What is a Pillar Page?
A pillar page is one that covers a topic in-depth and is linked to a cluster of related blog posts. These types of pages broadly cover the whole topic on a single page, with more in-depth information in blog posts that hyperlink from the pillar page. Read more about what pillar pages are here.
In a world of organic real estate being harder and harder to obtain, getting your content in front of the correct eyes and actually attracting new visitors to your site is tough! These pillar page concepts help drive traffic to your site because search engines reward websites whose content is organized by topics. In this blog, we’re going to talk about how you can create pillar pages using successful landing pages as a starting point.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a page on your website used for a specific purpose to capture leads. Pages like these are where users are sent to after they click on an ad and/or fill out a form. Often times, these pages are related to a specific content offer where a conversion path may look something like this:
- A User clicks an ad or call-to-action that they’re interested in. Typically a gated content offer.
- They come to your landing page and submit what is usually just their email address in exchange for your premium content.
- The user is then redirected to a thank you page where they are given the option to download the premium content offer in some way.
The Relationship Between the Two
Creating pillar pages that rank well for your desired topic or term takes time. It’s also hard to determine what topic engages the most users. Landing pages are a great way to get some insight. If a landing page about an SEO 101 digital booklet is performing very well within your audience, it would be a good idea to leverage that and transform your landing page into a pillar page and cluster that continues to expand on the topic. This landing page data provides great insight into what topics your buyer personas care about, and help you tailor your content and build authority in a topic.
Repurposing content is a key strategy of inbound marketing. Assets that you’ve already created like ebooks are great pieces of content to fill out pillar pages with. Use your landing pages and content offers as testing grounds to find out which topics get the most attention.
How to Start
Once you’ve been able to deploy and measure a landing page, identify whether or not it’s a strong contender to become the backbone of a pillar page.
Then, take this landing page and begin to progressively un-gate your content into the copy of your landing page. Over time, the content that emerges from your premium content will evolve to become more of a resource. This is one of the most organic ways to create a pillar page from a traditional landing page. Having the landing page already have SEO traction and traffic from the related call to action, helps keep a little bit of that authority as you begin to transform the page. Eventually, your landing page will become a full blown topic resource. At this point, you can remove the original downloadable content offer. But, you still want to retain conversion opportunities on your resource pages. Be sure to keep ways that the user can engage with the post and contact you.
Want to learn more about creating pillar pages? You don’t always need a landing page first.
What do I do with my Pillar Page?
With your new pillar page in this earliest stage of life, you can begin to spread its wings and link it up to many different parts of your website. Hyperlink existing blog posts into the copy of your pillar page in areas where certain sub-topics could be expanded on. As you begin to write new content, consider areas of your new pillar page that hold opportunities to link to more in-depth blog posts. As you grow your content and cluster topics together with pillar pages, you’ll position yourself as a trustworthy resource. This makes prospects much more willing to click that “call now” button if they’re in need of your services. Having information that can help solve your potential buyer’s problem, before they even need to call, is a surefire way to positively impact your conversion opportunities.
Instead of replacing one resource with another, think about now they can connect, transform, and support each other. Landing pages are a great way to capture statistics of your most valuable topics. Use this information to tailor your pillar pages to those topics and help create authority and trustworthiness in areas that your personas want to see. How are you currently using landing pages and pillar pages? You could be missing out!
Want to learn more about pillar pages? Check out the other blogs from this series.
