❌ - Authoritative Content Strategy

Authoritative Content Strategy

Summary

From an SEO perspective, generating blog content can be helpful in building site authority and therefore can increase overall rankings site-wide. In the case of [INSERT CLIENT NAME], we suggest creating an informative [INSERT PILLAR PAGE TOPIC] pillar page that will answer frequently searched queries on Google. We have mapped a few blog topics that are related to the pillar page topic, and there are a few existing blogs related to web design that we will interlink to.

Goal

The goal of this authoritative content strategy is to build content that will increase the authority of the site. Site authority is when Google sees a website as a trusted source on a topic and will use excerpts and other information from that site to answer user search queries. This authority is a major ranking factor for a site and can greatly increase page rank site wide.

We have built a strategy, generated a content plan and guidelines to increase the site’s authority by building structured and authoritative blog content.

Content Strategy

The content strategy has been developed around three aspects, pillar pages, sub topic pages and structured interlinking. The pillar page will link down to subtopic (blog) pages, that will in-turn either link further down to more specific subtopic pages or instead link back up to the pillar page.

First Step

Pillar Page

A pillar page will be the centre of the content strategy. The idea behind the pillar page is essentially to create a large blog page that encapsulates the entirety of a targeted topic. The pillar page will broadly cover the topic as a whole by addressing frequently asked questions/searches and other relevant information, which will then have links to more detailed information about the specific subtopic/question being covered. The page will be structured with a table of contents at the top that allows users to jump to the relevant information they are seeking on the page, and subheadings that indicate different subtopics. Interlinking will be performed within these subtopics to direct users to more in-depth information on the topic, as well as direct authority to where it needs to go.

Sub-topic/general blog pages

Additional pages will then be created to answer the questions in more depth. These pages will have more specific subtopics or general blog content that is relevant to the pillar page topic. For example, if ‘movies’ is the topic for your pillar page, ‘romance movies’ or ‘comedy movies’ would be subtopics that you could go into more depth about in separate blog articles.

Additional pages will then be created, these will be more specific subtopics or general blog content that is relevant to the pillar page topic.

URL/Site Structure

We need to ensure that the user and search engines can correctly navigate the site. We will look at how the current blog content is structured and make adjustments depending on URL structure and navigation. [ADD INFO ON SELECTING URL STRUCTURE]

For example, if /blog/movies is your pillar page,

then /blog/movies/romance and /top-movies-to-watch-in-2022 are subtopic or general blog pages

Second Step

Content Creation

Content will be created for the pillar and sub topic pages and will be done in such a way that it will appeal to search engines. We have provided a set of guidelines for the content and the structure of the content to ensure that it is seen as authoritative. You can find the link to these guidelines at the bottom of this document.

Page Audit & Interlinking

After the content has been created and the pillar page and subpages are ready to be published, we will audit the pages and interlink anchor text to ensure that all pages pass authority correctly.

Content Map

Pillar Page

The Initial pillar page that will be targeted will be [INSERT PILLAR PAGE TOPIC]

We have compiled a list of topic questions that need to be addressed in the page:

This list isn’t definitive, and questions can be skipped or added as needs be. It is also recommended that if the client has any frequently asked questions around the topic that hasn’t been covered in the list, that they add it.

Sub-topic/general blog pages

These are recommended subtopic pages and blog pages that will be interlinked from the pillar page.

Existing pages can also be added into cluster, for example:

URL/Site Structure

The current blog structure is set up with [INSERT URL] being the blog page and all other pages just using their title as the URL, e.g [INSERT URL]

This type of structure is called a soft structure, where the link between pages are done with only the on page interlinking, rather than the URL. A hard structure for example would be: [INSERT URL]

We recommend that the pillar page URL be:

[INSERT URL]

And any blog pages we would recommend being part of the harder structure:

[INSERT URL]

Both structures have their merits, but we believe the choice should depend on the user experience

Recommendations

In conclusion, we suggest that you:

• Build a [PILLAR TOPIC], pillar page with [INSERT URL]
• Populate the page with informational content answering the questions listed above.
• Create at least one more blog related to the topic.
• We will interlink and adjust content according to our topic cluster model
• We recommend building a hard URL structure:

Similar to this: [INSERT URL]

All pages that branch from the pillar page will have the [INSERT URL] URL structure. This will help crawlers better understand the content of the pages.

Mapping Data and Analysis

The content data and information can be found here.

The content guidelines can be found here