Some of you may have heard about pillar content. Some of you even do know what is pillar content, but I bet many of you have not taken it seriously. You would not know some of the killer benefits of pillar content includes, getting long-term traffic.
So this is my detailed post on, what is pillar content, how to write one, the types of pillar content, how to promote them.
Keep reading…
What is pillar content?
As the name itself indicates, pillar content acts as a pillar for your blog. Without two or more Pillar posts, your blog may become unstable. Pillar content alone has the capacity to get tons of backlinks and traffic.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="640"]
Best Ways to Get Massive Traffic From Pillar Content[/caption]Pillar posts are evergreen, insightful content that has the potential to get tons of traffic and backlinks. They are timeless. Normally these pillar posts have a word count above 1500 words.
Check out my pillar post on WordPress Security, to get a clear idea. On how to write.
How to find pillar content ideas?
I have already covered in detail on how to find blog topic ideas. But, however, while writing pillar content you have to be extremely cautious about the content on which you are writing. You are spending more time while writing pillar content, right? So you should make sure that, some people are there to read the pillar content that you are going to publish!
That means, before publishing pillar content. Ask yourself, “To who am I writing? What’s the burning topic in my niche?”.
Craft content accordingly, so that, it will be benefited for your wide range of audience.
Choose a topic that has already gained attention in your niche. Produce the content that covers more than that of any existing content on the topic.
Don’t be shy to cross the 10,000 words mark!
Examples of pillar content:
In detail blog posts
Blog posts that contain in-depth details on a particular topic. The topic is well researched before writing the blog post.
It just gives the boost to readers to link to or to share the content. In this case, they will often appreciate your efforts via comments.
Examples are:
Ultimate guide to keyword research.
Complete WordPress Security Guide.
Round up posts
Round up posts contain links of all your popular blog posts summarized in one article, i.e. Pillar post. It reduces the bounce rate of your blog, also increases the average page visit duration of your blog.
Examples of posts are:
Top 5 blog posts this month
These 5 blog posts change your angle of thinking.
In this type of pillar posts, we include all of our best posts, in one post. It benefits readers, and more importantly, the strategy of internal linking will work like a charm. Regular readers of your blog will surely bookmark this kind of round up posts.
These types of posts also act as a pillar for your blog, gaining lots of visitors, so I have included roundup posts as one of the types in pillar content.
Content curation
Content Curation is nothing but the process of collecting information all over the web and presenting them in a meaningful way. It is done for attracting Backlinks and traffic. The curated content contains many links to awesome content all over the web.
Case studies
Case studies are published on the based on the real observations and analysis. They are the resultant of extensive studies. Readers and visitors tend to believe in expert case studies, rather than mere information.
Case study has inherited content authority. Publishing case studies on your blog, helps you to get more number of quality backlinks and a steady stream of traffic.
List posts
People love lists. There are easily digestible. Writing very, very long lists helps you to get more traffic and Backlinks. It is often easier to convert the list posts to slides, infographics, and thus re-purpose the content.
Do not forget to offer PDF copy of the list post to the readers. They will be greatly benefited by this and there will be extremely thankful for you. Because PDFs have proved themselves to be the most portable document format ever.
Remember the magic numbers 101, 99, while crafting list posts.
Benefits of pillar content
Benefits of pillar content are:
- Increases page visit duration, as pillar posts are long and insightful.
- Decrease bounce rate in case of round up posts, and in long in-detail posts are there are chances of having a huge amount of internal links.
- Gets huge amount of backlinks.
- Gets huge amount of shares.
- Pillar content gets decent traffic throughout the lifetime of your blog.
- You will receive high Google rankings because of the high word count, shares, and backlinks.
- Google rankings increases as pillar posts are updated frequently with better content; Google loves fresh, updated content.
And much more…
Pillar content is Timeless. They can drive you massive traffic and links in long run.
How to write a pillar post
- Pillar posts are not actually posts, they are pages. They are usually written as a page because these pages never get buried deep under your blog. The URL structure of these pages does not contain any date parameter in its permalink.
- You should start writing a pillar post in pages section. Add pillar content as a page with, contact us, about us, write for us pages, as they are timeless and evergreen.
- Include table of contents. It helps users to browse though your pillar content easily. It also makes interlinking easier to certain sections of you post.
- While writing pillar content. It is important to write only headings or highlights of the content first, then expand itand form a long post. This saves your time writing long pillar content.
- Include case studies, stories, humor in your blog posts. It makes reading enjoyable for your readers, and make them read your blog post fully.
- Make use of text formatting tags properly, they have the potential to retain readers longer on your site. I have already stressed this point recently in one of my blog posts. Proper use of Text formatting tags is important in longer blog posts, to prevent readers from skimming throughout your blog post.
- Leave plenty of spaces between the paragraphs and sentences. Include bullet points. They make the post content easily digestible. These points are highly essential for pillar posts as they are long. They should not become, “Yet another history text book”!
How to promote your pillar content?
While promoting your pillar content, it’s important to showcase your hard work to readers.
Here are some key tips on promoting pillar content:
- While sharing pillar content on social media, do mention the word count of blog post, it increases the chance of retweets, sharing or likes.
Like: Do check my latest post on WordPress security [2000+ words] - Use words like complete, ultimate, the only guide. This increases click through rate.
- As you all know that PageRank follows to other blog posts through the homepage, it’s important to link to your pillar post from your homepage, it increases visibility traffic and search engine rankings.
- Do share in all of the blog communities, blog community members appreciate it and there is increased chances of blog post going viral.
- Do share the link to your pillar content to the forums; use it as your signature. As the post has in detail content, it is less likely to be marked as spam.
- Create separate domains for your pillar content 301 Redirect it to main pillar post.
- Link out to authoritative bloggers in your niche, tweet them about your outstanding content.
Pack your pillar posts to PDF, offer these PDF posts to your subscribers and readers.
You may also repack them later to EBooks.
How to maintain pillar content?
Proper maintenance is required for pillar posts. As they never bury under your blog, they should be evergreen.
You regularly have to go through all your pillar posts, and make sure that is up to date.
You have to make sure that it is super updated. You have to edit it ruthlessly to make it better. Because they are the supporting pillars to your blog nah?
Updating blog posts regularly also helps to boost Google rankings.
Make sure that the updated date is reflected in the byline, so that Google immediately determines it as updated content.
As pillar content is frequently updated, always try to interlink your pillar content in other blog posts. By this, your pillar content gets some link juice.
Final words
I hope you enjoyed this article. I think you have realized the importance of pillar articles in getting traffic and backlinks to your site. If you do not have any pillar articles in your blog. Do create two or more pillar posts. It helps you a lot. Don’t forget to link to those posts from your homepage.
If you have found this post useful, and felt that it is something worth it, please do share. If you do have any doubts or queries do comment. If I have committed any mistakes while writing this post on pillar content, do free to scold me. I do love negative comments.
Have a fabulous day ahead…
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