How Do I Organize My Content for SEO in Terms of a Pillar with Supporting Articles?

[Markenfi]

Hello,

After finding my main topic through keyword research and validating it by analyzing competitors. I am struggling to understand how to structure my content. My intent is to create a tight silo structure. I want to build an authority website that follows best practices in SEO.

Let's say I aim at 1 main pillar article for my main keyword with 5 supporting articles.
Is it bad to use the top 5 highest volume long-tail keywords for each of the 5 supporting articles (making each article all about this long-tail keyword)?
Or should I study how to organize the content into what I think makes sense (by researching the niche) dividing the content into 5 subjects I think the reader would want more information and then looking for relevant long-tail keywords to use in each article?

Basically I am confused by how much the keyword research should drive how the content is organized within a silo.

 

[bernard]

I think your method is fine to begin with.

Overall, just keep in mind that everything you're building should be for people first, so all articles should serve a purpose for people.

Which also means different intents for each article.

I wouldn't look so much at the keywords as for the intents, such as:

• Price comparison
• Reviews
• Informational
• Special interest

If you're searching "coupons for product", then you don't want to find a long article, you want to find the coupons. If you search "product on sale", then you want to find products on sale, not something else.

For each silo content, there will be these more or less fixed intents: best product, product review, etc, these are review type intents.

Cheap, on sale, best price etc, these are price comparison intents.

And you could add: green/eco, child friendly, luxurious, professional, for vegans, etc, those are special interest.

While "how do I use product x as" is informational.

See where I'm getting at?

For all products, there will be multiple related searches, that are more or less the same across products. You want to hit them all for each silo, but I would focus on getting the commercial ones up first. That's cheap, review, best, coupons etc.

Then I would focus on special interest keywords, because those are usually easier to rank for and convert very well.

Finally, I'd work on adding those informational articles, because those will get links and can be used for linkbuilding and outreach.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Let's say I aim at 1 main pillar article for my main keyword with 5 supporting articles.
Is it bad to use the top 5 highest volume long-tail keywords for each of the 5 supporting articles (making each article all about this long-tail keyword)?

This is pretty typical. To go back to your dog collar example in your other thread, let's say you decide the pillar article should rank for "Best Dog Collars" because you want to make money. You put a comparison table at the top of the best 3-5 choices, then you write a little bit about each choice in their own sections. Then below that you put in a short "buyer's guide."

I'm making this up off the cuff just to give you an example, but not some strict guidelines. In the Buyer's Guide, you have your H2 header for "Dog Collar Buyer's Guide" then below you H3 headers and one paragraph of summarized info for:

• What size should my dog's collar be?
• How to measure your dog's neck
• Are plastic clips strong enough for large dogs?
• Should I use a dog collar or a harness?
• What about flea collars?

Something like that, where these questions are based on keyword research, not chosen willy nilly.

And now you have your 5 supporting topics. Now you'll write full blown articles for each of these and interlink them to your "best dog collars" page with that keyword as the anchor text. Then on the pillar article you'll link back to the supporting articles from their respective sections in the buyer's guide with targeted anchors that make sense.

Now you're created what I call a "mini-net." People around the industry have taken to calling it a "content hub" lately now that the idea is out there in the public consciousness. I always called it a "mini-net" because it's not just a content-hub on your site. You now extend your net outside of your own site and onto other sites, driving relevance and link juice into your mini-net on your site.

 

[Markenfi]

This is great, thanks to both of you.
So my take away is:
my pillar article should be the money-making page (highest volume or highest profit potential + buying intent), the one I really want to rank. The supporting pages should be informational pages. The supporting pages come from keyword research (for example common questions) and will be interlinked to the pillar article.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@Markfeni, it depends. Sometimes your pillar article is the one that makes money, especially if it's a full SEO play where you can send hot traffic to a converting page.

But sometimes you run a service based business or sell a product that requires educating the users or convincing them that they need and want your service or product. So that can mean that your pillar article is for some extremely broad, "top of the funnel" content that has 100,000 volume. Then you funnel them down towards your sales page from there.

I'm sure you've seen SEO courses, for example. People build squeeze pages and other ways to increase the "hotness" of the visitors. Some fall off and weren't going to convert, but those that continue down the funnel are increasingly more likely to convert, and for higher amounts of money.

People do this with webinars and all kinds of ways to "squeeze" the traffic. Hell, some do it with in real life seminars, books, videos, audiobooks, youtube videos. They'll get in front of millions of people and by the end "squeeze" 20 people for $40,000 each.

So yeah, it all depends on your goal. You have to know what your end goal is and what state of mind the users are coming in from the keywords, and how to match those users to the right content based on what it takes to sell your stuff.

If you're just doing Adsense or display ads, then getting them to the page is enough and it doesn't matter what they do from there (other than click the ad). Sometimes, with CPM ads, just loading the ad is enough to get you paid.

Other times you'll have to massage the users and do real marketing and have a real funnel. And that can extend off-site to your email list, your social media, your YouTube channel, etc.