You spend countless hours performing keyword research, you write high-quality blog content on a frequent basis and you spend days each month ensuring all those pages are SEO optimized on your website’s backend - yet your organic website traffic still isn’t growing. What’s the problem?
Search engines are constantly evolving, and your B2B inbound marketing strategy needs to adapt if you want to improve your SEO and rank higher on Google.
Of course, we’re not saying keyword research, blogging and SEO optimization aren’t important, in fact, far from it. All of these are still crucial to the performance of your inbound marketing program. Yet there’s something new you need to add to take your marketing to the next level.
To become an authority on the topics and keywords that are important to your customers, you need to structure your website content with pillar pages and topic clusters.
Let’s start with pillar pages
HubSpot says a pillar page “acts as the main hub of content for an overarching topic.”
In essence, a pillar page is a website page that focuses on one of the core topics on your website. By covering all aspects of one topic - and using inbound and outbound links, as well as keywords - a pillar page is designed to give you complete authority on a specific subject.
Pillar pages are web pages with lots of content, but they aren’t as in-depth as blogs. This is what your topic cluster content will be used for, and we will talk more on that shortly.
In turn, this provides value to your target audience. A pillar page is created to be the leading authority on a particular topic, meaning potential customers will visit your page if they are looking for expert information or advice.
Can’t quite envision what a pillar page would look like on your website? HubSpot has some fantastic examples on this blog of pillar pages that do an excellent job of effectively organizing and linking content assets.
So, what’s a topic cluster then?
Now that you understand exactly what a pillar page is, the next step to improving your SEO strategy is learning about topic clusters. Let’s start with this quote from HubSpot on how pillar pages and topic clusters work side-by-side:
“A pillar page is the basis on which a topic cluster is built. A pillar page 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. Pillar pages broadly cover a particular topic, and cluster content should address a specific keyword related to that topic in-depth.”
Topic clusters are a way of interlinking all of the subtopics on your website to one core topic (your pillar page). A pillar page will touch on each of these subtopics, with internal links taking visitors to content that covers those subtopics in more depth.
Your topic cluster content will link back to your pillar page, resulting in an interconnected content experience that provides greater value to your website visitors and helps them find the answers they’re looking for.
Why are pillar pages and topic clusters so important for your brand’s SEO strategy?
There are two main benefits that pillar pages and topic clusters will bring to your inbound marketing strategy:
- Organization
- Topic authority and improved SEO
#1 - Organization
Since content on your website is now organized around main topics, visitors to your website will find it far easier to find the information they need to answer their questions. Each piece of content on your website will now be working together to boost the SEO of your pillar page, rather than competing with each other in search rankings for the same topic.
This organization also makes it easier for bloggers to create content which addresses keyword gaps that are preventing searchers from finding your website. Your content developers can analyze where you are missing opportunities to reach your target audience, and add those keywords to your topic cluster.
You can take a look at the two diagrams on this HubSpot blog, which clearly shows how much more organized a website is after the implementation of pillar pages and topic clusters.
#2 - Topic authority and improved SEO
In recent years, Google has changed its search engine algorithm to favour topic-based content. That means pillar pages and topic clusters are now a requirement for any inbound marketing strategy, and crucial for your search engine ranking position (SERP).
By using HubSpot’s topic cluster tool, you will make it easier for search engines to scan the content on your website. With a pillar page and topic clusters that hit the keywords your customers are looking for, Google will see your website as an authority on a subject and rank you far higher in search results.
The more digital real estate (as long as it’s valuable to your buyer personas and keyword-focused) that your business has on a core topic, the more valuable your website will appear to search engines.
Want to learn more about how pillar pages and topic clusters will boost your B2B inbound marketing program and SEO strategy? Contact The Brit Agency today. Our team of digital marketing experts would love to answer any questions you may have.
