A step-by-step guide to preparing your website to publish Pillar Content powered by DemandJump's solution.
Whether you're new to Pillar-Based Marketing (PBM) or an experienced user, the first steps to implementing PBM to your website are the same. You’ll start by establishing content marketing goals and clearly defining your target audience. For example, you may want to drive more brand awareness or climb search engine results pages (SERPs) and capture the attention of your ideal customer. No matter what you're looking to achieve, keeping your goals and target audience in mind while making decisions is the best way to successfully add PBM content to your site.
Now, let’s dig into the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about adding Pillar-Based content to your website.
How Do I Perform A PBM Content Audit?
To perform a PBM Content Audit, you need to take inventory of all the content you currently have related to your Pillar Topic. This step is done after choosing your Pillar Topic but prior to building out your full Pillar Strategy. We suggest looking beyond your current blog posts to see if any internal documentation, marketing materials, or even PowerPoints are helpful resources to inform your PBM content. Why reinvent the wheel when you're already part way there, right?
Where Should I Publish My PBM Content?
DemandJump has put a lot of time and effort honing in on our PBM content publishing practices. Here's what we found works best for publishing Pillar Pages, Sub-Pillars, and Supporting Blogs:
Publishing Your Pillar Page
Your Pillar is the longest piece of content in your PBM strategy and is where we want to drive the most traffic to. With all this inbound traffic, we recommend publishing this content to lead driving pages such as product and service or landing pages.
Product & Services Page: Publishing your content to your product or service page is our most highly recommended placement for your Pillar. You’re probably thinking, “That’s a lot of content for our product page!” and yes, you’re absolutely right. To make things more manageable, we implement a False Footer, and then add in our Pillar content. This allows the page to have all the stylized call-to-actions (CTA’s), quick facts, and graphics at the top for usability while satisfying the need for rich content. Check out our own Pillar-Based Marketing Pillar Page to see for yourself.
Landing Page: If publishing that much content to your Product or Service page doesn’t work for you, don’t sweat it! You can create a landing page to publish your Pillar content. We still recommend having the top of the page contain at least one CTA, graphics, an embedded video, or other information for your readers to see prior to reading the rest of your content. Then, publish the bulk of the content towards the bottom of the page.
Publishing Your Sub-Pillars
Sub-Pillars are typically published to your website’s blog, news, or resources page, just like a regular blog post. However, if a page on your mega menu already exists for this topic, or you think you should create one, a Sub-Pillar can be published using the Product & Service Page posting guidelines above.
Publishing Your Supporting Blogs
The ideal placement for your supporting blogs is in the blog, news, or resources section of your website.
You may think this is a silly question. “Of course, you publish blogs in the blog section.” But it can get rather complex, especially when there are two Content Management Systems (CMS) at play. Having a blog that’s separate from your website is going to break up your Pillar Strategy authority and could limit the results you want to see.
We suggest keeping your full strategy within the same domain to avoid disrupting the Pillar Strategy. This means you should post your Pillar Pages, Sub-Pillars, and Supporting Blogs to the same blog domain or create an alternate space to publish the blogs within your main site.
Does the URL nesting structure matter with PBM content?
No—all that matters is the linking structure we recommend to create the network effect we’re going for. Let’s break that down a bit.
Many content management systems (CMS) will “nest” new pages in a logical URL structure like this:
domain.com/product-category/product-number-1
domain.com/resources/blog/blog-title-number-1
We recommend that the final portion of the URL for a piece should match the title, or focus keyword, of the article. If a coffee brand were preparing to publish a blog about what makes a white mocha a white mocha (which, no idea why they’d do that, but bare with us), they might be doing so to target a keyword they found in the DJ platform: “what makes a white mocha different from a regular mocha?” The URL, then, should look something like this:
coffeeshop.com/blog/what-makes-a-white-mocha-different-from-a-regular-mocha
Whatever comes before the final slash in that URL does not matter as much as what comes after it.
In other words: don’t worry about changing how your website is designed to generate URLs for new pages! As long as the titles do not have tons of random numbers and letters, it will look good and work for your site.
How Should I Implement CTAs On My PBM Content?
When implementing CTAs on your PBM content, the most important things to keep top of mind are your goals, target audience, and user experience.
Establishing goals that outline the action you want your audience to take helps to reduce distractions and prevent you from accidentally stuffing your content with too many CTAs. You want to keep CTAs clear, concise, and relevant to your content.
Here is what DemandJump has at the end of each of our blogs which would also have a clickable link:
Your target audience should also guide your CTAs. No one wants to fill out a form or click a button if they aren’t going to get some sort of value out of it. Whether it’s a whitepaper, template, or demo, think about what value you can offer your audience in return for their action.
User experience is a critical part of implementing a CTA. Here are some quick tips for making sure your CTA’s are user-friendly:
- Form fills should ask for as little information as possible
- Clearly and concisely, let users know what they can expect by taking the desired action
- Draw attention to the CTA with color, bolding, font size or graphics
- Don’t force a CTA—it should come naturally near relevant content
- No matter how many CTA’s you use, one should always be placed at the bottom of the page
- Thank users for filling out forms and let them know what they can expect to happen next
You Are Ready To Implement PBM Content To Your Website!
Your goals and target audience are established, you know where to publish your content, and you’re an expert in CTAs. Now you can publish your PBM content like a pro.
Of course, if you have any questions, DemandJump is here to help!