Basic Blogging: Use Pillar Posts to Promote Your Blog

So let’s get down to basics.  As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again and again, in the blogging world content is king . But not all content is created equal.   A short  lived news item, (good for political blogs); tittle tattle about this week’s celeb, (great for film and entertainment blogs); or a review of a new film or a great shopping bargain are good for a short term blogging boost, particularly if you manage to get mentioned in a social bookmarking site, such as Digg or Stumbleupon.

However, to build a long term relationship with the search engines, review websites, directories and, of course, other bloggers you need to create a series of pillar posts to form the backbone of your site.  Pillar posts are articles that add value to the reader, are not time dependent, are usually factual and are likely to be linked to by other websites.

This article gives an overview of pillar posts, (a concept developed by Yaro Starak), how to develop them and how to maximise their benefit: to keep your readers on your site, to build backlinks to your site, to build links within your site and to build your site’s authority and rating with the search engines.

As a blogger you want people to  visit your site, find your site, recommend your site and stay on the site.  You also want them to visit, find, recommend and stay on your site time after to time.  So you need pillar articles – so what are they?

• They have authority: that is they are longer, high quality posts that add value to the reader
• They are not time restrained: that is they must have a very long shelf life
• They are a focus for links: incoming links from other sites , to improve traffic and search engine value; outgoing links to build up the post’s authority; and  internal links to improve the user experience.
• They form part of the blog’s promotion strategy: cut down and re-edited the pillar post can transformed into a guest post on another blog, can be transformed into short articles for linked free article directories, can be summarised to appear in email newsletters and expanded to produce incentive, and even commercial, ebooks.

I’ll say it again content is king.  All kings need legitimacy.  The legitimacy in the blogging world is  authority.

What is authority in the blogging world?

A blog post that people respect because it containing a lot of useful knowledge about an aspect of the blog’s niche.

Investigate your niche and develop your post by providing the potential readers with something very useful, possibly original and well researched.  Often  pillar posts are an accumulation of known facts, possibly from a number of posts,  on a specific topic, which is then refined into a concise well written post.

Developing this post

I already knew about pillar posts.  I therefore made a search on Google using the terms ‘wordpress pillar posts’.  I then noted the main points – significant article, timeless, adds value to the reader and the importance of the pillar’s being used to attract incoming links.

I added:

• the importance of outward links, (I know this builds authority).
• using the pillar to build internal links within the site, (a personal bee in my bonnet.  Most bloggers do not use internal links properly).
• the re-use of the post’s contents, (a common promotion technique).

My additions help me to produce an added value, more in depth article on pillar posts, that should be useful to potential readers, and hopefully over the years this pillar post will gain many incoming links.

Writing the content

Your pillar post should be much longer than your normal post.  I should also be well written within the style of your niche.  This post is written in a similar style to that I use when writing training materials.  Some niches and genres of blogs obey different written rules.

So say a blog on graffiti the owner would use different styles of text, would not necessarily follow standard forms of grammar and spelling and yet the article would still be considered authoritative by his audience.

This article will be valid for all the time there are text based blogs. All successful blogs will need pillar posts to help them build readership and promote itself.

This then means the relevance of the article will be valid for many years.  It is then worthwhile for bloggers to link to this post as they know it will be around for many years.  I can also use the post for a valid backlink when I write a guest post on another blog or as my by-line when I write a shortened version of this article for a free article service.

But you must review the post

Ever so often you need to review your pillar posts.  Update the text, but never change the heading, as it will be lost by the search engines and all the hundreds of links you’ve generated to the page.

By changing the text slightly, now and then, in your post will very slightly improve the page’s search engine rating

In fact I would say there are essential.  They need some time to develop and they need some thought.  You need to use your knowledge of your blog’s niche to develop and research your well written, added user value, pillar posts.  They will make your blog more authoritative and not only draw more readers, but will keep them on your site longer.

You should also be using your knowledge of the niche to plan to increase the number of pillar posts to act as the foundation stones of your expanding blog.  This will build up those all important incoming links and strengthening the search engine rating.

Of the thirty or so posts on your start-up, foundation blog, have at least two, ideally four, pillar posts before you start phase two, site promotion.

Image: Flickr @JWPhotography

What do you think?

Examine two or three blogs and see if they use, and how they use, pillar posts.

Start planning a pillar post for your blog.  Tell me about it.  Feel free to ask for advice.

Related posts:

1. Basic Blogging: Focus on Giving Your Blog Focus