Content marketing can sometimes seem like a never-ending stream of landing pages, blog posts, emails, and social media posts. Your goals may boost engagement and generate leads, but most brands miss the mark.
See, here’s the thing: When your content marketing strategy is disorganized and the topics are random keywords, it’s hard to make an impact.
So, how can content be used to effectively drive engagement, awareness, and, ultimately, leads and sales?
A pillar-based content marketing strategy.
To meet your goals and truly harness the Force of your content, you need to strategically plan your content in a way that supports your brand’s big-picture goals.
A content pillar strategy (and the data + deep research that comes with it) helps with this mission. It also helps give your content a purpose and makes it easier to create a content schedule that is more than just a mix of random keywords.
A pillar is something that is basic, essential, indispensable, and the foundation upon which something is constructed or developed.
Take a moment and imagine that you’ve been tasked with building a physical structure that can withstand the test of time. That’s the purpose of these foundational pieces of content; you’re building a content structure that remains strong and authoritative in the digital world.
What is a Content Pillar?
In short, a content pillar is a substantive and informative piece of long-form content (such as a blog, guide, eBook, or report) that comprehensively covers one main topic and all the sub-topics under it. The content pillar provides key information about a broad topic. The page is also optimized for a specific keyword and search intent.
The first goal of pillar-based content is usefulness and relevancy to the reader––no matter how they arrive to your website. The second goal is to make that content so compelling and informative that people are willing to link to it and share it.
It’s essential to remember that the value in a content pillar is the solution it provides to readers. Content pillar marketing allows companies to be creative and intentional with their content and strategically build brand awareness.
How Do Content Pillars Benefit Your Brand?
Content pillars are highly beneficial for building an impactful content strategy while expanding your company’s online presence. Additionally, content pillars can help boost efficiency when developing marketing strategies and creative elements to reach your audience.
A few of the other advantages of using content pillars include:
- Having consistent content that garners trust from prospective customers and clients.
- Creating a content marketing strategy where all assets are interconnected and serve a specific purpose on their own.
- Providing Google with better signals. Pillar and sub-pillar pages (also known as cluster pages) are so well organized that it is easy for Google to determine their subject matter and rank them. Remember, Google poorly ranks badly organized web pages, so high-quality content contained by topic pillars and sub-pillars tends to get rewarded with higher rankings.
Ultimately, properly using content pillars can significantly increase web traffic with highly concentrated content that is impactful, unique, and informative to readers.
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