Boost Your SEO With a Pillar Blog Post
Content Marketing helps you connect with customers and potential customers. It helps you find leads, build trust, and nurture relationships. It improves conversations and answers your customers’ questions.
As far back as 1732, Benjamin Franklin began publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack to promote his printing business. So while content marketing has been around for a long time, it has changed with the advent of digital marketing. One of the most effective types of content marketing today is the business blog post.
It is estimated that more than 75% of internet users read and interact with blogs, and according to SCORE, customers who read your blog are 97% more likely to click on your website.
In addition to building trust, nurturing relationships, and all the other benefits associated with content marketing, blogs also help drive traffic to your website.
The biggest challenge with blogging is that there are more than 31 billion active bloggers online, and not all of those blogs are helpful or well-written. So how do you get your blog to stand out? Provide relevant, well-written “Pillar Blog Posts.”
What are Pillar Blogs?
A pillar blog post is a long – 1,500-4,000 words – blog post that is posted on your business website. This type of blog goes in-depth about all aspects of a specific topic related to your business. The information is useful and actionable. The blog post is well-written and engaging. Typically, a pillar blog post also includes relevant images, videos, etc., to support your text.
It is called a “pillar” blog post because – like the columns or pillars in ancient Roman temples - these posts can be the pillars that hold up all of your content marketing efforts. Create a pillar blog post once, and you can reuse it for many years.
What are the Benefits of Pillar Blogs?
As we mentioned earlier, a pillar blog post helps set your blog apart, but it brings many additional benefits:
- Provides better SEO
- Helps build your authority and your brand
- Pre-sells your readers on the value of your product or service
- Delivers a long-lasting return on investment
Steps to Creating a Pillar Blog Post
Choose a topic
First and foremost, your topic has to be relevant to your product or service and resonate with your customers and prospects. Try to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What do your customers want?
- What questions do your customers have about your product or service? What are the frequently asked questions?
- What are your customers’ pain points? What are their problems in relation to your product or service?
- What are their objections? What is keeping them from purchasing your product or service?
- What information can you provide to help overcome those objections?
- What are your customers researching before they purchase your product or service?
Not sure? Ask your customers and prospects. Send existing customers a survey or interview a few of your best customers. Check out forums, groups, associations, etc., that are related to your product or service. Listen to what people are saying. Then, provide the answers to their questions and eliminate their objections with a pillar blog post.
Decide What Type of Post
There are many different types of blog posts – lists, how-to guides, checklists, interviews, latest news, etc. You need to decide what type of blog posts makes sense for your topic. The two types of posts that typically make sense for a pillar blog post are lists or how-to guides.
A list blog includes… you guessed it… a list of something. It could be a list of books, resources, tools, etc. Anything that your customers and prospects would find helpful. And remember, when we’re talking about a Pillar Blog post, that list needs to be extensive. The “top ten” won’t cut it.
A how-to post explains how to do something. For a Pillar Blog post, this means going into great detail about every step in the process and including images, videos, infographics, etc., that support the text.
Find an Angle
I remember one of my professors in college saying that every story has already been told - even classics like Bleak House and Hamlet. The difference is how the story is told. The same can be said of blogs.
Probably any topic you can think of has already been blogged about, so if you want your blog to stand out, you need to find an angle for it. Here are some tips:
- Make it personal - Do you have a personal experience related to the topic you can include in the post that will make it uniquely your own? For example, if you’re writing about how to train for a 5K and you’ve run a 5K, share some of your experiences. Never ran a 5K? Share one of your customer’s experience.
- Present something new - Is there some new piece of technology that you’ve discovered, new research, etc.?
- Focus on a very specific problem? For example, if you’re writing a blog about losing weight, your angle could be how to lose weight during the holidays.
- Leverage the authority of someone Else - For example, if you’re talking about how to roast a turkey, can you talk about how Julia Child roasted a turkey.
OR you can combine one or two of these angles to help make your pillar blog post unique.
Don't Have Time to Write a Pillar Blog?
Give Power Marketing International a call today at 484-297-6395 or contact us online. We have experienced, professional writers who can create a pillar blog post – or any content marketing – for you.
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