Blog, Website & Page Publishing

Slicey
Participant

Want to set my Blog Page as a Pillar Page

SOLVE

Tl;Dr - Why can't my blog page be set as a pillar page? 

Posted this query in SEO, but haven't solved this issue. Thought someone here might have some ideas.

 

We have recently re-skinned a website and I am setting up topics and pillar pages for the first time. 

On our site, we use blog pages for product pages. I wanted to create a topic for each product type and link to each of the brands/products as sub-topics. 

I've tried setting 3 different pages as the pillar page and am running into some issues. 

 

1.) Top-Level Pillar Page. I tried setting /Products as a pillar page with the idea that "Concentrates," "Topicals," "Tinctures," etc could each be topics that link back to that page. I thought it was working well because everything linked properly (image 1), but ultimately found this wouldn't work because I discovered that you can't link more than one topic to each pillar page. Products top-level Pillar PageProducts top-level Pillar Page

2.) Blog Pillar Page. I thought the next best solution would be to use one level down from products as my pillar pages. "Concentrates" /Concentrates, "Edibles," /Edibles, etc would each be pillar pages. This is the top landing page of my blog (each group of product pages is set up using the blog). HubSpot won't allow me to set this page as a pillar page. It doesn't show up when I search for site pages to set as a pillar page and I can't copy/paste this url in. It seems that any other page on my website - even blog posts can be set as a pillar page, but this page cannot. Why not? Blog landing Pillar PageBlog landing Pillar Page

3.) Option 3. Use a Blog Post as a pillar page. This isn't ideal, but HubSpot will allow me to set a blog post as a pillar page. The problem is that this post is then at the same level in the navigation structure as each sub-topic that would be linking to it. Trying to link back to the pillar page in this example seems less organic, and results in all the sub-topics I've already set having broken links to this page. They would all need to be added. (I've added links on this page out to each of the sub-topic pages, but they currently don't link back to the original blog post page)Blog Post Pillar PageBlog Post Pillar Page

My preference would be to use my website page (blog landing page) #2 as a pillar page, but for some reason I am unable to set it as a pillar. My second choice would be to use my top-level landing page as a pillar #1, but if you can only use a single topic per pillar page this won't work. Last resort would be using the blog post #3 as a pillar, but this seems less than ideal and will create A LOT of work for me to add links to each of the hundreds of sub-topic pages to get them to link to a blog post.

Any suggestions?
What is the reason I can't link to a blog page? 

Thanks,
Slicey

 

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1 Accepted solution
breichenbach
Solution
HubSpot Product Team
HubSpot Product Team

Want to set my Blog Page as a Pillar Page

SOLVE

Hey @Slicey

Taking a look at the pages you mentioned, the reason a page like /concentrates can't be used as a pillar page is that that is your Concentrates blog home page, which is considered an automatically generated blog listing page. At this time we do not include blog listing pages as options for pillar pages when searching for your HubSpot pages as they are typically just an aggregated listing of your content rather than a page that meets the criteria for what makes a good pillar page. 

 

A pillar page covers all aspects of the topic on a single page, with room for more in-depth reporting in more detailed cluster blog posts that hyperlink back to the pillar page.

Pillar pages broadly cover a particular topic, and cluster content should address a specific keyword related to that topic in-depth. For example, you might write a pillar page about content marketing -- a broad topic -- and a piece of cluster content about blogging -- a more specific keyword within the topic. 

 

So, in the case of selecting one for your topic cluster, a blog listing page isn't going to be fleshing out and providing a foundation for the topic at hand; it'll just serve as a repository for the content that does. 

 

That being said, you could theoretically add your /concentrates page as a pillar page by using the "Add External URL" function to get around this. It may not show up as a page when searching your HubSpot content, but you could just treat it as an external page if you decided to add it. However, I do not recommend doing so from the perspective of best practices. Given that listing pages do not meet the criteria for what makes for a good pillar page, adding it as one likely wouldn't result in the organic traffic that we seek to generate by following the topic cluster model of SEO. Instead, I think that creating a page or blog post that functions as a master post about concentrations as a whole and then using that as your pillar page will likely yield better traffic results in the long run.  

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1 Reply 1
breichenbach
Solution
HubSpot Product Team
HubSpot Product Team

Want to set my Blog Page as a Pillar Page

SOLVE

Hey @Slicey

Taking a look at the pages you mentioned, the reason a page like /concentrates can't be used as a pillar page is that that is your Concentrates blog home page, which is considered an automatically generated blog listing page. At this time we do not include blog listing pages as options for pillar pages when searching for your HubSpot pages as they are typically just an aggregated listing of your content rather than a page that meets the criteria for what makes a good pillar page. 

 

A pillar page covers all aspects of the topic on a single page, with room for more in-depth reporting in more detailed cluster blog posts that hyperlink back to the pillar page.

Pillar pages broadly cover a particular topic, and cluster content should address a specific keyword related to that topic in-depth. For example, you might write a pillar page about content marketing -- a broad topic -- and a piece of cluster content about blogging -- a more specific keyword within the topic. 

 

So, in the case of selecting one for your topic cluster, a blog listing page isn't going to be fleshing out and providing a foundation for the topic at hand; it'll just serve as a repository for the content that does. 

 

That being said, you could theoretically add your /concentrates page as a pillar page by using the "Add External URL" function to get around this. It may not show up as a page when searching your HubSpot content, but you could just treat it as an external page if you decided to add it. However, I do not recommend doing so from the perspective of best practices. Given that listing pages do not meet the criteria for what makes for a good pillar page, adding it as one likely wouldn't result in the organic traffic that we seek to generate by following the topic cluster model of SEO. Instead, I think that creating a page or blog post that functions as a master post about concentrations as a whole and then using that as your pillar page will likely yield better traffic results in the long run.