Digital Marketing

5 min read

23 Jun 2024

How Pillar Based Marketing Can Transform Your Content Strategy?

How Pillar Based Marketing Can Transform Your Content Strategy?

Did you know that 90% of marketers who employ a pillar-based marketing strategy see a significant increase in their website visibility on search engines? Let's explore what pillar-based marketing is, and why it's becoming a go-to strategy for successful marketers.

Pillar-based marketing is an approach that focuses on creating a robust foundation of main content pieces (pillars) supported by smaller, related content (clusters). This strategy helps organize content on your website and makes it easily accessible for both search engines and your audience.

Understanding and implementing pillar-based marketing can dramatically improve your online presence. In this blog, we'll delve into the details of setting up a pillar-based marketing strategy, explain the benefits it brings, and provide a guide for using it effectively to reach your target audience. So, stick around to equip yourself with all you need to relaunch your content strategy effectively!

What is Pillar-Based Marketing?

What is Pillar-Based Marketing?

Pillar-based marketing is an approach that focuses on producing high-quality, authoritative content pieces called "pillar content" that serve as the foundation for a broader content marketing strategy. These pillars, which come in a variety of shapes, are the primary thematic anchors of the content strategy and provide in-depth coverage of wide subjects or themes.

By going further into particular subtopics, supporting content—which can include blog articles, infographics, podcasts, social media postings, and email newsletters—complements pillar material. The content structure used in pillar-based marketing is hierarchical, with pillar material at the top and supporting content branching out from it.

Another important factor is SEO, since supporting sub-pillar content frequently links back to the pillar content, and pillar content is geared around goal keywords.

Traditional marketing techniques and pillar-based marketing are not the same in terms of implementation, focus, or method. While pillar-based marketing concentrates on producing extensive, long-form content pieces, traditional marketing focuses on short-form content, such as commercials and advertisements.

With pillar content acting as the cornerstone of a larger content ecosystem, pillar-based marketing employs a hierarchical content structure. Prioritizing audience education and involvement, it promotes continuous communication and the development of relationships. With a longer lifespan, pillar-based marketing needs ongoing funding to stay relevant and visible.

With the use of analytics tools and data-driven insights, also makes more thorough measurement and optimization possible. In conclusion, traditional marketing concentrates on short-term, transactional advertising, whereas pillar-based marketing prioritizes long-term relationship-building, education, and value creation through complete content initiatives.

Key Components of a Pillar-Based Marketing Strategy

A pillar-based marketing strategy's foundational material offers thorough, superior information on wide-ranging subjects or themes that are pertinent to the intended audience. It should be topic-specific, exhibit authority and knowledge, and be timeless.

Content should be carefully selected, with an emphasis on subjects that are relevant to company objectives and have a high search volume. It can be in any format, including podcasts, films, ebooks, whitepapers, essays, and tutorials. Additionally, pillar content needs to be search engine optimized, with keyword research being used to increase visibility.

In order to maintain accuracy and freshness, it should also include a clear Call to Action (CTA), an internal connecting structure, and regular updates. A brand can become recognized as an authority, draw in organic traffic, and establish itself by producing strong pillar content.

A pillar-based marketing plan must include supporting material, often known as cluster content. It offers thorough insights into particular subtopics associated with the primary pillar material. For increased visibility, it is linked to pillar material and can take on many formats.

Optimizing your keywords is crucial to drawing in organic visitors. Cohesion and consistency are crucial. The content schedule should incorporate supporting content, which should also be regularly optimized with the use of analytics tools and marketed through a variety of marketing channels.

As the link between creating pillar content and supporting content in a content marketing plan, bridge content is vital. It offers topic-relevant, transitional, instructive, and informational content in a variety of media. Bridge content incorporates call to action (CTAs), contextualizes information, and logically connects pillar content with supporting content. It ought to be implemented at key junctures, and analytics tools ought to be used to track its effectiveness. Your audience will have a smooth and consistent experience with this strategy.

Benefits of Pillar-Based Marketing

Benefits of Pillar-Based Marketing

Pillar-based marketing is a strategy that focuses on creating comprehensive content that caters to diverse needs and interests. This approach helps businesses establish authority, improve search engine visibility, and engage their target audience effectively.

By focusing on broad pillar topics and supporting them with detailed cluster content, businesses can provide a wealth of valuable information to their audience. This approach also helps establish authority and credibility, as it allows businesses to showcase their expertise and knowledge within their industry or niche. Pillar content is SEO-friendly, making it more likely to rank well in search engine results pages.

Organizing content around pillar topics and supporting subtopics creates a more intuitive and user-friendly experience for website visitors, leading to increased engagement and satisfaction. Content repurposing and syndication facilitate this process, allowing content to be shared across various channels, maximizing reach and impact.

Pillar-based marketing also streamlines content planning and management processes by identifying core pillar topics and creating a content calendar that outlines supporting pillar and cluster content together. Pillar content can serve as a powerful lead generation tool, offering resources like ebooks, guides, or webinars to capture leads and nurture them through the sales funnel.

Lastly, pillar-based marketing enables businesses to track and measure the performance of their content initiatives more effectively, allowing them to make data-driven decisions to optimize ROI. Overall, pillar-based marketing provides a strategic framework for creating valuable, relevant, and cohesive content that drives organic traffic and contributes to long-term business growth and success.

Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Pillar-Based Marketing

Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Pillar-Based Marketing

A pillar-based marketing strategy should be put into practice by first understanding your target audience, reviewing your business goals, researching potential core topics, prioritizing and refining them, validating them with audience feedback, conducting keyword research, analyzing industry trends, assessing competitor content, and brainstorming topic ideas.

This procedure guarantees that your effective content marketing strategy is in line with the requirements and interests of your audience while also establishing your brand's authority and competence in your sector. You may develop a thorough and effective content strategy by following market trends, examining the content of your competitors, coming up with topic ideas, sorting and honing your list, and getting input from your audience on the subjects you have selected. Your content strategy and pillar material will be built off these major themes.

A marketing strategy's most important instrument is the pillar page, which offers extensive resources on important subjects. Choosing the main subjects, obtaining data, establishing the framework, producing interesting content, optimizing for search engines, incorporating internal links, and providing calls to action (CTAs) are all part of it.

The page should have clean, white space, and legible typography. Before publication, it should be reviewed, revised, and pushed across a variety of media to boost awareness and interaction.

To effectively support pillar pages, it is crucial to identify specific subtopics and gather relevant information. This can be done through research, industry publications, case studies, expert interviews, and customer feedback.

The most appropriate content formats for each subtopic should be determined based on audience preferences and the nature of the information being conveyed. The structure of each supporting content piece should be planned, breaking it down into sections or key points, each focusing on a specific aspect related to the subtopic.

High-quality, engaging content should be created, optimized for SEO, and included in internal links to guide users to explore related topics and resources. Clear and relevant Calls-to-Action (CTAs) should be included to encourage user engagement.

The design and formatting of the supporting content should be carefully considered to enhance the user experience. The content should be reviewed and iterated before publishing, and the content should be published and promoted through various channels to increase its visibility.

SEO optimization is a crucial aspect of a pillar-based marketing strategy. It involves identifying opportunities to internally link between pillar pages and supporting content, using descriptive and relevant anchor text. External linking involves seeking opportunities to earn backlinks from authoritative websites and creating high-quality content.

On-Page SEO involves optimizing pillar pages and supporting content for target keywords related to core topics. Technical SEO involves creating a mobile-friendly and responsive website, implementing schema markup, and submitting sitemaps to search engines.

Content quality and relevance in search terms are essential, with keyword research and compelling meta titles encouraging clicks in search engine results pages.

User experience optimization involves ensuring fast page load times, intuitive navigation, and mobile responsiveness. Monitoring and analyzing performance using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console helps in refining SEO strategies and improving visibility in search results.

Explore the Power of Pillar-Based Marketing in Boosting Online Visibility!

A pillar-based marketing strategy involves identifying core topics, creating pillar pages, developing supporting content, and optimizing SEO. Core topics should be chosen based on audience and business goals, and keyword research should be conducted to analyze industry trends.

Pillar pages should be created by choosing broad themes, conducting thorough research, and developing high-quality content. They should be optimized for SEO, internal linking, and user experience, with clear calls-to-action. Supporting content should be created by identifying subtopics related to pillar pages, and optimized for SEO and internal linking.

Linking and SEO optimization should be implemented, with on-page elements optimized for target keywords and technical SEO elements in place for crawlability and indexability. High-quality, relevant content should address user intent. Performance metrics should be monitored to refine the SEO strategy over time.

The future of pillar-based marketing is expected to be shaped by several trends. These include content experience optimization, AI and automation integration, voice search and semantic SEO, visual and interactive content, ecosystem integration, ethical and responsible content, and measurement and attribution.

Content experience optimization will focus on creating personalized content recommendations, interactive elements, and immersive storytelling techniques to engage audiences more deeply. AI and automation will be more prevalent in content creation, optimization, and distribution, allowing marketers to leverage AI-driven insights to identify new pillar topics, personalize content, and optimize SEO strategies.

Voice search and semantic SEO will require marketers to adapt their strategies to optimize content for natural language queries and semantic search. Visual and interactive content formats, such as video, infographics, quizzes, and virtual experiences, will continue to gain importance in pillar-based marketing.

Marketers will explore innovative ways to leverage these formats to enhance engagement and convey complex information effectively. Ethical and responsible content practices will be prioritized, ensuring accuracy, diversity, inclusivity, and avoiding deceptive or manipulative tactics. Advanced measurement and attribution techniques will be invested in to track the impact of pillar-based marketing efforts.

In conclusion, the future of pillar-based marketing lies in its ability to adapt to evolving consumer behaviors, technological advancements, and industry trends.

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Diane Eunice Narciso

Diane Eunice Narciso is a content marketer, strategist, and writer who's skilled and passionate about marketing, social media, eCommerce, etc. And is also an expert in sales and business development nurturing strategic partnerships and collaborations.

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