How to Create a Pillar Content Strategy for Ecommerce Sellers

As an e-commerce business owner, attracting and retaining customers is essential for your businesses success.

While social media, email marketing, and paid advertising all have a role to play in acquiring and nurturing customers, producing high-quality content is the foundation of any marketing effort.

In fact, 97% of businesses surveyed by Semrush in 2023 reported that they achieved success with their content marketing strategy, up from 91% in 2021.

This indicates that creating a pillar content strategy for ecommerce is becoming increasingly important and popular in today’s ecommerce landscape.

In this article, you'll learn the benefits of pillar content and the steps to creating a solid pillar content strategy that'll take your e-commerce to the next level.

What is Pillar Content and Why is it Crucial for ECommerce Businesses?

Pillar content refers to authoritative, comprehensive content resources on topics that are most relevant to your target audience.

These are broader topics that can have multiple related subtopics on which other content can be created.

Pillar content not only attracts and educates your audience but also serves as a way to build natural backlinks for your ecommerce website.

Image via Gate 39 Media

Pillar content can include the following:

• Product Category Pillars: This includes content optimized for high-volume keywords related to your product categories. They can establish you as an expert in your niche and pitch your products and services.
• Resource Pillars: These are  ‘how to’ guides, glossaries of terms, informative articles, or other useful resources for your target audience. These provide value to customers and boost engagement.
• Ultimate Guide Pillars: These are long-form, in-depth resources on a specific topic within your niche. These help establish your authority in your niche.

Simply put, by creating pillar content, e-commerce businesses can increase brand awareness, establish brand authority, rank higher in searches, and convert more visitors into customers. 

How to Build a Robust Pillar Content Strategy for Your E-commerce Business

To create a robust pillar content strategy for e-commerce marketing, you’ll want to follow these steps.

1. Conduct Audience Research

Crafting robust pillar content starts with understanding your audience and their information needs. That’s why conducting audience research is an important first step in creating a pillar content strategy.

According to the previously cited Semrush report, 47% of businesses cited audience research as the most crucial factor for content marketing success.

Image via Semrush

Clearly, you need to understand your target audience's needs to create valuable content.

Focus on defining your target audience demographics, and understanding their interests, pain points, and information consumption habits. 

For example, websites offering customer service software tools frequently publish content about customer service tips, tools, and the latest trends. It helps them to get more relevant engagements and content performance in SERP.

Observe the kind of content they engage with most on your website and social media channels and then use this data to select the best topics for creating pillar content. 

2. Do Keyword Research

The second thing you’ll want to do is conduct thorough keyword research to determine the high-volume keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for. These precise phrases provide deeper insights into your audience's intent and offer better ranking potential for your pillar content.

To help you tackle this step with ease, you can use keyword research tools like Semrush to discover relevant keywords related to your chosen pillar topic.

Image via Semrush

Don’t know where to start with your keyword research? Try reading expert review articles such as this one by Attrock that can help you know how to use the tool to gain insights into keyword trends and competitor analysis.

With the right keyword research data, you can identify keyword gaps and look for opportunities to create pillar content that can rank for those terms. 

3. Map Your Pillars

Next, identify the core themes or pillars that align with your business. These pillars should represent broad topics that are both relevant to your audience and integral to your business offerings.

Once you have a list of pillar content topics, then map out how your pillar content can be broken down into subtopics or cluster content. Then, you can create a content hub with one pillar content piece and multiple content pieces that cover its subtopics.

The image below is an example of how a pillar content strategy can be mapped out.

Image via The Blog Pilot

Mapping your content helps you organize your topic clusters and streamline your content creation efforts.

4. Create High-Quality Content

The foundation of any successful pillar content strategy for e-commerce marketing is the content. Create content that educates, inspires, and solves problems for your audience. 

Your content should be engaging and understandable, even if you’re covering complex topics. Use clear language, concise sentences, and bullet points to break down information.

For your pillar content, consider long-form content to make it comprehensive. Use writing tools to polish your content or consider content marketing outsourcing if you don’t have the resources in-house.

Additionally, to  reach a variety of audiences, you’ll need to employ a variety of content formats. 

Image via AutoMonkey

Though infographics and blog posts are the most prevalent, video creation is quickly growing in popularity, proving itself to be an effective form of content marketing. 

At the end of the day, your pillar content can be a blog post, an ultimate guide, a white paper, or even a video series. As long as it is long-form, informative, and high-quality- you’re good to go.

When you create high-quality pillar content, you are demonstrating your expertise in your niche. This helps you build trust and credibility with your audience, which can ultimately lead to more sales conversions.

5. Use Internal Linking

Internal linking or interlinking is a vital component of a pillar content strategy for e-commerce that boosts engagement. This involves strategically linking your pillar content and cluster content to each other.

By doing this, your pillar content becomes a central hub that not only provides in-depth insights but also facilitates easy navigation to related topics. 

Even better? These interconnected links create a cohesive and informative web of information that keeps visitors engaged on your site.

Investing in e-commerce SEO internal linking does more than encourage your site visitors to explore more of your content. It also signals to search engines that your e-commerce website offers authoritative and reliable information on the subject.

To maximize the effectiveness of internal linking, consider the following tips:

• Maintain a natural flow by linking to content that genuinely enhances the reader's understanding or provides additional value.
• Utilize descriptive and contextually relevant anchor text for better user engagement.
• Ensure a balanced distribution of internal links across various pages to avoid overloading certain articles.

Final Thoughts

With a comprehensive pillar content strategy for your e-commerce business in place, you can establish yourself as an authority in your industry, while also can driving significant organic traffic and sales.

In today’s competitive digital landscape, a robust pillar content strategy is not merely a trend. It is an essential element for businesses aiming to thrive and distinguish themselves.

So what are you waiting for? Make the most of the insights provided in this guide and start developing a successful e-commerce pillar content strategy today!

Author Bio - Reena Aggarwal

Reena is Director of Operations and Sales at Attrock, a result-driven digital marketing company. With 10+ years of sales and operations experience in the field of e-commerce and digital marketing, she is quite an industry expert. She is a people person and considers the human resources as the most valuable asset of a company. In her free time, you would find her spending quality time with her brilliant, almost teenage daughter and watching her grow in this digital, fast-paced era.

Gravatar Email ID: reenaa@attrock.com
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