What is pillar content – and do you need it?

Everyone wants to be seen, even you (even though you may refuse it). In particular, we want to be visible in search engines like Google and Bing so people can see how great we are. And to capture the best spots in search engines, there are two things you need to have in place: pillar content and topic clusters.
And there you have it, the answer to how to climb up the Google search results. If it only had been that simple.

How does it work in practice?

Fortunately, there are many things you can do to become more visible on the web, and if there is something you should be familiar with, it is pillar content. It’s as simple as this: It’s no longer just about keywords, it’s about key themes.

Like us humans, Google has become wiser over the years. The algorithms that previously interpreted one and one keyword to present the best results to the searcher can now understand the relationship between the different keywords.

Therefore, you should also move the focus from keywords to topics. By organizing your content in so-called “topic clusters” you will increase the likelihood that precisely your content will appear in search results related to this topic.

So how does it work in practice? It’s a bit like structuring a blog for different categories. Instead of the blog being the main page for the hundreds of articles you write, however, you create one main page for each topic.

All the articles linked to the theme link to this main page and the main page links back. Is it still a little unclear? Take a look at this video from HubSpot which explains in more detail:

What do you need to think about when creating topic clusters?

• Remember that the main page (pillar content) should be general for the overall theme.
• Each subpage can go more specifically into an area within the overall theme. Example: If the main page is about inbound marketing, a sub-page may be “What are personas?” or “SEO“, which is an in-depth explanation of the topics that you mentioned in the main post.
• The main page should link to the content that is more in-depth on the various topics, and the sub-pages should link back to the main page. This is how you connect the “cluster” together.
  It is also a good idea to structure your web page in clusters as well so that the main pages are in the navigation menu.
• Be consistent with the keywords you use in the anchor text when linking between the different pages. This makes it easier for the search engines to understand the context while strengthening the credibility of your domain within the given topic.