Taming The Word Monster or The Pillar Post Defined

byMrDon1

628 followers

5 months ago

Have you ever caught yourself in a situation, where you have created a never-ending post? I have one that started out as an informational post, and every time I created a new header, it led me off on another research and write mission.

How to Make Extra Retirement Income with Affiliate Marketing as a Freelancer

Which morphed into my creating

9 Golden Nuggets to a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program

Which generated more legs when I identified the

7 Essential Skills You Need for Freelance Success

A pillar post, also known as a pillar page or content pillar, is a comprehensive piece of content that serves as the cornerstone of a topic cluster. It provides an in-depth overview of a broad topic and links to more specific, related content pieces known as cluster posts. This structure helps establish a website’s authority on a specific subject and improves its search engine optimization (SEO) by creating a logical and interconnected content architecture.

My Example of a Pillar Post the kept growing...

Title: How to Make Extra Retirement Income with Affiliate Marketing as a Freelancer

Introduction

Briefly introduce the concept of making extra retirement income through affiliate marketing.

Explain the importance of having a diversified income stream during retirement.

Section 1: Understanding Affiliate Marketing

• Define affiliate marketing.
• Explain how it works.
• Discuss the benefits and potential earnings.

Section 2: Getting Started with Affiliate Marketing

• Steps to choose a niche.
• How to find and join affiliate programs.
• Setting up a website or blog.

Section 3: 9 Golden Nuggets to a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program

• Detailed tips and strategies for success.
• Examples of successful affiliate marketers.
• Tools and resources to help you succeed.

Section 4: 7 Essential Skills You Need for Freelance Success

• List and explain essential skills such as time management, marketing, and networking.
• How these skills apply to both freelancing and affiliate marketing.

Section 5: Combining Freelancing and Affiliate Marketing

• Strategies to integrate affiliate marketing into your freelance business.
• Case studies or examples of freelancers who have successfully combined both.

Conclusion

• Summarize the sections.
• Encourage readers to start their journey in affiliate marketing and freelancing.
• Provide links to additional resources and cluster posts for further reading.

How to Handle Expanding Content

When your content starts expanding beyond its bounds into multiple subtopics like my example above, it’s an excellent opportunity to create a pillar post with cluster content.

Here’s how you can manage it:

Identify the Core Topic - Your original outline, "How to Make Extra Retirement Income with Affiliate Marketing as a Freelancer," serves as the core topic for your pillar post.

Create Cluster Content - Each subtopic that emerged (e.g., "9 Golden Nuggets to a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program" (with each of the 9 Nuggets expanded) and "7 Essential Skills You Need for Freelance Success" can be developed into separate, detailed cluster posts. These posts will link back to the main pillar post and vice versa. As you can see I have at least 17 posts from this one topic. How to Make Money (Pillar), 9 Golden Nuggets (9 Posts), and 7 Essential Skills (7 Posts). Pillar + 9+7 = 16.

Organize and Link: Ensure that your pillar post includes internal links to all the cluster posts. This not only helps with SEO but also provides a better user experience by guiding readers to more specific information.

Optimize for SEO: Use relevant keywords and optimize each section of your pillar post and cluster content for search engines. This will help improve your visibility and ranking.

By structuring your content in this way, you can turn a potentially overwhelming amount of information into a well-organized and highly valuable resource for your readers. This approach not only enhances the readability and usability of your content but also strengthens your website’s authority on the topic.

But what if you started with a 20,000 Word Monster?

So I got carried away one day and started with a 20,000-word post. Believe it or not, you have an excellent foundation for creating a comprehensive pillar post and related cluster content.

Here's how you can transform it into an effective pillar post structure:

Identify the core topic: Review your 20,000-word post and determine the main overarching topic it covers. This will become the focus of your pillar post. This is a great exercise for ChatGPT3.5. Simply ask it for the core topic and feed the 20K word monster into it. Within seconds it will tell you the core concept.

Create an outline: Did you use Headers? You can see where I am going with this. Hey Chatty, using the Headers, please break down the 20,000-word post into major sections or subtopics. These will form the basis of your pillar post structure.

Condense the pillar post: I am still using Chatty and a prompt that I created prior to our AI Authors being released.

This outline looks great. Now we need to create an amazing attention-grabbing introduction using an emotion-based hook to grab readers by the eyes. Ensure that you cover all of the points in our outline in this introduction. Within the Introduction, you need to include “How does this post answer the title?”

We have the introduction in place. Let's firm up the body.

Take your outline and feed it to Chatty ONE SECTION AT A TIME. Each Header and Sub Point that you got from the outline. Feed it with this prompt:

Use this exact same prompt for each section. Just change Section 1, to Section 2, Section 3, etc

The Introduction looks great. Now let’s look at body Section 1. We need to create this to educate our readers on each of the points mentioned. Keep it engaging even for the reader who is familiar with the subject. Ensure that the section has an opening paragraph, and each point has at least one, maybe two paragraphs as needed, associated with it. References are a good touch if they help illustrate the point.

This should trim our 20K novela into about 2,000 words. Focus on providing a comprehensive overview of the topic (Header) without going into extreme detail on every subtopic. This is your cluster content.

Develop cluster content: The Headers of this Pillar Post will become links to Detailed Coverage of each topical overview. These ARE your content clusters. Don't forget to link back to the pillar post.

Interlink content: Ensure that your pillar post links to all the cluster content pieces, and that each cluster post links back to the pillar page.

Optimize for SEO: Use relevant keywords throughout your pillar post and cluster content. Include internal links, optimize meta descriptions, and use header tags effectively. See how I linked back to my SEO Post? If I wanted to add a section to my SEO Post on Pillars, I would link from SEO back to this post.

Add visual elements: Incorporate images, infographics, or videos to break up the text and make the content more engaging. Use the same Images in the pillar as the Feature Image of the cluster post to add connection.

Create a table of contents: For easy navigation, include a clickable table of contents at the beginning of your pillar post.

Update and expand: Regularly review and update your pillar post and cluster content to keep it current and comprehensive.

By following these steps, you can transform your 20,000-word monster into a well-structured pillar post with supporting cluster content. This approach will not only improve your SEO but also provide a better user experience for your readers by organizing the information in a more digestible format.

How did you handle You Word Monster?