You don’t have to lock yourself away in a tower to work on your pillar content and improve your SEO.

Spend some time researching search engine optimization (SEO), and you’ll soon run across the concept of pillar content. 

Pillar content, as defined by Hubspot, “covers all aspects of the topic on a single page, with room for more in-depth reporting in more detailed cluster blog posts that hyperlink back to the pillar page.”

These pages are longer than typical blog posts and serve as the pillar for future blog posts. In theory, following blog posts would go into further detail about particular aspects of the pillar content. 

The goal is to create a killer long-form article that can serve as the definitive source for a topic and drive users to your website. But what’s the best way to create such an in-depth post?

I’ll admit it can be daunting.

Pillar content should be at about 5-10k words long, with multiple sections. This length benefits your SEO by giving you authority around the chosen topic.

Another benefit of pillar content and the related blog posts is the ability to release it as a free downloadable ebook. Then, give this free download away as an incentive for people to sign up for your email list!

Now, before you start freaking out, let’s get one thing clear: it can seem daunting to create such a large piece of content. Unless you’re long-winded, in which case it’s a breeze! For mortals, a piece of pillar content can seem like an enormous time investment. You may have many ideas or topics in mind that could work, but none in particular stands out. 

So where should you start?

One bite at a time. 

“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” This saying is my favorite metaphor for approaching daunting tasks, and my advice in this article is to take a similar approach.

Let’s assume you contribute to your blog regularly. You’re reading this, so you’re also interested in creating a pillar page. 

Why not plan a series of posts and combine them into your pillar content in the future? This way, you can break it into manageable chunks. Maybe even try out a few ideas to see which one has legs. Over time, the amount of content around the topic will pile up. These will provide the foundation for future blog posts.

Take a look at the average word count of your blog posts, calculate how many it will take to get between 5-10k words, and make your plan about the series of posts. Once they’re written, consolidate, and you’re all set!

Bring your pillar content online.

After combining the written blog posts into your pillar page, it’s up to you whether or not you choose to leave them up as stand-alone blog posts. Take a look at your SEO strategy and determine the best course of action. Are there other links to them out in the wild? Links on your page? If so, it might be best to leave it.

Whatever you decide, future blog posts will need to be made around your pillar content. Take a look at your pillar page, at each of the sections, and ask yourself what questions people might ask when reading your pillar content? 

Your future blog posts are your chance to take a deeper dive into the topic and offer further guidance to your readers. Make sure you link these to your pillar content, and that your pillar content links out to these pages. Bonus points if these future blog posts are guest posts on another blog!

You can do this!

The creation of a pillar page can seem daunting at first, but with a little planning, it can be the outgrowth of processes you already have in place, like weekly blog posts. It just takes the foresight to stick to a particular topic and guide your readers through to the end.

Then, you have another source of future blog posts by making content around the information on your pillar page.

Creating your pillar page doesn’t have to take over your life during its creation. For example, here at Algorithmic Global, we dedicated a series of blog posts to using story structure during content creation. With some consolidation and editing, we have a potential piece of pillar content right there!

So now that you know a clear path forward exists, what are you going to write about?