When people change the way they search the internet, search engines have to adapt to provide users with the most relevant and reliable sources.
As users are entering longer, more conversational queries, many designers are now focusing on topic clusters to better sort the pages on their site.
A topic cluster is like the theme of a group of web pages. Because these pages are grouped under a broader theme, when one page does well, all the other pages get a boost too!
What Are Pillar Pages?
A pillar page acts as an index for your topic cluster. This page will be under a certain topic and contain links to all other pages on your site relevant to that topic.
Pillar pages are a valuable resource to your viewers because it will give them general information they are looking for and links to a more in-depth explanation.
While they are helpful for organizing content, pillar pages can also have a great impact on SEO.
How do Pillar Pages Affect SEO?
When you create a blog post, you choose certain keywords to help SERP ranking. Each individual page will be competing for a higher ranking, which creates competition between your own posts. Pillar pages organize your content so all the posts in a cluster are boosted together and more viewers are connected to your content.
Search engines rank based on relevance and authority. The more related keywords on your page, the better your ranking. Authority is determined using several metrics including the number of backlinks to your domain, quality of content, and popularity on social media sites (likes, shares, etc.).
Authority can also be affected by the structure of your site. Here is where pillar pages can come in handy. When a search engine crawls your site, a pillar page will link it to other relevant content.
Having the links throughout your site all organized on a pillar page signals that you are a reliable source with several relevant pages with a site that performs well and is user-friendly.
When you optimize a page on your site, you’re hoping that page will get some attention, but ideally you’d like your whole site to be noticed. Pillar pages are a simple SEO trick for improving the ranking of your entire site.
For more information on Pillar Pages, check out our Understanding Pillar Pages blog post.
Thanks for reading,
Christine
