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How to Build a Pillar Page in HubSpot

Incorporating a pillar page into your blog could be the best thing you do for your digital marketing this year. It's great for SEO, and it could help you improve your rankings on search results pages. In short, a pillar page is a resource page that focuses on one umbrella topic, and it includes links to blog posts about this main topic. Your pillar page is part of a wider cluster topic, where similar pages of content with specific keywords link to each other.

How Do Pillar Pages Improve SEO?

Your pillar page is the foundation of your cluster topic — the page that supports all the subtopics related to a particular subject. Say you specialized in digital marketing, for example. Your cluster topic might be social media marketing. Your pillar page would introduce your visitors to social media marketing and include links to individual pages about this cluster topic — Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, Twitter marketing, etc.

By organizing your website in this way, you can increase your search engine authority. Google will scan your site for pillar content, cluster content, and the hyperlinks featured on each page. In theory, search engine users should be able to find the information they are looking for more easily using the topic cluster model. As a result, your search rankings should improve.

"Pillar pages are longer than typical blog posts — because they cover all aspects of the topic you're trying to rank for — but they aren't as in-depth," says HubSpot. "That's what cluster content is for. You want to create a pillar page that answers questions about a particular topic but leaves room for more detail in subsequent, related cluster content."

For this post, take this pillar page for example.

How to Cluster Content

How you cluster content will depend entirely on your niche. Think about the products and services you offer and try and group them into clusters. If you specialize in clothing, for example, you might want to include a cluster page for menswear and another cluster page for womenswear. Subtopics for your menswear cluster might include shirts, trousers, jackets, shoes, and accessories.

"Once you define a core topic, you’ll want to identify a series of subtopics. Subtopics are content ideas that are strong enough to stand on their own (i.e. blog post, video, etc.) but have a common connection with the core topic and can be clustered together with other subtopic content to help tell its story," says BuzzSumo.

content-cluster-example

Above is an example of a content strategy organized in HubSpot. Being able to lay out all the subtopics makes it easier to tell a coherent story and cover nearly any question a lead may have.

So how do you link to all this information? You might want to include a table of contents on your pillar page, with hyperlinks to each topic. Alternatively, incorporate links into the main body of text on your pillar page. You can also anchor link the table of contents to each subtopic's corresponding location, like the example pictured below.

table-of-contents-example

anchor-link-example

How to Publish a Pillar Page on HubSpot

Publishing a pillar page on HubSpot couldn't be easier.

  1. Set up your website infrastructure in HubSpot's design manager. Choose a template and create rich text fields for each of the subtopics in your cluster. Click Publish.
  2. Enter a title for your topic cluster, create a summary, design a table of contents, and make a list of your subtopics. Next, enter your subtopic content. Then, establish your backlinks. All of this will make it easier for Google's search bots to crawl your website and determine its place on the results page.
  3. Finally, make sure HubSpot's strategy tool recognizes your topic cluster.

pillar-page-example

 You can find out more information on how to create a pillar page in HubSpot here.


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Pillar pages could revolutionize your SEO strategy in 2019. By grouping topics into clusters and creating a killer internal link strategy, you could attract more people to your pages and boost revenue.