Blogs can give a powerful boost to your marketing strategy, getting your website in front of thousands of viewers without a dime spent on advertising. BUT, it's only possible with a strategy that gets your content to the top of search engines. How? Through the pillar page model.
The pillar page model—also called the topic-cluster model by HubSpot—is a strategy that search engines reward because it makes your content the most useful, authoritative source for answers that people are searching for.
A pillar page covers a keyword-driven topic and its subtopics, with each subtopic covered by a "support blog." This combo makes search engines see you as a trusted expert because you have so much overall knowledge that they want to share with searchers.
Pillar Page and Topic Coverage Example
Say you run a gardening blog and you know your target audience is searching for "best time to plant seeds." You don't just write one blog on planting seeds in May. Instead, you create a pillar page titled "The Ultimate Guide to Home Garden Planting and Harvesting Times," adding in several keyword-driven subtopics on regional climate differences, seed growth cycles for different vegetables, soil health, full sun vs. partial sun, when to harvest... you get the gist.
When someone in your target audience searches "best time to plant seeds," Google crawls the web looking for helpful content. It finds your pillar page with all of its highly valuable, comprehensive content and puts you high on the list of search results. When another searcher types in "when to harvest my zucchini" and Google sees that your content answers that question too, you keep gaining credibility and authority with the search engine.
Over time (usually 4-6 months), Google will move your blogs higher on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), and you're now the authority on your topic. And that's how you get on the front page of Google!
Here's the story of how we helped a client rank #1 on Google for a high-search volume keyword using the pillar page model, and they're still #1!
How to Build a Pillar Page Strategy
As an all-encompassing piece of content, you need to start with finding a popular keyword that your target audience is actually searching for, then pinpointing relevant subtopics that will build authority. Once you pinpoint your keyword topic (look for high search volume but low competition), you’d start writing your pillar page with name like “The Ultimate Guide to …” because it covers every aspect of the topic you’re going after.
Your pillar page will have broad information about your subtopics because your supporting blogs, or “cluster content,” are where you can get into the nitty-gritty of each subtopic.
Once you’ve written your pillar and support blogs, you need to hyperlink all your posts to each other. The pillar page will link to each support blog, and each support blog will link straight back to the pillar page and to each other.
And now, you wait! Blogs typically take several months for Google to index in its vast database, but your content will be rewarded for having such thorough topic authority. Before you know it, you’ll be on that front page of Google, bringing in more eyeballs and traffic to your site than ever before.
Start on Your Own Pillar Page
Ready to write your first pillar page and support blogs to start ranking on search engines? There's no time like the present, and we have the perfect, plug-and-play resource for you. Download our free Blog Content Framework where you'll find blog templates from HubSpot to get you started.
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