Pillar pages are a great way to boost SEO, but they should also mean more than that to your business. Like all marketing activities, pillar page campaigns should help you achieve business goals. Two very common goals for pillar page campaigns are to generate leads and acquire customers.

Since pillar pages are essentially and ungated content offer, you might ask, how do you generate leads if it's ungated? In this article, I'll show you how to go beyond boosting SEO and give you 5 tips for generating leads with pillar pages.

1- Include a gated download of the pillar page content

The best way to generate leads from a pillar page is to package the content from the pillar page as an eBook. In fact, we recommend that you make the eBook first. Many people prefer to read long content in a PDF rather than from a web page. They can also annotate the PDF, and shared it internally with their notes. How many people will download? That depends, but some estimates put the numbers as high as 50%.

One way to sweeten the deal get more downloads of your eBook is to include an exclusive extra. This doesn't need to be anything extravagant, something as simple as a template or checklist will do.

Tip: Include the same download option at the end of the pillar page to make people who are skimming the content don't have to hunt to find the download when they reach the end!

2 - Include Other Relevant Calls to Action

If you have other content offers that are relevant to the topics or subtopics covered on your pillar page consider putting a calls-to-action (CTA) for those offers on the pillar page. Any offers that add detail to or provide guidance related to the core topic or subtopics covered in the pillar page should be considered.

For example, at the end of our subtopic on promoting pillar page content we included a button CTA to download our ultimate reach checklist.

3 - Create an Engagement offer Related to the Core Content

We encourage anyone who is making a pillar page to create at least one additional offer that directly related to the core topic covered on the pillar page. These can be something like a free consultation, an assessment, or a product or service.

For example, on our Boost SEO with Pillar Pages, we include an offer for a free, 30 minute consultation on pillar pages.

4 - Plan Conversion Points

Your pillar page should be a valuable resource for your audience. It should not be a billboard for your calls to action. We prefer not to saturate the page with offers, and tend to include one offer at most per subtopic or major content section.

It's important to put your offers close to relevant text so they make sense in the context of the pillar page.

To make sure you’re adding them at appropriate places that make sense within the context of the pillar page, plan out the conversion points for the entire page. For example, if you’re creating a pillar page for cloud training with the following subtopics, you might layout conversion points as follows:

Cloud Training (Core Topic)

• Cloud migration training (subtopic)

  • Conversion path: Ebook - Overcoming Cloud Adoption Barriers

• AWS training (subtopic)

  • Conversion path: Checklist - Migrating to AWS

• Azure training (subtopic)

  • Conversion path: Report - Top 4 Cloud Vendors Compared

• Google Cloud training (subtopic)

  • Conversion path: Guide - Comparison of AWS and Google Cloud Service Features

• Cloud security training (subtopic)

  • Conversion path: Report: Top 20 Most Common Cloud Security Problems

• Cloud administration training (subtopic)

  • Conversion path: Ebook - 50 Cloud Administration Scripts

• Cloud automation training (subtopic)

  • Conversion path: Report - Comparison of Chef and Puppet for Cloud Automation

Always place calls-to-action near the most relevant text to make sure it makes the most sense in the context of the writing.

5 - Choose the Right Types of CTAs to Use

You have a lot of different options for calls-to-action. They can be text URLs, buttons, or image calls to action:

We prefer to that our pillar page content flows well and is easy to skim so we tend to use button CTAs or URL CTAs for most links to related offers.

Adding Relevant Offers will Boost Lead Generation

Your pillar page shouldn't be all about boosting SEO. Lead generation should be one of the main objectives as well. After all, if the goal is to drive a lot of traffic to your pillar page, give those visitors a way to convert into leads and customers! By thoughtfully incorporating relevant content and engagement offers, you do just that! If you want more tips, see our complete guide to boosting SEO with pillar pages.