Pillar posts are one of the best ways to generate back links and improve the overall ranking of your blog. Pillar posts are the support for your blog. They help to define your topic and act as support for your blog thus the term pillar posts.
A pillar post need to be a good resource that people will want to refer others. The two most common types are a tutorial or a resource list.
It is best to make these on topics that are evergreen. By evergreen I mean something that will still be valuable 3 or 6 months or even 3 years from now. With the internet changing as fast as it is this is not always possible and you can get results from items that are lees likely to last.
As an example Twitter has become huge over the last year but a great Twitter resource list from last year is probably not still valid as the scene is changing their daily. That does not mean that you could not have gotten some great traffic for it over the first few months. It just will not continue to add references like a more evergreen topic.
Make sure that you have done the keyword research for your topic and that your pillar post targets one of your specific keywords.
A great list of Word press plugins would be perfect for my blog about WordPress but the same list would have absolutely no value on my horse training blog. It needs to be on topic for the rest of your blog. Seems like common sense but I have seen people create lists that have absolutely nothing to do about their primary topic just because it was a hot topic.
Resource lists are one of the easier ways to create a pillar post. List the top 10 or any other number of what ever the resources are in your topic. If your blog is on traffic generation then a post explaining the top 10 ways to generate more traffic would be perfect.
For how to, tutorial or instructional pillar posts go in to depth on exactly how to do a specific task. If you are doing it in writing then be sure to include screen captures (if appropriate) to make it even more valuable.
Your how to can also be a video which are quite popular in this day and age. Doing both a written version and a video version on your pillar post topic can make it even more likely that more people will link to your post.
The better the information you share the more likely people are to link to it.
In conclusion adding pillar posts are one of the best ways to generate links back to your blog which will definitely allow you to get more traffic to your blog. So stop reading and go add one to your blog today.
Mike Paetzold is a long time blogger and WordPress expert who has created 15 Minute Blog Traffic to help you generate more traffic to your blog easily.
