Column pages have been an effective way of grouping and presenting website content to users and search engines for some time.
In this post, I’ll define what a pillar page is, how it can help your SEO efforts, and share some examples of pillar pages in action.
So let’s start by defining column pages.
What Is A Pillar Page?
A pillar page is a landing destination on your website that focuses on a key topic, resource, product or service area.
It enables users and search engines to access lots of currently relevant content quickly.
The depth of column sides will vary depending on their purpose.
Some may be more superficial introductions to quickly access other content (much like the role of a content page), while others will be more comprehensive and provide deeper stand-alone value, supported by related content elements.
If you listed all the core topics related to your business, each of these could logically warrant becoming a column page.
Pillar pages give people easy access to a wide range of related content in a user-friendly way.
They also provide search engines with logically organized content that can be quickly crawled, understood and therefore ranked effectively in searches.
You may have heard of cornerstone content, content hubs, content clusters or pillar pages in various forums, and effectively they all represent nuances of the same approach.
If you visualize a wheel on a bicycle, in the center, you have the hub.
From the hub you have lots of spokes.
In the case of column content, the pivot is the column page (the central theme or topic) and the spokes are the related content areas that point to and from the column page.
A single column page can have many pages and other content types that all link to the column page, either directly or via other subtopics that then link back to the main/column page.
The basic interaction remains the same – centralizing all related topical content from one main destination (the column page).
I’ll soon provide some examples to help reinforce this principle so you can visualize column pages in action.
How Can Pillar Pages Help Your SEO?
Before moving on to some examples of pillar pages, it’s helpful to understand a little more about how they can help your SEO performance.
There are many benefits to creating column pages on your website, and I’ll cover a few of these next.
Strengthening Topical Authority Signals
Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) underpins Google’s guidelines and is a key factor in assigning overall quality scores to any website.
In short, Google uses E-A-T as a yardstick to determine whether content is considered high quality – and if it is, it’s likely to rank consistently higher.
This is because it will be considered:
By grouping content in a simple hierarchy, you make it easy for search engines to identify, understand and rank your content.
Your current signals are clearly delivered to help broader Google guidelines such as E-A-T.
This means you can shine a light on the areas you want your business to be closely related to online and make ranking for those topics more consistent and optimized.
In contrast, consider a site where the majority of content is all competing against itself.
Where there is no clear segmentation or hierarchy of topics (or columns), and every time you add a new blog post or article to your website, the amount of noise increases for search engines and users.
You can quickly see why column pages add value.
Here you can find out more about E-A-T and why it matters.
Faster, Simpler, More Complete User Experience
For many years, Google has increased the effect of a positive user experience for SEO gains.
Core Web Vitals (CWVs) are a more recent manifestation of this.
Another example of this in action is the devaluation of sites and content that create barriers between the user and their intended destination, such as interstitial ads or sites with perceived content of thin value.
Site speed and mobile friendliness as ranking factors are other examples.
By using column pages, you are able to land people in the heart of the topic they are interested in.
You can provide clear signals of trust through comprehensive, more meaningful content delivery.
You can showcase your experts through the content they are associated with and house it in a central resource.
You can improve user engagement signals by simplifying access to related content and encouraging them to move through the information search and purchase cycle faster.
Additionally, while focusing your resources on specific main landing pages, you can ensure they are quick to load, intuitive to interact with, and easy to navigate.
You also simplify the ongoing, iterative changes you make to keep improving them through new datasets.
Here you can find out more details about improving SEO with user experience.
Natural, Value-Based, Link Building
When you offer a one-stop shop for people to solve a myriad of related questions, wants, needs and pain points in a simple way, you can naturally collect external trust signals, including links.
Think of all the repeat social listening opportunities to share your extensive column pages with your audience.
With your pillar pages, you provide free, easily accessible, share and promote content resources, perfect for link acquisition, brand building and PR.
Added SEO Benefits Of Pillar Pages
There are many additional SEO benefits of using column pages, but typically this will include:
Examples Of Different Pillar Pages
Columnar pages have many different applications and to conclude this article I thought it would be useful to share some here.
Product Pillar Page
This example segment from the Foresters Friendly Society shows how a single column page can provide:
Image from Foresters Friendly Society, December 2022
Topic Pillar Page
In these sample excerpts from the University of East Anglia (UEA) life on campus landing page, you can see how a single column page provides the user and the search engines:
Image from the University of East Anglia, December 2022
Image from the University of East Anglia, December 2022
Image from the University of East Anglia, December 2022
Conclusion
Column pages are not only an effective way to organize your site’s content, they can also have significant benefits for your SEO.
By leveraging column pages, you can create a faster, more streamlined and generally more user-friendly experience on your website – making it easier for both users and search engines to interact with it.
If you want to boost your SEO efforts today, put pillar pages to use!
Featured image: oatawa/Shutterstock
pedestal, in classical architecture, the support or base of a column, statue, vase, or obelisk. Such a pedestal can be square, octagonal or circular. The name is also given to the vertical members that divide the sections of a balustrade.
What is the main purpose of pillar content?
#1: What is a content column? Content Pillars are 3 to 5 topics your brand will consistently discuss, amplify and create content for on social media. As social media strategist Christina Galbato explains, “You might hear them called content categories or content buckets. They all mean the same thing.”
What are the 3 pillars of content? When developing a content marketing strategy that will deliver positive business results, keep in mind the three pillars: value, relevance, and consistency. Take the time to understand the issues your customers and prospects care about.
What are pillar contents?
What is column content? Pillar content is content that provides a complete answer to any question a user searches for on a given topic. It is specially designed to provide value to the reader and also to rank high in the search engines.
What are the 5 pillars of content?
The five pillars of Content Marketing
- Level. The process does not begin with writing a blog post. …
- Create content. With a clear marketing strategy in mind, it’s time to start creating. …
- Optimize your content. …
- Distribute your content. …
- Analyze your results.
What are the 4 content pillars?
The answer lies in four pillars of content creation that will help you create high-quality content that ranks well in search engines: originality, relevance, engagement and relevancy.
What is pillar content strategy?
What is a Pillar Content Strategy? Pillar pages are designed to contain all the information you would typically cram into multiple white papers or eBooks on a single page or blog post. Your column page is meant to focus on a specific topic you are trying to rank for in the SERPs.
What are the 5 pillars of content?
The five pillars of Content Marketing
- Level. The process does not begin with writing a blog post. …
- Create content. With a clear marketing strategy in mind, it’s time to start creating. …
- Optimize your content. …
- Distribute your content. …
- Analyze your results.
What are the 4 content pillars?
The answer lies in four pillars of content creation that will help you create high-quality content that ranks well in search engines: originality, relevance, engagement and relevancy.
What is the three pillar strategy?
Both scenarios illustrate the three pillars that form the basis for decisions in business, management and everyday life: strategy, law and ethics.
What are the 3 content pillar strategies? When developing a content marketing strategy that will deliver positive business results, keep in mind the three pillars: value, relevance, and consistency.
What does 3 pillars mean?
Originally, the name of the three pillars stood for Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the three main entities in our faith.
What are the 3 pillars of the plan of salvation?
These three events—the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement—are three prominent pillars of God’s plan, and they are doctrinally connected—(“Constancy amid Change,” Ensign, Nov.
What are the three pillars of life?
The three pillars of life are proper digestion, proper sleep and proper handling of sexual activities. Eating, sleeping and reproducing are essential to life, and when these three areas are in a healthy state of balance, the body and mind will reach their full potential for health and well-being.
What is a pillar in a strategy?
What are strategic pillars? Strategic pillars are the backbone of your content strategy; top priorities driven by the core business strategy and goals your company wants to achieve. They are not the goal, but the method to reach the goal. ‘how we get there;’ execution of the strategy.
What are strategic pillars examples?
What are the most common strategic pillars?
- Smart Growth â Not just growth at any cost.
- To be a good place to work.
- Having customer empathy or customer centricity.
- Operational excellence.
What is vision pillars?
Vision pillars is a full-service offering the most creative architecture, graphics, branding, clean code web development and measurable marketing services to help your business achieve needs and goals. Website https://visionpillars.com. Industries Design Services.
What is the most important pillar of SEO?
Focusing on these three pillars of SEO will increase the opportunities for your content and attract more organic traffic over time.
What are the 3 core must haves of SEO? Use the three pillars of SEO – technical features, a compelling content strategy and offpage elements – to strengthen your business’s approach to staying visible, relevant and prominent when connecting with search engine users.
What are the 3 most important on page SEO factors?
Top 5 On Page SEO Factors
- On Page SEO Factor 1 â Keyword Research: …
- On Page SEO Factor 2 – URL optimization: …
- On Page SEO Factor 3 â Metatags: …
- On Page SEO Factor 4 â Header Tags: …
- On Page SEO Factor 5 â Content optimization:
What are the three most important elements in on page SEO?
On-page SEO components include content elements, site architecture elements, and HTML elements. Google’s algorithm ranks your site according to three main factors: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO: We cover on-page SEO elements below. Off-page SEO refers to social sharing, external links and more.
What are the important aspects of on page SEO?
On-page SEO refers to the SEO elements you control on the web page, or the web page code itself. Examples of on-page SEO include content, headlines and headings, image optimization, title tags, meta descriptions, structured data, and more.
What is the most important part of SEO?
Google’s #1 Ranking Factor At WebTek, we say that the most important parts of SEO and the most important Google ranking factors are the web page titles and heading tags. Titles represent the primary real estate of any website – they are your best chance to tell Google exactly what your website or webpage is about.
What is important in SEO?
SEO is important because search engines are not perfect. If you don’t take steps to address their mistakes, your website will pay the price. For example, if a site does not have a proper link structure, search engines may not crawl and index the site properly, which can lower rankings.
What are the main pillars of SEO?
The three pillars of SEO: Authority, relevance and experience.
What are the 3 core must haves of basic SEO?
To do SEO, you really only need 3 things to get started: a website, your brain and data. Hopefully you already have the first two, so let’s make sure you have the right data. Data is everywhere in SEO, from visitor analytics to keyword research and especially link building.
What do the four pillars symbolize?
The 4 Pillars of Meaning In his book, Smith divides the search for meaning into four pillars: belonging, purpose, storytelling and transcendence. Belonging defines a connection to a larger community. Creating and maintaining relationships is how we increase this connection, which in turn makes our lives feel meaningful.
What are the four pillars of our relationship with God? The pillars of an authentic Catholic life are summarized in the traditional four pillars of Catholic catechisms: faith, liturgy/sacraments, life in Christ, and prayer, which Peter distills in Acts 2:42.
What are the four pillars of spirituality?
These are self-control, inquisitiveness, contentment and good company. These four can be said to be pillars upon which a seeker can build his spiritual journey.
What are the 4 pillars of Christianity?
The Four Pillars of the Christian Life “Faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love†Paul understood that the disposition of our hearts determines the value of our gifts. The 4 spiritual pillars are about the disposition of our heart and the surrender of our heart to God.
What are the main pillars of Christianity?
Originally the name of the three pillars stood for Father, Son and Holy Spirit – the three main entities of our faith….They included:
- Sola scriptura: by Scripture alone.
- Sola fide: by faith alone.
- Sola gratia: by grace alone.
- Solo Christo: through Christ alone.
- Soli Deo gloria: glory to God alone.
What is the purpose of the four pillars of education?
The pillars have specific goals: to guide people through lifelong education to walk the path to self-realization, to develop personality in an integrated way; consolidate team spirit, creativity and respect for differences; to awaken from an early age the awareness that an education based on the four pillars of …
Would you say that the four pillars of education is a good formula to ensure complete or total education of the students why?
Answer: I would say that this is a good formula to ensure complete or total education of the students. Because I personally believe that these four pillars of education can only equip the students with learning opportunities guided by the teachers if the mentor knows how to anchor his strategies to these pillars.
What are the four pillars of the school?
But there are common features among all schools that function as they should. I call them the four pillars of effective public schools: promoting child well-being, supporting powerful learning, building teacher capacity, and fostering school-community collaboration.
What makes a strong SEO?
Quality, authoritative content is the main driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for good content – this is especially true when doing SEO marketing. Quality content created specifically for your intended user increases website traffic, improving your website’s authority and relevance.
What are the 5 SEO factors? Top 5 On Page SEO Factors
- On Page SEO Factor 1 â Keyword Research: …
- On Page SEO Factor 2 – URL optimization: …
- On Page SEO Factor 3 â Metatags: …
- On Page SEO Factor 4 â Header Tags: …
- On Page SEO Factor 5 â Content optimization:
What are the 4 pillars of SEO?
Mitigation, reporting, project management and relationship building are all important to the success of enterprise SEO.
What are the 3 C’s of SEO?
Simply put, the basics of SEO can be boiled down to The 3 Cs: Content, Code and Credibility.