Developing a content strategy isn’t without its challenges. And one of the first challenges that many people encounter is trying to find the balance between writing for audiences, and writing for algorithms. Of course, both are important. Content not only needs to be engaging enough to hold a reader’s attention, but also simple enough for ranking algorithms to scan and ‘understand’.
And right now, this is becoming increasingly important.
Like most businesses today, Google is placing more and more emphasis on customer centricity. It wants to be able to offer the very best experience for its users, which means generating the most relevant search results for each and every query. And that comes from developing algorithms that do more than simply match search terms with keywords; algorithms need to understand context, too.
This makes it even trickier to create content in a way that meets both machine and human needs.
But it can be done. How? By using content pillars.
What are content pillars?
Content pillars are one part of the ‘pillar and cluster’ model. This model is made up of a central pillar which supports a broad topic of discussion, and multiple niche clusters venturing off to the sides.
A content pillar offers a basic overview of a subject matter, briefly touching upon all of the important elements that fall under that specific topic. For example, a content pillar on the subject of climate change may answer a number of fundamental questions. These could include ‘what is climate change?’, ‘how does climate change happen?’, ‘what are the effects of climate change?’, and so on. The idea is to offer a comprehensive introduction to a particular subject area, covering all of the relevant topics.
A content cluster focuses on just a single idea within that pillar, exploring it individually in greater depth and detail. Using the climate change example above, a cluster looking into ‘how does climate change happen?’ would delve more deeply into specific actions, activities, and behaviours that are contributing towards global warming. These could include manufacturing, travel, technology, and more. The pillar will answer the initial question, while the cluster will aim to explain the answer transparently.
So what do pillars and clusters have to do with writing for people, and writing for algorithms? It’s all about how this content model is able to organise and pull together all of your different content ideas.
Connecting your content
The most effective way to use content pillars is to connect your ideas and topics together. The aim is to draw a logical line between different areas of discussion to satisfy both human readers and algorithms.
From an algorithm side, what pillars do is create associations between seemingly unrelated ideas. The various pieces of content that you produce will often be built around different keywords. This means that it can be difficult for Google to understand how different pieces of content relate to each other. At a time when context is key for search engines, this can be a problem. The purpose of a pillar is to pull together individual topics under a single overarching subject. This helps algorithms to better understand the meaning of the content, and deliver the best possible results to users.
From an audience side, what pillars do is organise content in a way that’s easy to understand and offers an improved online experience. If a search engine directs a user to a post on your website called ‘what is climate change?’, it can be assumed that they may also be interested in learning more about what causes it, and the impact it can have. Therefore, the ability to connect one cluster to another, and to another – through the pillar – can help audiences learn more about a subject, navigate around your site with confidence, find what they need, and keep them on your site for longer.
You may have lots of different ideas for creating content. But to walk that fine line between writing for people and writing for machines, you must be able to connect all those different ideas in a way that makes sense. Using pillars to pull everything together is key to organising your ideas in the best possible way; in a way that supports the user experience, and satisfies algorithm requirements.
