How to Create a Content Pillar

A content pillar page is a page that is comprehensive and explores a topic or theme in-depth. All other pages on the website link back to the content pillar page. This page is designed to improve organic rankings and grow traffic. There are three main types of pillar pages: the “Guide” pillar page, “What Is,” and “How-To”. A pillar page can be divided into multiple smaller pages, each exploring a different aspect of the topic. This approach is effective for improving your website's ranking and authority on the subject. A pillar page is a type of web page that is designed to be a comprehensive resource on a particular topic. The goal of a pillar page is to provide detailed information and empower readers to be able to accomplish a task or solve a problem. If your topic is evergreen, you can use it to build a strong backlink profile and promote your expertise within your industry or niche. To create a high-performing pillar page, two things must be present: 1) The page covers a topic that is interesting, relevant, and essential for the target audience. 2) The page has been created using the Keyword Magic Tool to assess the primary keyword and find related keywords. Once these two steps have been completed, the next step is to identify the topic for the pillar page and make sure it is substantial enough to be used as a hub. A list of high-level topics that the audience is interested in should be created, and then the topics for the cluster pages can be built. For example, if you are a law firm specializing in bankruptcy cases, you can start by creating content about questions and concerns that your clients share the most. You should carry out a content audit to work out if your existing webpages could be improved to match your proposed pillar content strategy. The next step is to make a list of all the questions your pillar page will aim to answer, and use these to plan the structure of the article. In some cases it may be possible to start with creating the pillar page before writing the articles that will support it; this will depend on what content you already have, and what new content you will need to create. If you don't have any existing content to work with, you may need to do this process in reverse, by creating the content first and then planning how it will fit together. Choose a subtopic and use the information to write headlines and structure a blog post around it. promoting your pillar content is essential to your information architecture, and you can use different methods to do so. If you have a budget for paid promotion, consider boosting your best-performing organic posts. The pillar page strategy can be successful for both readers and search engines if the page is focused on evergreen content. The pillar-cluster content model allows content marketers to be more strategic and produce content that readers will find useful. A content pillar should serve a purpose to your audience while promoting your brand’s expertise. A pillar page that contains both evergreen and timely content about new product features and releases can be particularly effective. To get started on your next content strategy, visit the Semrush Content Marketing Platform.

(source: https://www.semrush.com/blog/building-high-performing-content-pillars)