If you are a blogger or a writer, you have surely stumbled upon the word ‘pillar article‘. Have you ever wondered or thought about how you can define it? I bet most of the time you’ve taken the word for granted and passing over to the next lines. This is an opportunity to have a discussion, so let’s talk about pillar articles..

What Is A Pillar Article?

I define a pillar article as an article depicting all of the following:
1) Is a lengthy article which clearly, concisely and deeply explains the subject matter
2) Makes you feel that the writer has expertise in what he/she is saying and hence demonstrate an authority. The author knows exactly what he is writing about and will often share his experience or elaborate on different facets.
3) The article comprises:
- a clear, simple definition,
- a full-fledged body,
- with examples and analogies
- and/or a conclusion. (This pattern seems analogous to writing a GP Essay)
4) The content itself is very unique, wonderfully structured, well researched coupled with the author’s own writing styles. (Very much like a balanced diet with an exquisite dessert)
5) The article is evergreen – it will still be valuable for the next incoming years

Why Write A Pillar Article?

1) Writing pillar articles very attractive and appealing to bloggers and hence they are willing to link-back or talk about your article with a happy heart.
2) You are not just writing an article for the sake of writing it or for search engines, but you are writing for humans, providing your readers with good, valuable content. Hence you are showing that:
- you value your readership
- you are not wasting the time of your readers
- you are serious with what you are writing
- your article rocks!
3) On the whole, a pillar article lures and increases traffic

What Does It Take To Write A Pillar Article?

1) Time and energy demanding.
Writing pillar articles is NOT like writing about ‘What John Chow is eating everyday‘ or what ‘Shoemoney is doing at PubCons‘. Obviously, in addition to your own expertise, you will need to make some research. Then you will need to refine and proofread your article to make sure it is of a high standard.

For some it might take hours and hours, for others it takes days and still for some it might even take weeks. But it all depends on your personal skills, passion, experience and maturity. Assuming you have the habit of writing, I think 2hrs is just enough, else I think you need to stop blogging and start writing for Readers Digest!

2) Passion and true desire to write
If you don’t have a free will to write a pillar article, just forget about it. Better not write, than spoiling the article and your credibility.

How To Write A Pillar Article?

I think if you have a passion to write a pillar article, I don’t need to tell you how to do it. It’s like football, if you have passion to play it, you will play your own tunes – like Ronaldinho or Cristiano Ronaldo. But still, keeping in mind that not everyone is an artist, I will briefly give you some hints as follows, but these are not by any means the only aproach.

=> PART 3″ href=”http://wakish.info/wonderful-blogging-ideas-how-to-breed-them-in-your-garden-part-3/”>Brainstorm ideas without any reading or research
=> Now go make some research if you feel the need (but whatever your skills, research is important to keep you on track)
=> Link your ideas + the one you’ve acquired through research
=> Sit down with an inspirational mind, write your article.
=> Proofread your article and come back later to make sure everything that you wrote is still making sense and is ready to be ‘published’.

Writing a pillar article is very much like writing a poem or painting. Just feel the inspiration and let the spirit guide you to write some wonderful masterpieces.

What’s Your Opinion On Pillar Articles?

Do you agree with what I’ve said? What is your approach to write a pillar article? I’m sure you might be having some more brilliant ideas on pillar articles, so please do share it..

I started blogging (not so seriously) at around February 2007 and till now my definition and philosophy about blogging has changed enormously. At the beginning, I have been blogging (very rarely) solely for my eagerness of having an online presence and to be able to share some of my perspectives. But as I progress, my knowledge in IT coupled with the blogosphere, has convinced me if blogging is done seriously and with passion, it can lead to assets. Meaning, I can turn my passion into money without compromising my initial ‘way of blogging‘.

On this blog, I make money (just enough to pay my hosting/domain bills) via:
1) Adsense (still using)
2) Text-Link-Ads Affiliate
3) Private deals

The only payment method that I can use are:
1) Checks
2) Moneybookers

Disadvantages Wakish Wonderz Faces

1) No Paypal – This is a BIG blow
I cannot use Paypal, since it has a ‘send-only’ status assigned to my country Mauritius. This is so frustrating and I even wrote about why I think Moneybookers is better than Paypal. Every single payment online is done MOSTLY via Paypal. I have missed out so many great opportunities in making money online just because I cannot receive money via Paypal. Now you can imagine my frustration!

2) Digg banned me.
Digg is a major asset for bloggers in terms of traffic and ‘that’ Digg thing banned me just 3 months of my blogging existence. At that time, I was mainly relying on Digg for traffic. That was another blow.

Due to the nature of the ban, I can proudly say that Digg Sucks Big Time! They don’t have a human touch and hence I think they have a bad philosphy. I emailed them kindly 3 times, the first when I was banned, the 2nd in December 2007 and the last one was in March 2008. Digg has NOT replied to ANY of my kind messages. Another reason to say Digg sucks!

But, I think this has been more of an advantage to me since it allowed me to start to blog by realizing the crude reality of how things goes on right at the birth of my blog.

3) StumbleUpon just banned me.
Last friday I was banned by StumbleUpon. Now, compared to Digg, I don’t really blame them. I immediately emailed SU kindly and stating, according to me, why I was banned (I suspect only 1 possible reason). SU replied to me kindly just 12hrs later. They said they appreciate my appeal and that my ban is not of a high severity though they cannot unban me yet because of their ‘internal’ ban process.

Infact I stumbled two of my own articles in a lapse of two months. But according to their rules, I’m not allowed to do so.
Nevertheless, I’m not so happy with SU, since the reason of not unbanning me was pretty lame.

Anyway, SU was a big source of traffic for my site, and needless to say this is another blow and which is having an impact of my present experiments. But anyway, I guess I have to work even harder to achieve my aims.

How ABout You, Any Advice?

Are you experiencing any similar side-effects? Or may be you can just dropped me your opinions and advice..

Since my inception as a blogger, I have tried and experiment a lot of things, either consciously or simply blindly. But recently, I’m deriving a lot of pleasure in putting what I have read and learned into actual mind-conscious experiments. I observe those experiments, compare it with what others says and finally I make my conclusions. (And I’m kind enough to share it with you? )

Sensing Something In The Tunnel

One of the most craziest experiment I recently done, was to put the ranking of my site at stake which saw my site’s alexa rank dropping from 270,000 (approximately) to 1,040,000; you can read more here: Revealing My Experience With How Inactivity Affects My Blog’s Growth. But I did it with my trusted spirit to achieve the best, constantly reminding me that I can eventually come back with style. My spirit is revealing positive; I made a follow-up of my previous experiment saying my alexa rank is getting back; at that time it came from 1,040,000 to 1,013,000. Right now, if you check my alexa rank, it’s at a surprising 847,223 mark. Surprising because of the short laps of time (like 2 to 3 weeks) with which my alexa rank is getting back into the ranking game. You see, I’m not bluffing whatsoever!
And all that, without writing any pillar articles – as you can see for yourself in my Archives.
So, how the heck am I getting back? (That’s the question you should be asking yourself right now if you haven’t)

The Answer And My New Experiment

=> I’m not using any kind of paying adverts, nothing like this. I have just simply stopped writing articles (about what I’m supposed to be writing on) and I’m investing that energy in optimizing my blog’s full potential in order to get more traffic from different sources, among which search engines being my favorite. But mind you, that does not mean I will be dumb, I will at times say ‘some crappy hellos’..

My blog has, till now, a mediocre amount of articles, 130 exactly, excluding this one. I believe that ‘writing and writing‘ does no good if I’m not being able to make the most out of my present ones. I want to exhilarate my site’s full potential and hence titillating Traffic. In simple terms, I will spend time in putting into practice what I have learned so far (and also in figuring how I can use my current contents) to drive traffic to them without spending money on campaigns like adwords..etc

The Big Question

How will I do this experiment. As you have rightly guessed, I won’t reveal it yet until this experiment is over. But once done, I’ll once more share it with you as I did for my previous ones. Fair enough?

I aslo believe that this experiment will eventually be at its peak at a certain point, hence indicating the end of the experiment. So keep abreast with Wakish Wonderz if you don’t want to miss out the results of my new exciting experiment!

Today while observing my stats, I noticed some phenomenal increase in traffic, specially due to some articles which, according to my different statistics tool, are the most viewed and read. I will make a list of those most read articles and I will update this list on a frequent basis.

The List Of Most Read Articles On Wakish Wonderz

1) Content Is King, But The Queen Remains Uniqueness! – (Blogging)
(Mostly liked by stumblers – 99% readers from stumbleupon)

2) Writing the GP Essay – Write to convince!
(99% readers come from search engines)

3) How To Write Good English
( 97% readers come from search engines)

4) robots.txt – why is this simple file still so widely used?
(Readers come equally from search engines and social sites like blogcatalog, reddit..etc)

5) Bloggers Should Polish Their Old Posts – Old Is Gold!
(Readers are mainly stumblers and bloggers)

6) Scintillate Your Inspiration And Goals – Make An Analogy From The Attitude Of Michael Phelps
(95% Search engine)

7) Revealing My Experience With How Inactivity Affects My Blog’s Growth
(This one is a new post i made last week and it has got a lot of views and I decided to include it. Readers essentially come from stumbleupon and other bloggers)

You might also want to have a look at the Top 5 Recommended Blog Related Articles On Wakish Wonderz

Something Surprising

While the above are the most viewed or read articles, they haven’t essentially received the most comments. This is explained by the nature of the traffic, which mostly comes from search engines and SU. And as we all know these viewers are passive readers unfortunately. (If you are one of them, prove me wrong by leaving a comment!)