Pillar Articles, and Working Nonstop through Copyright Issues

byapowers

741 followers

Updated 12 years ago

A few pieces I've read over the last week have discussed the importance of pillar content. In these articles I've also seen the terms "flagship content" and "cornerstone content" to refer to really the same thing: an article, generally longer than a standard post on a website, that describes something in detail.

This content helps to provide credibility to the rest of the site, especially the portions of the site that drive purchases. If a prospective customer lands on my site and reads some of my pillar content they will (if I've done my job) have learned how to solve the problem they're looking to solve. It's at that point that they'll be looking to purchase the product that solves the problem, and obviously there's a link on my page for them to buy it.

I've read that this content also helps to gain credibility in whatever community it is that you're competing in. By becoming a credible source in the niche you've selected you can earn guest blog spots on competing websites, gaining backlinks to your site.

As I've found out the most common and coincidentally easiest type of pillar article to write is the "How To" article. In a lot of cases, this can be the landing page, or one of several landing pages for an instructional site.

I've been working on a "How to" article for my site to replace the landing page you'll see if you click the previous anchor text. It's a comprehensive guide on watching streaming content like Hulu and Netflix in your living room and is one of two pieces of pillar content I intend to post over the next short period. The current article is at about 3000 words and I expect will finish at about 4500.

The second article I haven't begun yet but is about listening to streaming music like Pandora and Spotify and devices that will help get the job done. i intend for this article to be about 3000 words.

After posting these two pillar articles, I'll make some StreetArticles that link to them. I'll create some Squidoo lenses to link to them as well. Then I'll start posting social media links to this content... though I'm not really sure how yet.. I'm awaiting Kyle's training, to be released on 12/19/12 entitled Social Engagement to help me with what to do here.

Regardless, my intention is to create two articles that will be relevant for the next several years and will help to establish me as an expert in my niche. If I can do that I expect to garner significant traffic and, with trustworthy content, sales as well.

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I've been working almost non-stop lately.

I love every minute of it.

My goal is to get to a point where my fiancee and I can quit our jobs as soon as possible. She just had our daughter 23 days ago and quite frankly, I don't want her to have to go back to work.

Of course, if it has to happen, then that's life. We've still gotta pay the bills.

But I was fortunate enough to parlay a very, (and I stress) VERY limited knowledge of internet marketing into being the online marketing coordinator for a small local call center. They expect small accomplishments that I'm ready and able to accomplish right now, and the pay is quite good.

So my average day is spent on my trusty 2 month old Toshiba laptop for about 14 hours. I can feel the off-white paint that is the letters on my keyboard rubbing off from the thousands of words I type a week.

It's an amazing feeling to accomplish as much as I have in the time I've been working at it, and in all honesty, I haven't even accomplished anything, I haven't earned dollar one yet. But I have written better and better content each time I've tried. I've continued to learn about SEO. I've redesigned my site to be more user friendly.

I've dealt with copyright issues on my site.

I pulled some pictures from Amazon.com to use on my site. I figured that was ok since they were linked to their site with my affiliate link.

Apparently that's wrong twice. 1.) I can't use the image from Amazon without their permission. 2.) I can't link back to their site without it being their pre-built link because it can be considered cloaking.

Over the last 24 hours I pulled down the offending content. Then, I went to Best Buy and took some pictures to use on my site. I brought 'em home, threw 'em in GIMP and cut out the backgrounds, then posted them where the copyrighted material once was.

Unfortunately, there was a few items I talked about that I couldn't get pictures of yet, but I'm going to keep trying.

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And I keep pressing forward. Determined as ever.

-Andy