Why the Pillar Content of A Blog should be Written First
By Matt Jones on Jul 6, 2007 in Blogging Tips
It sounds obvious when I call it “pillar” content because of-course you need pillars to hold the rest of the blog up. However a lot of bloggers do not see it this way.
What exactly is a Pillar Post
Blogging Business Plans
Too many bloggers have a business plan for their new blog that goes something like this:
Very Bad Plan
1. Crank out a few bad/average posts.
2. Market the blog with comments, submitting it to tacky directories and spam potential blogging allies for link exchanges.
3. Once some traffic starts flowing write slightly better posts.
4. Start crying when the traffic they worked so hard to build (or not) doesn’t stick around because there’s nothing to see.
Imagine how with a little more effort and planning, that scenario could go something more like this:
A Cunning Plan
1. Write at least 10 Pillar posts before even telling anyone about the blog or having it indexed in Google.
2. Each post is fantastic so you can market each one like mad and traffic flows in fast.
3. Traffic returns because they have all the other pillar posts to read and are eager for more.
4. You write the next stage of a blogs content, known as ‘linkbait’. This attracts links and traffic and your rankings in Google and Technorati rise.
5. Many visitors who arrived from the linkbait subscribe because your pillar posts made them expect good things from you.
6. You are over the moon at how well things are going, this extra boost motivates you to maintain the high-standards you have created.
7. Your blog takes over the world.
8. You thank me and take me out to dinner.
Bonuses
If you place your pillar posts in the sidebar, as many bloggers do now under a heading like ‘top posts’ the majority of your readers will visit them, which increases the chances of them being linked to. This results in the pillar posts rising in the SERPS and so more targeted traffic arrives. These new visitors like your blog and subscribe to the RSS feed because the first thing they saw was the pillar content which gave a good first impression.
Conclusion
Writing Pillar content first creates a positive feedback loop. It’s a simple blogging technique that I am putting into full effect on Blogging Fingers. If you have missed out this stage it’s never to late, only you will have to ‘lever’ the pillars up beneath your blog, which could involve some heavy lifting if your blog is already full of content.
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[…] Not writing Pillar content first. The idea to not write anything of substance till readers are already there simply doesn’t […]
Matt:
Great post…and great pillar content. In fact your blog is full of pillar content…and I have to admit it made me stick around for quite a while as well as bookmark your site. One recommendation. If your site had a better design…i.e. look and feel, I think you could really be on to something. I love your content though.
Thanks for the compliment Mark
and I’m glad you agree about pillar content.
I am still working on the site design, I agree there is a lot of tweaking to be made (namely a clickable header banner … ). If you have any precice suggestions I would love to hear them.
Good ideas. I figured I’d implement the “top posts” idea..linking back to my pillar articles.
I’m in the process of figuring out how to do just that. I can’t seem to find any widgets that allow you to display predetermined posts. Any tips on how to set that up?
I’m in the process of figuring the coding out, but can’t seem to set it up the way I want. The header is always un-centered and the link text is different from the rest of the sidebar text. (I’m new to html/css)
Just thought I’d ask you for some tips. Would be cool if I could find a widget.
Andrew,
I just use a text widget and add the html links manually for each post I want to add to the ‘Top Posts’. The HTML in the widget would go like this:
<a href=”http://bloggingfingers.com/blogging-basics/blogging-basics-what-is-rss/”>What is RSS?</a>
<br>
<br>
<a href=”http://bloggingfingers.com/blogging-tips/why-the-pillar-content-of-a-blog-should-be-written-first/”>Why the Pillar Content of a Blog should be Written First</a>
<br>
<br>
etc
Using <BR> like that may not be the ‘best’ way to do it, but it works fine with me. Of course you would have to swap the links to those of your own posts.
Thanks bro! Got it working right.
[…] strategy for Blogging Fingers. I wrote most of the guest posts along with a batch of about 5 pillar posts before even launching Blogging […]
Solid article Matt. You certainly have learned the value of these pillar articles. (You must be a student of Yaro Starak!) Anyway… keep up the good job.
[…] Why the pillar content of a blog should be written first - Matt explains how you should be writing awesome content as soon as your blog begins. Save the ‘filler’ posts for when your blog is established! […]
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good blog
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