A Guide to Content Pillars Part 3: Building a Pillar Page
Bringing it All Together in a Pillar Page
If you’re new here, take a few minutes to review the first two articles in our Content Pillars series as a helpful place to start:
If you’ve been following along on this journey already, welcome to part 3!
We’ve explained why content creation is essential, how to align your efforts with your audience’s needs, and how to maximize the return on the content you create. Now we’re going to put all the pieces together in a pillar page (and we’ll show off a couple examples, too!).
Remember, a pillar page is vital to your topic cluster strategy. It brings all your wonderful subtopic keywords and audience research together to create the link structure you need for success.
4 Important Components in a Pillar Page
The whole point of a pillar page is to help your audience gain an in-depth understanding around a certain topic cluster. It gives your topics and subtopics a chance to shine, while giving your audience the information they need to feel comfortable making a purchase or using your brand’s services.
Each pillar page has a few must-haves to consider:
1) Comprehensive Copy
Pillar pages should hold 2,000+ words on the page. When you think you’ve written too much, keep writing a little more! Group your topics and subtopics in a way that fits the natural thought progression of a new audience member and try to answer their questions.
If you get stuck, remember to consider your audience, your business, and the current content you already have. Defining terms, answering frequently asked questions, and describing your process is also a great place to start.
2) Table of Contents
This is one of the most important parts of a pillar page. You want easy-to-navigate content and plenty of opportunities for your readers to jump around to find what they are looking for. Many pillar pages will include a floating table of contents that anchors down the page—this is another great way to reiterate all the awesome content! Check out this example on Member One’s pillar page.
3) Striking Visuals
As you can imagine, a text-heavy pillar page (with over 2,000 words!) could easily bore your audience and lead to increased bounce rates. To avoid reader fatigue, make sure you are including interactive and visual content to support your ideas. Videos, infographics, photography, and icons are just a few examples that can make a big difference in keeping your audience engaged.
4) Linking Structure
What sets a pillar page apart from a normal landing page? The linking structure! Remember the topic clusters we talked about? Each subtopic within the cluster should have standalone content — whether it’s a blog post, a whitepaper, a downloadable resource, a podcast, or something else.
A successful pillar page includes links back to the subtopic content, and the subtopic content should link back to the pillar page. This synergistic relationship between the content on your website will create a linking machine that will help Google determine the importance of your pillar page and all the supporting content on your site.
Bonus Elements:
5) Percentage Read Bar
Everybody likes an achievement, and a percentage read bar is a visually appealing way to help readers know how far they have to go to complete the page. It offers a nice touch and lets them know you want to be conscious of their time. Check out this example on the Maple Leaf Farms website.
6) Downloadable Content
While not a mandatory item, downloadable content is a great way to get leads on your pillar page. Oftentimes, pillar pages will claim to be the complete guide on a certain topic. A downloadable version of this content is a great way to incentivize someone to share their email with you in exchange for a more built-out version of the content on your page. They leave with a resource they can share with their team, and you get their contact information to begin the lead nurturing process.
→ Pro tip: If you already have a complete guide or ebook content, take that content and put it on your pillar page so you can begin to rank for your hard work!
How to Organize Content on a Pillar Page
Let’s get into the real question: how do you write 2,000+ words for a page and keep it interesting?
Enter a content strategist’s best friend — categories!
By organizing your content into categories, you will keep things cohesive and develop a system you can repeat each time you write a new pillar page.
Here are some popular categories you can expand on to support your topic clusters:
Definitions
In the awareness stage of an audience journey, providing definitions and answers to the questions they are already asking is a great addition to your pillar page. It gives you the opportunity to define your product or service in a way that aligns with your brand, while educating your audience and getting them closer to a conversion.
Type Differentiation
Does your topic have any product or service variations? Expand on these and break down each type! To keep things visual, this would be a great section to use a comparison chart, side-by-side imagery, or This vs. That examples.
Pros and Cons
Think about all the benefits your topic offers. This shouldn’t be too hard, assuming it coincides with the product or service your brand already offers. This can be a great way to link out to company and product information to give your readers a well-rounded understanding of who you are.
Likewise, are there any negatives to your topic? Maybe it’s not a good fit for everyone. You can use this section to paint those negatives in a positive light and help narrow down your audience. They will appreciate the transparency and objective perspective.
How-To / Process
Does your topic need explanation? A how-to video or step-by-step process explanation could be a great way to educate your audience and help them understand what to expect.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions are a great way to create content for long-tail keywords (or subtopics). Pulling ideas from your topic and subtopic research can help bolster this section of the website with an aim to answer your audience’s questions before they have to ask.
A tool like Answer The Public can help you brainstorm all kinds of questions related to your topic. Another great place to find questions your audience may be asking is the quick answers section in a Google search.
Next Steps
Always use the opportunity to tell your audience how they can take the next step and purchase your product or use your service. Include a call-to-action that supports your main goal for the pillar page and ensure an easy path to contact you for more information.
Get started (and reach out if we can help)
You’ve made it through the entire Content Pillars blog series, and you should have everything you need to get started on your content pillar strategy! As a quick recap, we’ve discussed:
→ how topics and subtopics replace old-school keyword research
→ how topic clusters support your business, your brand, and your audience
→ how pillar pages are comprehensive linking machines
→ how to make a successful pillar page to house your topic clusters
We hope this has given you the insight you need into one of our favorite content strategies. So what topic will you cover on your site?
If you need a refresher, read the other articles here:
If you want more information on Reusser’s approach to content strategy, take a look at our process.