How to Create Pillar Content for Website Optimization

When optimizing website performance, you need content that can achieve large amounts of traffic. To meet these needs, you can learn how to create pillar content.

This guide will discuss how to create pillar content in accordance with SEO rules. Before we get into it, you need to first identify some important aspects of it below.

What is Pillar Content?

Pillar content is a page that provides information related to a topic as a whole. This page links to several other pages on more specific and in-depth sub-topics.

You can think of it as a complete guide or a mini encyclopedia. The content is longer than usual because it covers all aspects of the topic. Even so, the discussion focuses on certain topics only.

Such content is created to connect with more specific and in-depth clusters. In short, the content pillar is the center of the collection with the same topic, which is connected to the other content via internal links.

The purpose of creating the content is to provide comprehensive information about a topic on one page. By knowing how to create pillar content, you can make it easier for your audience to find all the information they are looking for on a website.

Types of Pillar Content

To know how to create pillar content, you must first know the type you want to make. From the three main types, you can choose one that fits the marketing goals you want to achieve.

The three types of content pillars are how-to articles, explanatory articles, and guide articles. Here's the full explanation:

How-to Articles

How-to articles provide information related to the steps of doing something. To write this type of content, you must position yourself as an expert on the topic.

By using how-to articles, you can reach an audience who is looking for related information. You can link how-to articles to other articles that provide complementary information.

You can see examples of how-to articles in the following content regarding how to optimize on-page SEO. In the article, you will find the steps to implement an on-page strategy on a website.

Explanatory Articles

Explanatory articles cover a topic in its entirety. The discussion usually includes the meaning, purpose, benefits, advantages, types, and comparisons.

Each explanation in this type of article will be linked to other articles with a more specific and in-depth discussion.

As an illustration, you can find an explanatory type of content in the form of an SEO definition article, which discusses search engine optimization comprehensively.

Guide Articles

Guide articles are summaries of all the content on websites on the same topic. Any content with a related topic will act as a support link to the guide article. Supporting content can be blog posts, FAQs, product pages, or videos.

If likened to, guide articles act as the head, and the supporting content is the hands, feet, and body. Audiences can access any content with related topics in one guide article. 

Use of Content Pillars in SEO

Pillar content is very useful in SEO. You can use it as a content marketing strategy for your website. The reason is that it is a content marketing strategy that focuses on mastering certain topics compared to keywords.

You can generate a large amount of valuable content on a single topic using content pillars. This way, the topical authority of your website will increase.

In addition, the content pillar will also improve the hierarchical arrangement and navigation of your website. Good website navigation will make it easier for the audience and search engines to explore the contents of your website. This has a positive impact on the user experience or web crawler on the website.

Pillar Content Creation Strategy

Before discussing how to create pillar content, it's better to know what strategies are needed to produce it properly. Here is the strategy you should know:

Create Educational Content

You can use content pillars with the aim of educating the audience. It can be related to the products or services you offer or discussions about education regarding a particular topic.

By creating educational content, the audience can better recognize the business and products that you offer. Not only that, the audience will also benefit from new knowledge, so they will have more confidence in your business.

Pay Attention to Entertainment Trends

Audiences are not only looking for content to gain insight, but also for entertainment. In this case, one of the strategies that you can apply is to provide entertainment-themed content. With this type of content, you can build a stronger relationship between your audience and your business. 

Interact with Audiences

Interaction is one way to measure the quality of a piece of content. In fact, engagement rate is one of the metrics in Google Analytics that is commonly used to measure the success of an SEO strategy.

In order to increase audience interaction with your content, especially on the website, you must be able to provide features such as comment fields, CTAs, and sharing features on social media. You can also create the type of content that encourages discussion among readers.

How to Create Pillar Content

Now is the time for you to know the stages of how to create pillar content. It is important for you to know how to create good SEO-friendly content so that you can get satisfactory results.

For more details, see the explanation of the steps on how to create pillar content below:

Conduct Competitive Analysis

The first step you must take is to do a competitive analysis. The content you create must be unique both in terms of the topic and the point of view of its writing.

This is because every topic must have been already discussed by other websites, so if your content does not have a difference, then the results will not be optimal. For that, you need to do a competitive analysis by looking at competitor content on the same topic.

Find gaps where you can provide unique value to your content so that it can be better than your competitors'. 

Know and Understand the Target Audience

The second step is to pay attention to the target audience. Just like the other content marketing strategies, the creation of content pillars must be done with the purpose of answering the audience's problems.

To be able to answer the needs of the audience, you must do research first. Audience research aims to understand your audience. Some of the information you need to know from the target audience is demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavior, habits, goals to be achieved, and their constraints.

To get this information, you can use methods such as surveys, interviews, observations, and so on. After that, you can create a buyer persona that acts as a fictional character who represents your target audience.

Meet Audience Needs

If you've done audience research and created buyer personas, the next step in how to create pillar content is to produce one that meets the needs of your audience.

Think of the topics that should be discussed to address the audience's concerns. What are the formats and content types like? What is the strategy that should be applied?

In essence, the process of creating the content should be based on the needs of the audience, not search engines.

Pay Attention to Market Trends

When creating content, especially on topics that rely heavily on trend growth, you must always be sensitive to what is being discussed in your industry.

Of course, you want to create content that gets a lot of attention. If you manage to rank high on trending content, you will get a large amount of organic traffic.

Use Easy to Understand Language

High-quality content is not only judged by the information within but also by the delivery method that you use.

No matter how good the content you create is, if the audience has a difficult time understanding it, then the efforts you expend to create it will be in vain. Avoid this by using language that suits the target audience.

Share Content on Social Media

After the content pillar is created, the last step in how to create pillar content is to distribute it. This stage is no less important than content creation itself. By doing a good content distribution, you can maximize the performance of the content on your website.

One of the many choices of channels that you can use to distribute content is social media. You can use this channel to increase your audience reach.

Thus concludes a complete discussion about how to create pillar content. From this article, you have learned about the meaning of a content pillar, its types, its function for SEO, and strategies that you can apply to create it.

If you are interested in creating a high-quality content pillar, you can use the Content Writing Services by our professional team at cmlabs.