In a recent study, we found that our pillar pages are magnets for links, organic traffic, and newsletter subscribers โ especially compared to regular blog posts. Here are the results that both types of SEO content generated over the course of a year:
Do these results mean you should ditch your blog strategy in favor of pillar pages? Not exactly.
Hereโs the catch: You really canโt have one without the other, and it all comes down to content mapping. Iโll explain exactly what I mean in this article.
What is a pillar page?
A pillar page is a piece of content that comprehensively covers a broad topic. Pillar page โ also sometimes referred to as hub and spoke โ content weaves together a wide range of relevant subtopics (spokes), organizes them all in one place (hub), and effectively showcases your subject matter expertise for the broad topic.
Pillar page content should be easy to navigate for readers looking to learn โ at a high level โ about a particular topic, but should also offer relevant resources for them to dive deeper.ย
Itโs kind of like the choose-your-own-adventure of content marketing.
Topical authority: why itโs important
When it comes to content creation for SEO and digital marketing, you donโt want to create content around any old topic. Instead, you want to reinforce your brandโs topical authority with every new piece of content you create (be it a blog, a pillar page, an eBook, etc.).
Letโs put it this way: If youโre in the business of selling mechanical keyboards, it doesnโt make sense to publish a blog article about the best recipes for a summer BBQ. Unless youโre recommending that your customers grill and eat their mechanical keyboards, which is (highly) unlikely.
Instead, itโs more helpful to your brand โ and your audience โ if you cover topics related to mechanical keyboards, like:
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What is a mechanical keyboard?
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Mechanical keyboards vs. regular keyboards.
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Custom mechanical keyboards.
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How to transition to a mechanical keyboard.
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Pros and cons of a mechanical keyboard.
By covering as many topics related to mechanical keyboards as possible, youโre building a foundation of informational content that tells search engines: โHey, I know a lot about mechanical keyboards!โ
And the more content you have that starts to rank for important search terms related to mechanical keyboards, the more likely searchers will see you as an authority on the subject. Ideally, they will start coming back to your content when they need to learn more about this specific topic.
Pillar pages + blogs = a match made in content marketing heaven
A well-executed and organized pillar page is one of the best ways to showcase to your audience (and search engines) that you have topical authority in a specific area. Blog posts help you achieve topical authority by allowing you to cover a wide range of relevant subtopics in great detail, and pillar pages organize all of that content into a nice, user-friendly package.
Letโs take a look at this tactic in action.
We built our content marketing guide as a pillar page, which allowed us to cover a slew of subtopics related to the broader topic of content marketing, all in one piece of collateral.ย
All of these subtopics are organized into sections on the page, with a hyperlinked table of contents at the top to allow readers to pick and choose exactly what theyโd like to learn about:
Then, throughout the page, we offer readers the opportunity to go deeper and learn more about each subtopic by linking to relevant blog content:
What is content mapping?
A pillar page is a great tactic if youโve got a lot of existing blog content all focused on a particular parent topic. Itโs one of our favorite ways at Brafton to repurpose and repromote our blogs.
But you can also create a pillar page with all brand-new content โ itโll just take more research, planning, and production time to complete.
Enter: content mapping.
Content mapping is the process of assessing your target audience, understanding what they are trying to achieve, and helping them along that journey with branded educational and commercial content. Its scope can span the entirety of your content marketing strategy or a single piece of pillar page content.
Why content mapping matters in content marketing
The planning (or content mapping) of a pillar page is just as important as the research done to choose the correct keyword to target for your business.
Pillar pages are kind of like the books of the marketing world. If you were an expert birder, for example, you wouldnโt set out to write a book about bird-watching without doing any research. Especially if youโve spent a lot of time writing and publishing articles about bird-watching on your blog. Youโd want to understand a few things before starting that book, like:
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Which of my blog posts generated the most interest from new and returning readers? (i.e. pages with the most new and returning visitors, as seen in your web analytics tool).
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Which blogs kept readers coming back for more? (i.e. pages with the most newsletter subscriptions, or the best newsletter subscription rates).
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Which blogs did my industry peers find most useful? (i.e. pages with the greatest number of high-quality referring domains and backlinks).
These questions can be answered by looking through your web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and Moz Pro.
Youโd also want to understand what the competition looks like before you spend dozens of hours writing thousands of words to fill a book.
Youโd want to answer questions, like:
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What do my competitorsโ books on bird-watching look like? (i.e. the types of bird-watching subtopics the page 1 results cover).
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What does Google think searchers want to see when they search for bird-watching? (i.e. the types of content that are found on page 1 for your target keyword โ and surprise! it might not be books).
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How long and detailed are my competitorsโ books? (i.e. the level of complexity and comprehensiveness of the content ranking on page 1).
These questions can be answered by manually reviewing relevant SERPs and utilizing TF-IDF tools like Clearscope or MarketMuse to understand the breadth of subtopics and types of content ranking on the first page.
Once you understand which of your content performs best and which content Google and other search engines prefer to rank highly for your target keyword, you can start piecing together a plan for your pillar page.
A note about internal linking
Before we dive into the how-to portion of this piece, we should also acknowledge the importance of internal linking to this whole process.
And Iโm not just talking about throwing in a link to a related product/service at the end of the page and calling it a day. The internal linking structure of your pillar page is literally the glue that holds the whole thing together. It helps readers easily navigate to related resources to continue learning from your brand. And it helps search engines understand the relationship between your pillar page content and the additional content youโre highlighting on the page.
But when it comes to internal linking, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Including too many internal links throughout your content can cause a frustrating user experience or look spammy, so use caution and make sure the only internal linking you do on the page is extremely relevant to the parent topic.
If youโre unsure whether or not youโve got too many internal links on the page, you can run it through Mozโs On-Page Grader tool, which automatically counts the number of links on your page and flags if youโve got too many.
Tip: Keep in mind that this tool will count ALL links found on the page, including those in your main navigation and footer, so the โToo Many Linksโ warning could be a false positive.
As Moz explains: Google recommends you donโt go over 100 internal links per page, because it can dilute the SEO value sent from the pillar page to the linked pages, and it can also make it more challenging for users and crawlers to navigate all of the content.
Two data-led ways to map out content for a pillar page
There are a couple of different ways to approach the construction of this type of content, but they each rely on organic search data to lead the way.
1. Planning a pillar page and related resources (all from scratch)
Letโs pretend you donโt have any prior content created about a particular topic. Youโre basically starting from scratch. Letโs also assume the topic youโve selected is both core and commercially valuable to your business, and that your domain realistically has a chance of ranking on page 1 for that keyword.
Letโs say youโre a pet food company and one of your main products is cat dental treats. Once youโve determined that this is the exact keyword you want to target (โcat dental treatsโ), itโs time to start your research.
Step 1: Manually inspect SERP to understand searcher intent
First, weโll start by manually inspecting the first SERP for this keyword, and answering the following questions:
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What types of content are on the first page of results?
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Why are people searching for โcat dental treatsโ?
By answering these two questions in our SERP analysis, weโll make sure that our plan for creating a pillar page to rank actually makes sense and itโs what searchers want to see on the SERP. Weโll also better understand all the reasons behind why someone might search this keyword (and we can then address those reasons in the content we create).
So letโs answer these questions:
Question 1: What types of content are on the first page of results?
Answer 1: The first SERP includes a variety of product ads, a People Also Ask section, and a selection of organic blogs and product pages.
Question 2: Why are people searching for โcat dental treatsโ?
Answer 2: From a quick analysis of the SERP, we can deduce that people want to know why and how cat dental treats are important to a catโs health, and they also want to know which cat dental treats work best. Perhaps most importantly, itโs highly likely that they plan to purchase cat dental treats for their furry companion(s) in the near future.
Step 2: Select related keyword ideas for blog content
Since you donโt just want to create a pillar page for just the primary keyword, you also want to pinpoint a selection of related subtopics to be written as blog content.
For this part of the process, head over to your keyword research tool, plug in your target keyword and (with an eye for topics that youโre well-suited to cover), jot down a list of keywords and phrases.
Hereโs our list of potential blog topics:
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Best cat dental treats.
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How do cat dental treats work?
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What to look for in cat dental treats.
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Do cat dental treats work?
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Can cat dental treats replace brushing?
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Vet recommended cat dental treats.
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Grain-free cat dental treats.
Step 3: Choose subtopics to cover in your pillar page content
Next, youโll want to review the subtopics mentioned in the top ranking results. While this process can be done manually (by clicking into each result on the SERP and jotting down the topics mentioned), a TF-IDF tool like MarketMuse makes this part of the process much quicker:
These TF-IDF tools analyze the top 10-20 results for your target keyword and automatically present the common subtopics mentioned in each piece. This gives you a very good understanding of what youโll also need to cover in your piece to compete for a top-ranking spot.
Hereโs the list of subtopics weโll want to cover in this pillar page, based on our MarketMuse data:
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Cat dental treats.
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Clean teeth.
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Purina dentalife.
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Feline greenies.
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Fresh breath.
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Natural ingredients.
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Veterinary oral health council.
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Best cat dental treats.
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Artificial flavors.
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Cats dental health.
Step 4: Create your outline and plan content
Now itโs time to connect the dots from your research. The best way to do this is to start by structuring your pillar page outline, and then going back in and filling in the areas where you want to create supporting blog content.
Hereโs an example of what the end result might look like:
H1: The Complete Guide to Cat Dental Treats: For a Fresh-Breath Feline Friend
H2: What are cat dental treats and how do they work?
- Topics to cover: Cat dental treats
- Blog post to support section:
Title: How Cat Dental Treats Work (& Why Your Kitty Needs Them)
Keyword: how do cat dental treats work
H2: What are the benefits of cat dental treats?
- Topics to cover: Clean teeth, fresh breath
- Blog post to support section:
Title: Do Cat Dental Treats Really Work? (Hereโs What The Experts Say)
Keyword: do cat dental treats work
H2: Are cat dental treats an acceptable alternative to brushing?
- Topics to cover: Cats dental health
- Blog post to support section:
Title: Cat Dental Treats Vs Brushing: Everything You Need To Know
Keyword: can cat dental treats replace brushing
H2: Do vets recommend using cat dental treats?
- Topics to cover: Veterinary oral health council
- Blog post to support section:
Title: Vets Recommend Using Cat Dental Treats โ Hereโs Why
Keyword: vet recommended cat dental treats
H2: The best cat dental treats to try
- Topics to cover: Purina dentalife, Feline greenies, natural ingredients, artificial flavors.
- Blog post to support section:
Title: 5 Of The Best Cat Dental Treats & Why We Love Them
Keyword: best cat dental treats - Blog post #2 to support section:
Title: What To Look For In Cat Dental Treats
Keyword: what to look for in cat dental treats
Creating an outline for a pillar page isnโt easy, but once laid out, it helps us understand the content that needs to be produced to bring the whole thing to life.
Here is our list of content to create (based on our outline):
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Pillar page: The Complete Guide to Cat Dental Treats: For a Fresh-Breath Feline Friend
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Blog #1: How Cat Dental Treats Work (& Why Your Kitty Needs Them)
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Blog #2: Do Cat Dental Treats Really Work? (Hereโs What The Experts Say)
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Blog #3: Cat Dental Treats Vs Brushing: Everything You Need To Know
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Blog #4: Vets Recommend Using Cat Dental Treats โ Hereโs Why
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Blog #5: 5 Of The Best Cat Dental Treats & Why We Love Them
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Blog #6: What To Look For In Cat Dental Treats
The best way to tackle this list of content is to create and publish the six blog posts first, then once they are live, you can write the pillar page content, placing hyperlinks to the supporting blog posts directly in the copy.
2. Planning a pillar page from top performing content
For this next method, letโs say you already have a ton of published content about a particular topic, and youโd like to reuse and repromote that content within a pillar page dedicated to that topic.
All of the steps in the previous process apply, but for Step 2 (Select Related Keyword Ideas for Blog Content), do the following:
First, youโll want to understand which of your existing pieces generates the most interest from your audience. Letโs use our web analytics data for this. In this example, weโll look at Google Search Console data because it shows the actual search performance of our website content.
Letโs use the topic of โcontent creationโ as our desired pillar page keyword. Search for the query in Google Search Console (choose the โQueries containingโ option):ย
Pull all of the pages currently generating impressions and clicks from terms containing your topic, placing those with the highest clicks and impressions at the top of your list. Hereโs what this might look like:ย
As you can see, most of the content weโve created that also ranks for keywords containing โcontent creationโ is blog content. These will be highly useful as related resources on our pillar page.
Now, go back to your TF-IDF tool and select the subtopics related to โcontent creationโ that you want to cover in your pillar page. Example:
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Social media content
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Content creation tool
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Content creators
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Content strategy
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Content creation process
Finally, map your existing blog content to those โcontent creationโ subtopics. The initial mapping may look something like this:
You may not be able to map each blog perfectly to the subtopic youโre covering in your pillar page, but thatโsย OK. Whatโs important is that youโre providing readers with relevant content (where applicable) and that content, as youโve seen in your Search Console data, is already proven to perform well with your organic search audience.
Pillar page planning templates and resources
Pillar pages take an incredible amount of time and planning to execute, but they are worth every penny.
Hereโs an example of the success we saw after producing one of our more recent pillar pages, โHow to Rank on Google:โ
Hereโs a template of the outline used to bring the page to life (and you can use it for your own pillar page). Just make a copy and off you go. Good luck!