Pillar articles are blog content pages that focus on educating its readers and are typically considered the best of a website’s content. They are written in tutorial style and usually provide a highly detailed step by step procedure. Pillar articles are traditionally longer than a typical post and require must more time to write and proof as well. Most professional bloggers focus on as many pillar articles as possible to gain the most web traffic.
But writing pillar articles may not be a breeze, especially for those who are just starting to blog. There is no exact formula on what makes a blog content a pillar article. Even though we all have various writing styles, what you want to aim here is to create articles where your visitors will remember after reading them. So put your thinking cap on and be creative as a pillar article is not something you can put up in an hour or so.
First of all, know your target readers. Choose a theme and be consistent with it. The more specific your theme is the better. The best and easiest way of finding topics and turn it into pillar articles is doing a close self-examination. Unless you know your blog articles theme inside out, you won’t be able to figure whom they will appeal to. Start with your hobbies, passion, or your day job. Say, if you’re a hairdresser, you can write informative how-tos on hairstyling. It should be a good and fun start. Once you have that figured out, it’s time to create your articles.
The following are tips on writing pillar articles. They may seem pretty basic but they always work. Read on.
- Use an eye-catching title. It’s what your target audience read first. Follow your title with a nice introduction that gives your reader an idea of the content. You want to lure them into reading your entire article.
- Long articles can be tiresome to most readers. Try to limit them to 500 and 600 words and present only relevant and appropriate information. Do all necessary research and information gathering methods. When it’s time to write your article, you need to simplify them to make it more understandable to a wider range of audience. One nice trick is to present them in multimedia formats, ideally using photos, especially in technical how-to’s. Remember, pillar articles are meant to educate readers and a picture tells a thousand words. A carefully presented blueprint style blog will clearly relay your message or demonstrate how to do something more than explaining them using words. You may also present your content in bullet points, lists, and sub-topics.
- Consider writing evergreen articles, meaning they have no expiration. It is perfect in drawing web traffic all year long. It will broaden your audience as these articles will remain relevant today and in the future. Avoid using words like yesterday, slangs of the year, and specific numbers like current prices. Those words will make your articles dated. You want web traffic to come in and keep coming long term even if your articles just sit there.
- Always carefully proofread your articles. Proofreading is the final and essential step before an article can be considered complete. Read it slowly and carefully. Check grammars, coherence, punctuations, spellings, and spaces before publishing them. One misplace punctuation can ruin a good article.
One of the many challenges new bloggers face is getting substantial traffic to their blogs. Write as many pillar articles as you can. You may want to do this every day if you can. The more articles you have in the internet, the more traffic you will bring to your site. Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog site if you want to start earning. When it’s time to market your pillar articles, more work is required. Mention them in our social networking accounts–Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Other methods are posting them in forums, submit them to article directories, or by encouraging commenting in your blog. Traffic generation is a skill you can’t learn overnight but you can always search the web for more information on marketing your blog further.
The most important outcome you want to aim is traffic. A good pillar article is one that is well researched, well presented, and well marketed. When you write quality content, do enough marketing efforts, blog traffic will follow.
