Goodbye Keywords; Hello Pillar Pages

Search has changed, which means it’s time to rethink the way we create content.

Google has gotten a lot smarter about making associations

Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving to provide the best possible answers to searchers’ queries. If you search for “running shoes,” Google will now also serve up results for related words, such as “sneakers.” Google is now interpreting conversational queries as entire thoughts rather than individual keywords. An estimated 64% of searches are four words or more.

Organize websites according to main topics

As a result of Google’s evolution and our subsequent behavior, websites need to be organized according to main topics. In the current model, we create individual blog posts that rank according to specific keywords. The result is disorganized, difficult for users to find the exact information they need. It also results in our own URLs competing against one another in search-engine rankings because we produce multiple blog posts on similar topics.

A better solution: Creating pillar pages with links to more specific topic clusters

The first step in creating a pillar page is to stop thinking about your site in terms of just keywords. Start thinking about the topics you want to rank for first. Choose a topic that’s broad enough that it can generate more related blog posts that will serve as cluster content, but not so broad that you can’t cover the entire topic on a single pillar page.

• Let’s say you write a pillar page about content marketing. It’s a very broad topic, so your cluster topics might be about blogging or social media.
• Fundamental to the pillar-page concept is a comprehensive linking strategy among the pillar page and its cluster topics.
• A pillar page should answer questions about a particular topic but leave room for more detail in subsequent, related cluster topics.

Pillar pages and SEO: More inbound links = higher placement in search

Pillar pages help position your content so users can easily browse your website and consume your blog posts, videos and infographics. There’s a lot of clutter online, and it can confuse Google’s algorithms. Google loves a clean website experience with a thoughtful linking strategy that tells it exactly what each piece of content is about. Inbound marketing and sales expert HubSpot experienced an increase in their rankings when they used more internal links.

Use personas to help identify the interests and challenges of your audience

If you haven’t created personas, this is a great time to do it. Your personas will help identify the top interests and challenges of your audience, providing topics for pillar-page content.

I’m doing some reorganization of my own website to more closely follow the pillar-page concept, and I’m finding it helpful to create an organizational chart that maps out broad topics that are my pillar pages and the cluster topics that support them.

Your pillar page will gain Google authority through the quality inbound links from your subtopic content.

Need help rethinking your website content? Give me a call—let’s strategize about how we can make your content work for you.

Creating Personas to Define Your Business Audience

A new client’s website was nine years old and she wanted help showing up in search engines. I explained that search engines discriminate against those sites that haven’t been adapted for mobile devices. She was sabotaging herself with her current site. “Zoe” was talking about a little enhancement; I was talking about starting over. A nine-year old site is really not redeemable.

Who was her audience? “Everyone” is the wrong answer

Zoe had a fairly extensive collection of blogs on her site, and as I read through them I wasn’t getting a clear sense of who she was, which is a problem. But more importantly, I didn’t have any idea who her audience was. When I asked her about this, I knew what her answer was going to be: “Everyone is my audience; some of my readers are 16, I have grandmothers reading my blogs as well as industry professionals.” Wrong answer. This is marketing 101—everyone is not your audience. As a small business owner, you really can’t be successful without identifying the niche that really is your audience.

Time to create personas

I explained to her how we were going to create personas. I wanted her to think about whom she visualized when she closed her eyes and pictured a typical client. I wanted her to describe that person for me. I wanted her to be making an emotional connection with that person, to think about that client when she was writing a blog. The scope of our work together included keyword analysis, a new website, a newsletter and pay-per-click advertising (PPC). For PPC, especially, identifying a persona and keywords is critical to the success of a campaign, but it’s also important for her website’s landing pages.

Personas help define our audiences

By understanding demographics, we learn to communicate more effectively with our audiences. Facebook’s powerful advertising appeal lies is its ability to drill down to the details of people’s lives. Every Facebook field that we fill out provides data for someone to mine. For Zoe, as with most of us, we well may have more than one persona. And for each of these, we’re going to create a comprehensive persona based on the following information:

• Age and gender.
• Communication preferences. How do they get their information? Text, email? Do they hate telephone calls?
• Technical experience and background. Do they love instructional videos or prefer to read directions?
• Job title and major responsibilities.
• Education, ethnicity and family status.
• Pain points or frustrations. Important clues for how we can help them solve problems.
• Industry and working environment. A quiet office or the emergency room.
• Biggest challenges and how they deal with them.
• Shopping preferences. Favorite stores or online?
• Food and drink. Favorite area restaurants and bars.
• Persona names and photos. Giving your personas names and uploading photos provide an identity.
• Interview real clients to discover what they like about your product or service.

Creating personas is a valuable exercise that will help you market more effectively to your audience.

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