What’s the Difference Between a Pillar Page and a Landing Page?

Pillar pages and landing pages have completely different functions, but they can work together to help generate leads and show up organically in search engines.

What is a pillar page?

A pillar page, or content pillar, is part of a larger pillar-page strategy that provides in-depth coverage of a topic. The pillar page strategy is supported by subpages and blogs that provide relevant information on the same topic. It’s hierarchical, with all content rolling up to the main pillar page topic. Search engine crawlers prioritize websites with this kind of topic-organized content. It can help you rank for important inquiries. 

What is pillar page SEO? 

Pillar page SEO means identifying keywords you want to rank for and using these throughout your pillar page strategy. This is what it’s all about. Use those keywords in your headings, subheads and other text. Be sure to assign H1 and H2 tags to these headings. Be consistent—use these words throughout all of your online accounts.

Landing pages focus on a single topic: Lead generation

Unlike pillar pages that provide comprehensive coverage of a single topic, good landing pages can focus on a single objective—lead generation. A landing page is a dedicated page on a website that you land on directly from an external source such as a paid ad or email. It’s highly targeted, persuasive in nature, designed to connect with a predetermined audience. Landing pages can be constructed for SEO purposes to capture organic search traffic. They can also be used with paid advertising through search engines or social media.

Landing pages in a marketing campaign

Landing pages are usually accessed by a link from a paid ad or email. Traffic from paid ads has high commercial intent and is usually ready to complete an action. The page must be ready to fulfill that need. 

A landing page should be providing:

• A unique proposition. Define what makes your product so appealing and enticing. Why should the user take action? Use the proposition in the headline to gain attention and encourage the user to read the supporting copy. Follow best practices for writing headlines and subheads. Short, crisp, attention-getting headers. Easy to read fonts. Use an image that’s descriptive, one that helps define your further your proposition. 

Just one thing. Make sure you’re promoting one thing. I see this a lot. It quickly becomes confusing and dilutes your messaging. Make sure you’re promoting one product or one service.

• Call to Action (CTA). The most important part of the page. Make your CTA button obvious and stand out. Include a CTA above the fold and repeat at the bottom of the page. 
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• Benefits of the offer. Don’t sell features, sell benefits. How will this make the user feel? How will it make their lives or jobs easier, save them money, etc. There must be a visceral appeal.
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• Social proof. Word of mouth and social approval offer trust. People are risk-averse and reviews are now a fact of life. None of us makes a purchase these days without reading the reviews. We’re reassured by others’ positive experiences.

Can a home page be a landing page? 

Theoretically, your homepage is a landing page. But it has too many functions to be focused on landing page conversion. The home page usually exists as the portal, enabling a user to navigate to other pages. Despite the trend toward minimizing navigation, I don’t get it. Why make it difficult for users to find what they’re looking for? 

Unlike your homepage, a landing page is designed to convert visitors into leads. Landing pages are the gatekeepers to your most valuable content offers. Landing pages map to the sales funnel. 

• Awareness
• Discovery
• Evaluation
• Intent
• Action
• Loyalty

Aside from delivering on the promise and intent of the query, the organic landing page must also make the brand and offer clear. 

Ask us about how a pillar-page strategy and landing pages work together to help improve your ranking in search engines. Contact Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing specialists.  

Case Study: Web Referrals Increase by 50%

Sometimes we forget how effective case studies can be

Rather than just telling your audience what you do, case studies are opportunities to actually demonstrate your ability to effect change, to showcase your expertise, to document how you’ve successfully helped your clients increase revenue.

An audit to understand marketing effectiveness                       

I’ve been working with one client for seven years. When we began working together, I did an audit to understand how they were spending their marketing dollars and how effective that investment was. They had a website and a presence on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, but posts were sporadic and haphazard. The person who had been writing blogs was neither local nor generating content that was relevant to their Bay Area clients. A monthly newsletter wasn’t showcasing their range of services.

Blogs became the workhorse of their content marketing program

My immediate goal was to improve the quality of their weekly blogs, which became the workhorse of our content marketing program. Well-written blogs accomplish a few things. They provide fresh content for your website and increase your SEO value, helping it rank in search engines. A blog is also an opportunity for you to share your expertise and position yourself as a thought leader. It doesn’t stop there. Your blog can be repurposed in your monthly newsletter. Excerpts can be used in social media posts. Add a link back to your website to drive traffic to your site. 

Increased web referrals by 50%

Over the course of the next year or so, our metrics showed that our steady efforts were paying off. Our website referrals increased by 50%. Since then, we’ve created a brand new website and rewritten the content, but we’ve continued to stick with our quality blogs, social media posts and monthly newsletter. 

Things that I do to help raise SEO value and clickthrough rates

• Create crisp, attention-getting subject lines for blogs and newsletters
• Identify and deploy keywords/phrases liberally throughout all content. 
• Write consistently high-quality content. 

What we’re doing during the coronavirus lockdown

This client has closed down one office, has most of his team working virtually and is expanding to new locations. Staying nimble and making critical business decisions as the economic landscape shifts is not something everyone can do. One thing I’ve always admired about this client is his ability to make decisions. No tortured conversations or looking back with regret. 

We’re also rebranding

We’re developing a new logo, which means new marketing collateral and a new website. In the virtual world that is the new norm—at least for the foreseeable future–we’re rethinking the way we’re perceived in the marketplace and the value we bring to our clients. Like every business owner these days, we’re identifying the pain point. When you break it down, it’s nearly always that simple. What is the problem that we can solve?

Now is the perfect time to work on your marketing! 

Is it time for a new or updated website or an expanded content marketing program? Contact us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re writers and content marketing experts.

I encourage my clients to develop case studies and post them to their websites, social media and anywhere else where they have a forum. Real-life stories provide compelling insights into how we successfully help our clients solve problems. This is one of my own case studies.

“Oliver” found me on Yelp—the app we love to hate–but it can also be a legitimate source of new business. Oliver fled a boring corporate career and began designing and selling furniture made from reclaimed teak wood. Everything is sustainable—he’s created processes for sourcing old structures in Indonesia, disassembling them beam by beam to create the materials that will become his beautiful furniture. He has a Berkeley showroom and sells furniture online.

Here’s the problem . . .

Oliver had built a fairly steady stream of online sales from his e-commerce website. A year or so ago, he upgraded his WordPress site with enhanced visuals and navigation. Once he rolled out the new site, that online sales stream completely dried up. He gave this enough time to confirm that this wasn’t just seasonal or a little economic downturn.

Our goal: Restore online sales

Our goal was to restore online traffic and sales, so we began troubleshooting his site. We peeled back the layers and found that there were more than 20 WordPress plugins that hadn’t been updated, and these were creating conflicts. A vast array of plugins is one of the things that makes WordPress so powerful, but they’re not all compatible with each other, and they need to be upgraded. As we cleaned up the infrastructure, we kept finding anomalies and bugs, and a simple project grew more complex.

Keyword research, image labels and alt tags

Along the way, we did keyword research to identify those words and phrases that our audience might be keying into search fields to find us—this helped us know what words and phrases to be using in our content. We labeled every single image, created alt tags and descriptions for literally hundreds of product pictures. We finally rolled out the upgrades, and we’re all delighted that our client is starting to get online orders again.

We added a monthly newsletter to the marketing mix

We began doing a monthly newsletter in MailChimp. We keep this simple, highlighting three products and including a promo code so we can track responses. We’re getting an astonishing 45-55% open rate, a high click-through rate and conversions with our mailings. The newsletter is easy to turn around and looks great; the ROI on this makes it easy to include this in our marketing plan.

Up next: Pay-per click advertising

Our website blues aren’t completely over. We still find issues that befuddle us, but among us, we solve the problems as they arise. With the website stabilization, we’re planning to add Pay-per-Click (PPC)advertising to our marketing mix. We’ve identified a budget, and we’ll carefully monitor our campaign, adjusting as we go, to make this another component of our marketing program.

Do you need help with your PPC or other online marketing program? Talk to us at Top of Mind Marketing. We’re internet marketing specialists.