Knowing which pieces need to link together can enhance your marketing strategy. Don't skip over the important linking practices.
To make the Pillar-Based Marketing (PBM) strategy work, you must properly link all of your related content together. When you link to another source within a piece of content, you indicate to search engines that it is an authority and that it informed your content during your writing process. The PBM strategy has you link to longer pieces of content (both Pillars and Sub-Pillars) within the pillar topic so that you establish those as authorities. Let’s take a closer look at how the linking works:
A PBM strategy typically starts with 16 pieces of content:
- 1 Pillar
- 3 Sub-Pillars
- 12 Supporting Blogs
As you can see, the Pillar also has three Supporting Blogs beneath it that don’t connect to a Sub-Pillar. Each Sub-Pillar has three Supporting Blogs underneath it. When creating your linking, each Sub-Pillar should link to the Pillar and each Blog should link to both the Pillar and related Sub-Pillar—if there is one. Supporting Blogs will not link down. The Pillar will not link to any related Sub-Pillars or Supporting Blogs.
These links should appear in the introduction of your content, and you should link to your Pillar before your Sub-Pillar. Why? Because in theory, the higher the link in your content, the more authority it receives. And since your Pillar is your longest piece and the one that provides the broadest overview of your topic, it should receive the most. That’s also why your Pillar doesn’t link to any of the other related content.
When adding links to the Pillar and Sub-Pillar in the introductions of your content, be sure to use the exact title of those pieces as your anchor text. In other words, put the links to your Pillar and Sub-Pillar on their titles. Search engines will give those links more authority for those exact keywords that way.
If you have Content Services through DemandJump, you will find where you should link to the Pillar and Sub-Pillar highlighted in yellow on each copy deck. We highlight instead of providing a specific link because we typically write most, if not all, of your content before links are created..When publishing final pieces, you can remove the highlights and put the proper links in their place.
Keep in mind that as you add additional pieces of content to any Pillar Strategy, you’ll continue using this linking structure. While 16 pieces is the minimum to create the network effect PBM is designed around, it’s critical to keep building additional content to broaden your network.
If you have more questions about Pillar content linking, please reach out to your DemandJump Customer Success team member or Professional Services team member if you have Professional Services. They may be able to audit your content to ensure that you are linking properly in your PBM strategy.