How Pillar Page Can Boost Your Blog’s Ranking?

1K Blog Marathon: Day 13

Do you ever encounter a user manual that is either lacking explanations or is not properly constructed and segregated into steps? How about reading a book with jumping chapter ideas?

Isn’t it easy to navigate to a website which is not only topically sorted, but also explained broadly by a front page with links to subtopics? This my friend, is what we call “Pillar Page”.

By definition

“Pillar page” is a website page that shows a full summary, broad analysis and links of a single big topic. Think of it as a big umbrella. Its branches page, or the ribs, are called “Clusters”.

Pillar page’s objective is to provide a comprehensive overview of all the topics under this main topic. For example, a pillar page about Robotics will include cluster topics like origin, parts, professionals, roles, types and so on. With every cluster page, the reader will fully understand the points given by the pillar page.

Benefits of Pillar Page

Aside from user-friendliness due to its navigational help to readers, here are other good things it can do to your website:

SEO

Google crawlers indexes your website and runs on all links included. With every “juice” collected by these bots, your page ranking will get higher as you provide more relevant informations about the topic. And because you will provide good information on every cluster page linking from your Pillar page, it acts a roadmap which makes it more user friendly. Remember, crawlers don’t just look on the hacky tricks like keywords, but also how a page presents information. If it’s easy for readers to understand, it’s easier for crawlers to understand.

User Friendliness

If a user read even one of your cluster topic, you can lead them back to you pillar page. And if your pillar page is well written, it will act as a “one-stop shop” for the reader, and will continue to read and come back for more related topics because your page is well sorted and topically divided.

You will become an authority

Again, when you’re striving to get to the top of your niche, pillar pages can mean you are an authority on that particular topic. Being an authority can lead you a more subscribers, followers and fellow supporters (like a politician ^_^)

Pointers in creating a Pillar Page

Create a broad topic, then supply sub-topics of it. According to blog.hubspot.com, you should “think about the top interests and challenges of your core audience personas to give you ideas for pillar page content.”
Think of your audience, not only crawlers. Users nowadays changes the way they search. The traditional typing keywords on google search box (omnibox) is now changing to voice search. The usual “lose weight” is now “how to lose weight without exercising?”
Again and again, content is king! You should not only provide pillar and cluster topics, it should also be well defined, collated and concise. The more information your readers will get from your pillar page, the more traffic it will generate.