” pillar page gives your brand a chance to impress potential customers at the earliest stage of the buyer’s journey.
The “How to” pillar page
A “how-to” pillar page shows readers how to carry out a task. Sometimes, this task is complex enough to have several distinct “how to” sub-topics come under the main topic.
“How to create a website”, for example, requires further posts that explain:
- How to choose and buy a domain name
- How to choose and buy web-hosting
- How to choose and install a content management system
Other times, it’s pillars like “how to tie a tie” where sub-topics cover similar topics. E.g how to tie a knot, or how to tie each type of knot: single knot, windsor knot, bow tie knot. E.t.c.
“How to” pillar pages inspire action, and that makes them memorable. They are the type of posts that get bookmarked by readers who want to come back to steps in the future.
The ultimate guide pillar page
An ultimate guide pillar page serves as a 101 introduction to a topic, but it’s not the same thing as the “what is” pillar page.
The “what is” page shares the most elementary information and exposes the reader to fundamental concepts.
The guide, on the other hand, answers questions a reader already has from previous research. In Coschedule’s quality content guide, for example, they answer questions about length — something only a more advanced reader would know to ask about.
Guides help readers clarify confusing concepts, understand the topic better or from a different angle, and determine a good next step to take.
3 key benefits of creating pillar content
Pillar pages offer tons of benefits for website owners and readers. However, the improved user experience, better SEO performance, and boost in conversions that come with pillar content easily top the list.
Pillar content promotes user experience
User experience defines how readers feel when they access and interact with your site. It’s easy to pin this “feel” down to design alone, but site navigation is just as important.
Information architecture expert, Peter Morville names the seven key aspects of a good user experience as: usable, useful, desirable, valuable, findable, accessible, and credible.
The internal links you add to pillar pages help users find and access the rest of the useful content they need.
Take a look at this user behavior flow data for a topic cluster on one of my sites. Users stay engaged as far as four pages deep into the site because all the content they need on the topic is accessible.
Pillar content boosts SEO performance
Pillar pages help you rank higher in search, even for high-difficulty keywords. This better SEO performance means more brand visibility and opportunities for conversion.
How does pillar content do that?
According to Topic Cluster expert Chima Mmeje, “pillar content passes link juice to subtopics, and subtopics pass link juice to the pillar post too.”
Mmeje says this makes it easy for Google bots to understand the relationship between content and the rest of your website/webpages.
Similarly, Jonas Sickler says that “Pillar pages are excellent for SEO because they thematically link all the other pages within a cluster.”
Sickler explains “This shows Google you’re a subject matter expert on a wide range of related topics. It also helps Google understand the context of your content so it knows what each separate page focuses on — and which page is the best answer for a specific search query.”
On my sites, I’ve seen up to a 200% increase in traffic in a single month thanks to pillars and the cluster pages they link to.
Pillar content increases conversions
“Pillar pages give you plenty of opportunities to knit together multiple lead magnets that are all part of a broader theme. For example, Terakeet’s content strategy blog post covers personas, journey maps, topic clusters, pillar pages, and much more. Under each section of the pillar, in addition to linking to the appropriate cluster page, we also include a CTA to download a useful resource related to the subtopic in that section.” – Jonas Sickler, Terakeet
When procurement automation SaaS, DirectRFP, implemented a targeted pillar content strategy, they saw a 141% growth in conversion rate.
Because pillar content is broad, it gives you plenty of opportunities to convert readers from different angles. A checklist download for your post’s how-to section, templates for your example section, and maybe even a quiz.
Every content upgrade you can add to a more focused post can easily go into a pillar page and increase your chances of converting a reader.
How to create pillar content that people and search engines will love
Writing good pillar content isn’t much different from writing any good blog post. You need two things; a focus on readers, and search engine optimization.
Focus on the seed keyword
Sickler says that a pillar page is like a table of contents. There’s a broad topic the pillar page covers — like the broad topic for a book — and the subtopics make the table of content.
Say your offering is a project management tool.
It’s easy to think “project management tool” should be the right keyword to target with your pillar page. But would you write a book about project management tools? Probably not.
What about a book on project management that features a tools section? Most likely.
Let’s compare actual keyword suggestions for “project management tools”
With keyword suggestions for “project management”
The suggestions for the keyword “project management” show that it’s a better choice for a pillar page.
You’ll need to cover tools, skills, and much more in your pillar page. Whereas “project management tools” will only cover tools like Monday.
Align your content with search intent
“Always start with search intent. Don’t fall into the trap of creating pillar content that covers EVERYTHING about a topic. For example, a great pillar post about search engine optimization would explain all the various considerations but doesn’t go into great detail on how to create an SEO strategy. Instead, it focuses on what a user is trying to accomplish: Understand SEO. If someone searches for “how to create an SEO strategy”, then you could create a more action-oriented pillar page explaining the steps they will need to take.” – Jonas Sickler, SEO Manager Terakeet
For every keyword users search, there is something they’re trying to achieve.
They may be interested in going somewhere, buying something, comparing options, or simply learning more about a topic.
But content that matches search intent goes beyond checking the informational vs transactional box. It represents what the reader already knows, what they don’t know, and what they need to know to achieve their goal.
Take two similar keywords “SEO” and “advanced SEO”.
While both keywords are about SEO, there’s a wide gap in the reader’s knowledge level.
Someone who’s searching for “SEO” is looking to learn what SEO is, how it works, and other beginner-level info. Therefore, it makes sense to define SEO and other SEO terms for them.
Here’s what the outline for the number one article on SEO looks like:
Someone searching for “advanced SEO” is most likely looking for tips. Here’s a snapshot of actual search results for the keyword.
It makes little sense to define advanced SEO and most SEO terms in the post. Instead, the outline will look something like this:
Before you create your pillar page, consider the user journey. Where in their journey is the user? What do they already know? What don’t they know yet?
Optimize your headline for keywords and clicks
A good headline can be the difference between a click and a scroll past your post in search result pages. Good pillar page headlines include keywords that help you rank and power words that compel clicks.
The title of this post gets an 84 score in Coschedule headline analyzer, for example.
It is:
- Clear
- Previews what the blog post will talk about
- Promises actionable takeaways
- Includes power words
- And includes the keyword
Pillar content are assets. Build your assets
Creating stellar pillar content is not easy. But the results are well worth it.
More than serving as the glue that holds your topic cluster together, pillar pages are link magnets. Because of how expansive they are, pillar posts are often hard to replicate, so people just link to them.
Together with a topic cluster, pillar content is a powerful SEO strategy that helps you rank faster and dominate keywords for your topic.
The good news is that once you’ve created one, it’s easy to apply the same framework to other pillar posts as well.
Remember to focus on the seed keyword, align your content with search intent, and optimize your headline for keywords and clicks.
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