Pillar Page Strategy for Demand Gen Contributes Organic Pipeline in 90 days

Overview

SmartAcre recognized the opportunity for WorkStep to own and rank for industry-specific keywords related to Frontline Employee Engagement. To capitalize on this opportunity, SmartAcre provided a pillar content strategy, development, and promotional plan to not only boost search engine rankings but also generate quality leads by providing its core audience with engaging and impactful resources as a hook.

Challenge

WorkStep had a vast amount of disparate content supporting frontline engagement keywords, but it was not optimized for search or ranking for the intended key terms. They needed a way to bring the content together to tell a better story that added value to their HR and Operations audiences, while also boosting SERP presence and organic traffic to the site.

Approach

Our work started with the creation of an annual demand-generation content strategy that included recommendations for core topics with WorkStep’s target audience in mind: HR and Operations personas within the Logistics & Transportation, Retail, Manufacturing, and Healthcare industries.

As part of this strategy, SmartAcre identified the opportunity for WorkStep to rank for and own industry-specific keywords related to Frontline Employee Engagement. With WorkStep’s focus on frontline workers, their perspective was already unique without too much competition.

To signal authority on the topic to search engines while catering to the identified needs of the ideal target audience, SmartAcre recommended the creation of a “bookmarkable” resource, a toolkit designed to provide strategies and resources to help HR and Operations leaders improve engagement across their frontline workforce.

WorkStep already had the majority of this content created, it was just living in multiple places throughout the website and in other content formats with the opportunity to optimize it for search engines and identified key terms. To bring it all together, SmartAcre outlined a pillar content strategy that spoke to the core theme while linking out to existing blogs and resources with more detail on the topic. We optimized existing blog content for targeted terms, strategically placed backlinks throughout the newly drafted pillar page, and supported the creation of new lead magnets to help support the overall effectiveness of the page as a demand-generation asset.

Knowing the ultimate goal of creating more pillar content throughout the year, SmartAcre built a WordPress template following pillar page best practices to allow for quick and user-friendly creation of new pages without the need for development and design support.

SmartAcre also provided a repeatable campaign planning framework that included content promotion tactics spanning planning and strategy, through to marketing and sales automation, to multi-channel promotion.

As part of our approach, SmartAcre created:

• A pillar page focused on Frontline Employee Engagement with optimized interlinking blog content
• Two brand new downloadable assets for inclusion in the toolkit to use as a lead gen component
• HubSpot assets and reporting management to support tracking of leads through the funnel
• A promotional plan to quickly signal authority to search engines by driving fast site traffic

Outcomes

Within the first 30 days of the pillar page launch and existing blog content optimizations, WorkStep was ranking #5 for their top-targeted keyword defined within the overarching content strategy. By 90 days, they were ranking at #2.

Within the first 60 days of launch, the Toolkit earned a featured snippet on Google.

Within the first 90 days post-launch, the resource converted 133 contacts, generated 29 new leads, and 1 new sales accepted opportunity.

The Frontline Employee Engagement Toolkit pillar page was just the first piece of our content strategy puzzle for WorkStep. To continue to increase SERP rankings, drive organic leads, and build out website content, we’ve identified three additional pillar pages to build. This campaign allowed WorkStep to diversify its MQL makeup while providing the intangible benefits of speed and being able to move quickly on things. With the new pillar page template in place and with content creation best practices identified, we’ll be able to continue to move quickly on campaign launches.