Try the Most Accurate AI Detector on the Market
Our patented AI checker is the most accurate detector on the market! Don't believe us? Try it for yourself!
A content pillar strategy is similar to other content marketing strategies, in that it requires careful consideration of the target audience and alignment with brand goals.
Since a content pillar lays the foundation for cluster content, its strategy requires a few content-specific steps to ensure you get the most out of this essential piece of content marketing.
Looking for a best-in-class suite of tools for your content marketing strategy? Check out Originality.ai’s Predictive SEO Tool, AI Checker, Plagiarism Checker, and Grammar Checker.
While the terms pillar content and content pillar are often used interchangeably, they have a distinct but subtle difference.
As the name implies, a content pillar is foundational to content strategy. From a content pillar, a marketer can branch out into additional subtopics called cluster topics to expand the overall comprehensiveness of that topic’s coverage, boosting authority, credibility, and trust.
The foundational aspect of a content pillar adds structure, organization, and clarity to a comprehensive content library. This allows your audience to navigate it easily and search engines to understand your site’s purpose. Together, these qualities improve SEO.
As with any content strategy, deeply understand your target audience (and the customer journey) before you start writing. You can’t tailor your message until you know who you are speaking to. Know the audience’s interests, pain points, and what engages them. Moving onto the next step, you’ll think about topics with your audience in mind.
What are the business objectives for your content pillar? Whether you want to drive more traffic to your website, increase lead generation, or build thought leadership, define clear goals and metrics to track performance.
Then, strategically plan the topics in which your brand wants to build topical authority. Some factors that will help in choosing pillar topics:
When it comes to pillar topics, choose relevance over quantity. Establish authority on key areas rather than spreading to thinly over too many topics.
Once you have identified your pillar content topics and sketched out some of the subtopics and clusters you can branch out into later, audit your existing content to see what might fit into your new pillar strategy.
Identify what existing content is about, which pieces may fit in as-is, which may need some revisions, and which may need to be set aside for a different purpose.
You’ve established what your audience is looking for, what topics you want to write about, and what pieces you already have. Before writing anything new, it’s time to identify the keywords to help your audience find your content.
Examine and evaluate what topics your main competitors are covering — and how well. Scrutinize their pillar content, looking for content gaps.
If your competition is missing the mark in certain areas or not digging deep enough into a topic, you have an opportunity to create comprehensive, relevant pillar content that lifts you a step above.
Likewise, if your competition is excelling in certain areas, you know where to differentiate yourself to get a piece of the market.
Creating pillar content is all about structure, organization, and comprehensiveness. Write a clear outline for all the points you intend to cover, which questions to answer, and what headings and keywords you’ll incorporate. Identify reputable sources for external linking and mark opportunities in the pillar article for linking to cluster topics later.
This is an easy one: publish your content. If you are creating your content all at once, strategize when and where you will publish it.
Promote your pillar content across your other channels and monitor its performance according to the metrics you established early on.
The best pillar content is regularly reviewed, refreshed, and updated to stay relevant and current. Even evergreen topics must be reviewed for freshness to ensure they are still engaging, impactful and helpful to your audience.
A content pillar strategy sets a strong foundation for writing, publishing and tracking the pillar content, which establishes topical authority for your brand and can boost SEO performance. By strategizing, planning, and outlining your content pillars and clusters, you make your content easy to navigate, develop credibility, and deliver a clear signal to search engines about your site’s content.
Discover industry-leading tools for your content marketing strategy with Originality.ai’s Predictive SEO Tool, AI Checker, Plagiarism Checker, and Grammar Checker.
Learn more about content marketing in our top guides:
