Skyrocket your Traffic...The power of pillar posts
Most bloggers (including me) love writing articles, and we all hope that someday, one of our posts will go viral and bring thousands of page views to our blog.
This might be a good approach and might work, but we all forget the bigger picture. We need to think ahead, take a step back, and look into the future.
I started to think about what direction I wanted to go with my blog and where I wanted my blog to be in 5 years.
Do I still want to write articles that have no connection with each other? Or do I want my blog to be a useful and helpful source of inspiration?
My blog was unorganized and needed some well-defined structure, but how?
After some research, I discovered a strategy known as 'pillar posts' or 'pillar content'. This is exactly what my blog was missing. This strategy put all the pieces of the puzzle together and made my blog a well-structured blog where readers can easily find what they are looking for.
What are pillar posts?
You can see a pillar post as a cornerstone of your blog, it is an in-depth and long-form blog post that covers a specific topic extensively.
A pillar post is created with the intent to cover a broad overview and provide detailed insights, often by breaking down the topic into subtopics.
A pillar post is supposed to be evergreen content, meaning its relevance lasts long after publication. People will come back to this post as a source of information. A pillar post covers a single topic in detail to ensure the reader fully understands the subject. From the pillar post, you link to other, more specific articles.
For example, if you have a blog about fruit. Your pillar post might be a long article about the different kinds of fruit. And in this article, you link to all other posts about fruit, like 'How to grow a banana tree in Europe', 'How to preserve your apple harvest', or 'How to propagate lemons'.
The importance of pillar posts
Here are a few reasons why pillar posts are so important:
Getting traffic
One of the biggest benefits of pillar posts is that they can attract a steady stream of traffic
Pillar posts are (or should be) SEO-optimized for search engines and provide high-quality information (and this still tends to perform well in rankings.
Your pillar post will rank for broader keywords, while the linked pages will rank for more specific (and long-tail) keywords.
Building authority
Pillar posts are essential in establishing authority for your blog.
Pillar posts build credibility with readers (and search engines) by showing your expertise and giving valuable information.
Providing value
The main goal of pillar posts is to provide value and high-quality content to the reader.
By offering comprehensive information, pillar posts are the perfect post for answering a user's answer. Pillar posts help them solve their problems and maybe learn new skills. And if they want, they can go even deeper into a topic by clicking one of the links.
Putting structure in your blog
Because pillar posts act as a main hub for other blog posts, it makes it easier to put a structure in your blog.
Pillar posts link to other blog posts covering specific subtopics in more detail, resulting in a robust linking structure.
This not only improves SEO but also provides your readers with lots of related information, which keeps them longer engaged on your site.
How to write pillar posts
Simply writing a long post isn't enough.
Creating a pillar and obtaining its full potential requires careful planning, research, execution, and updating.
Comprehensive research
After choosing the right topic, which is broad and relevant for your blog, it is time to do research to gather all the necessary information about the topic.
This research will be the basis of your pillar post, so make sure it is accurate and comprehensive.
Also, look for visuals, graphics, data, statistics, and examples that can support your content.
Optimize for SEO
When doing your research, you also found a lot of keywords you want to write about. Include many of these keywords naturally in your post. And make sure the title and headings are optimized for search engines.
You link to many other articles in a pillar post; also, make sure all the other ones link back to your pillar post. This way, it receives a lot of so-called 'link juice' back, so search engines will notice this is an important post and probably rank it higher.
Write with clarity and depth
You have done good keyword research, and you have a clear outline of your pillar post; now, the time has come to write (and proofread and re-write) your post.
You have to focus on clear, detailed, and useful information. Aim for a conversational tone with an authoritative undertone. This will increase your readers' engagement.
If applicable, try to add images, videos, charts, infographics, or tables. These break up a large chunk of text, make a post more engaging, and help you explain things better.
Update when needed
As I wrote above, a pillar post is supposed to be an evergreen post; the purpose is that the user will come back to it in the future to find information about the topic.
So, make sure it stays up-to-date. Not only for your readers, but search engines also love new or updated content.