A Content Marketing Strategy Framework You Need to See [Example]

Justin Champion is the author of Inbound Content, Principal Content Professor for HubSpot, Adjunct Lecturer for the University of Florida, and one half of Wild We Wander. Justin created HubSpot Academy’s Content Marketing Course, which has awarded over 40,000 certifications to professionals across the globe since November 2016. You can find him on Twitter @JustinRChampion.

Content marketing has seen a lot of changes over the past several years. Many of these changes can be attributed to the rapidly evolving search landscape, as well as a shift in the way people search, discover, and consume content online. 

All that said, many marketers still experience the same pain points that were common 5 to 10 years ago. 

• “I struggle to measure the return on investment of the content I create.” 
• “We know the content we’re creating provides value, but we still don’t seem to rank high on Google for our target keywords.” 
• “I’ve done my keyword research. Now what?”

Let me start by telling you that creating more content in the hopes of having your website show up on Google is not the answer. In fact, adding more content to an outdated existing site architecture can make it harder for Google to find and rank your content. That’s not a situation any marketer wants to find themselves in.

The answer to these problems spans way beyond the amount of content your business publishes per week or month; the real problem lies in the way that most content marketing strategies are being developed and organized.

SEO is evolving, and marketers need to adapt.

Want to learn and apply content marketing to your business? Sign up for HubSpot Academy’s free Content Marketing Certification course.

Today, we live in a digitally informed world, one where there’s millions of people searching for content every minute as well as millions of pieces of content being published online every minute. This makes the job of a search engine like Google increasingly difficult to serve you the most relevant, high authoritative content possible. To remain a relevant and helpful search engine, Google released a series of algorithm changes over the past several years. 

For more information on the evolution of SEO, check out this resource. 

All this change brings opportunity to be found by your ideal audience. That’s a key facet to creating successful content in today’s online environment. Most forget it’s not just about creating content for the search engine. Search engines aren’t the ones filling out the forms on your website. Search engines aren’t the ones sharing your content on social media. Search engines aren’t your customers—humans are.

If you want to create effective content that converts visitors into leads and eventually customers, you need to create a helpful, positive user experience that solves for both the searcher and the search engine, not just one or the other.

Here’s how you can solve for both: Create targeted clusters of relevant content that each cover a specific topic in depth. These targeted clusters then need to lead to a centralized hub, known as a pillar page.

A pillar page (also known as a content pillar, power page, etc.) is a website page that covers a specific topic in depth and is linked to a cluster of related content. 

How do you build a pillar page with a support cluster of related content?

First, you need to identify a broad topic that you want to be known for and build authority around. Instead of thinking about specific keywords you want to rank for, focus on terms with high monthly search volume, usually 2–3 words in length.

For example, let’s say you’re a marketing agency who does inbound marketing for your clients. In this case, “inbound marketing” would be a great example of a broad topic that you might want to be known for and build authority around.

However, actually trying to rank for broad topics like inbound marketing could seem impossible. Not to mention, broad topics like this don’t offer context as to what you’re specifically talking, making it difficult to solve for searcher intent. 

If your goal is to rank for a broad topic like inbound marketing, then you need to be specific as to what you’re talking about by bringing context to the equation. Let’s say your marketing agency offers a service to build personas for your business. After all, knowing who you’re trying to reach is an important facet to a successful inbound marketing strategy. In this case, “inbound marketing personas” would be a great example of bringing context to the broad topic, inbound marketing. 

The trick to doing this effectively is finding specific terms in support of your broad topic that have adequate search volume to justify the content creation time. This is because you will be creating a pillar page around this specified topic with the intention of getting that page to rank on the first page of search engines like Google. And while I’d love to provide you with a magic monthly search volume number as a baseline to go by, it really will depend on your industry and location.

Here’s a pro tip: When doing keyword research, identify a list of keywords you could use to bring context to your broad topic. Keep in mind, the higher the monthly search volume, the more difficult it will be to rank for. On that note, choosing keywords that have lower monthly search volume can still make a big impact on your search engine visibility. You may think that 250 monthly searches for a specific keyword is low, but ranking for a keyword with this monthly search volume can pay off in the long run. That’s because the average first-page ranking will also rank well for about a thousand other relevant keywords (source: ahrefs). Remember, search engines are much smarter nowadays. Their main goal is to solve for searcher intent. Yes, keywords are still important, but if search engines think your content solves for the intent of a search query, even if that search query doesn’t have the specific keywords you used to optimize your content, then chances are they’ll choose to rank it anyways. That’s why it’s important to think in terms of topics over keywords.

Once you determine how you intend to rank for a term that’s specific to the broad topic you’re going to write about, you’ll want to identify your topic cluster, which will be made up of relevant subtopics. A subtopic should be strong enough to be published on its own — in the form of something like a blog post or video — but when combined with other like-themed subtopics, it should be relevant to and support the specific topic you’re writing about.

In this case, “What are negative marketing personas?,” “How do you build a persona?,” and “What content does my persona want?” are examples of strong subtopics that provide value on their own, but when put together, support the specific topic “inbound marketing personas.”

Here’s a pro tip: If you’re looking for a place to start when identifying subtopics, consider the questions your audience has around the specific topic you chose to write about. If your audience uses search engines to do research, then chances are they’re doing their research in the form of a question. And if you’re the one who’s offering the answers to their questions, then you’re off to a good start with creating an effective topic cluster.

And to complete the topic cluster, and solve for both the searcher and the search engine, connect the pillar page and subtopics together through a series of hyperlinks.

At a minimum, make sure all subtopics link to your pillar page. By linking all relevant subtopics to the pillar page, you’re funneling all your traffic to the main resource hub on this topic.

Let’s see this in action.

If you performed a Google search for inbound marketing personas, this is what the first-page listing would look like.

At the top, you’ll see Google generated a featured snippet, which is the search engine’s way of answering your search query without you having to click through to the page. In this case, Google chose to feature a snippet about what an inbound marketing persona is — information that’s pulled from a comprehensive resource published by an inbound marketing agency called SmartBug Media.

Below the featured snippet, you’ll see SmartBug also claims the number one listing for “inbound marketing personas” with the same resource, “The Ultimate Guide to Inbound Marketing Personas.”

In a world of trying to build authority and awareness for a broad topic that’s relevant to your business, this is what you’re striving for: the featured snippet as well as the number one listing for a term that’s aligned with your broad topic.

Let’s say you’re a company looking to create your business’s personas, so you click the link in the search result to learn more. You’re taken to this page:

Near the top, you’re greeted with a video as well as an overview of what you’re going to learn. Below that is a form to access a guide with a bonus template to use for applying what you learn to your business. But let’s say you’re not sure you’re ready to give your information just yet in exchange for the offer. Maybe you need more information to make sure that this offer is right for you.

SmartBug understands this might be the case, which is why they offer the majority of the content in the guide on the actual pillar page. This way, visitors can check out the content first to make sure it’s what they’re looking for.  

And for people who do find value in SmartBug’s content and want access to the downloadable guide and bonus getting started template, SmartBug makes it easy to access it by offering a sticky form at the top of the page that follows visitors as they scroll. This way they’re being helpful without disrupting the visitor’s experience.  

One last thing before moving on, SmartBug includes helpful links throughout their pillar page. These links connect to other websites as well as content on their site, including subtopics a part of their topic cluster. For example, notice how this hyperlink, “getting the answers to some basic questions,” connects to a blog post on SmartBug’s site. This way the visitor can continue consuming content around this topic. And at the top of the blog post, there’s a link that takes you back to the pillar page. 

Something important to note: Not every subtopic you have will be referenced on your pillar page (and that’s okay). That’s because you may have dozens, even hundreds, of subtopics that make up your topic clusters. Instead, you can strategically link to relevant subtopics throughout your pillar page when it makes sense and when it provides value to the website visitor. Just make sure all important subtopics connect to the pillar page. Remember, keep the user experience and the story you’re trying to tell in mind.

So that’s how this page solved for the searcher by offering a positive user experience, but how did this page solve for search engines in terms of traffic and visibility?

In the first 3 months after publishing their pillar page and linking their topic cluster together, SmartBug’s pillar page received over 4,800 views and 1,000 downloads. 

With results like this, SmartBug started to rethink their overall content strategy and structure of their website. Remember, search engines want to connect people with the best content possible based on their intent. Focusing on user experience is a strong and sustainable way to search engine optimize your content.

If you’re looking to take your content marketing efforts to the next level, then check out this on-demand workshop (this way you can learn from wherever inspires you best). Each person who enrolls will receive a copy of my book, Inbound Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing Content Marketing the Inbound Way. 

Image: Unsplash