Power Pages: What Are They And How To Use Them To Rank In Google

Power pages are strategically designed pieces of content that will enable you to perform efficient link building.

In turn, this will boost your authority in Google’s eyes, which will help you create an actual brand and visibility. Ultimately, having a brand and a visibility to your brand will result in leads and sales.

Now, you are probably thinking that this is simply another marketing trick or scam designed to simply steal your money.

And the very fact that the above sentence is even written could only enforce your believe that this is something shady.

However, this can’t be further from the truth.

In fact, power pages are one of the most efficient pieces of content  that a business can publish online.

In this article, we are going to explore how power pages are created and the process behind it and why and how it is so efficient as a content marketing tactic.

A few years ago I was actively reading a digital marketing blog called Backlinko. The blog’s founder, Brian Dean, had recently released a course that teaches the content marketing principles he himself used to grow his blog to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month over the years.

This is where and when I first came across the concept of power pages.

First, I should mention that I am not going to teach you the various principles that the course goes over. Not only I feel that would be wrong, but also because I have paid for the course myself. On top of that, this is well beyond the purpose and the capability of this blog post.

Instead, I will be going over the various facts behind SEO and content marketing and the costs involved in creating such a project.

And if you are still here, the rest of this post will be worth your while if you stick with it until the end as it will save you both time and money.

What are power pages?

First, it is important to make it clear that there are many terms that are synonyms. These terms include skyscraper content (also coined by Brian Dean), 10X content as described by Rand Fishkin and so on.

Whatever people call it, the idea is to create a piece of content that is both super detailed and actionable and has plenty of information and data that come from authoritative sources.

It would be even better if you can come up with data that comes straight from you. But we are going to talk about this in another blog post.

Why power pages are efficient content marketing strategy?

Longer content can acquire backlinks easily  

Many studies were done over the years that suggests long-form content is better if you want to build links in an efficient way.

Here is a graph published by Backlinko:

In addition, backlinks are still one of the most fundamental factors on how a website performs in the organic search results.

So, this means that power pages are a super effective method for acquiring backlinks.

High quality content increases time on site, which in turn increases Google’s rankings in the organic search results.

There are over 200 ranking factors used by Google. One of them is called dwell time or simply put, this is how much time the user spends on a site.

Here is how this works.

Let’s say you search for something on Google. You click the first results however you go back really fast. Google sees this and determines this particular result is not what you were looking for and decides to drop the rankings of the website you just left.

On the other hand, if you stay on a certain longer then Google will see this and decide to temporarily boost the rankings.

Ultimately, the more people stay longer on a website, the higher the rankings will go up.

And content like power pages will definitely give a reason for people to spend more time on your website.

Longer content can rank for higher number of keywords

Another reason why power pages are one of the great content frameworks is because they simply tend to rank for a higher number of keywords than a regular blog post.

But why is this the case?

The simple answer comes to Topical Authority.

Marketmuse has described Topical Authority as a “depth of expertize” and this is quite a decent definition.

Think about it like this.

If the rankings were based on domain authority then this would mean that the rankings will be filled with brands’ websites like Microsoft, CNN, Apple and so on.

So, by creating an in-depth content on a topic, you will enable Google to have a better understanding of your website’s topic and see that you are an expert on the topic.

What is the pricing structure behind creating a power page?

So, by now you have probably decided to invest in creating a power page for your business’ website and you are probably wondering how much it is going to cost you.

I have been creating power pages since 2019 although it took me a while before that to polish my skills up to a level that I consider to be sufficient enough, so I can confidently offer this as a service.

In this time, I realized that in order to have a successful power page created, you need to have the following in place:

– A content writer that knows SEO and/or editor that knows the subject;

Depending on your position, this can one person or two people. And you want to be successful with your content then you will have to prepare to make some decent investment.

Unfortunately, many people expect to spend $50 or less for an article that has around 3000 words and they expect that they will become famous within their industry from just a few articles even if they are power pages.

The reality is good writers are super hard to find. Also, it is even harder to find a good writer that knows their subject matter. And, of course, the hardest one is to find a good writer who knows their subject AND is also familiar with SEO.

This is why you should be prepared to invest (not spend, invest) at least $200-$300 for a writer of top quality.

Fortunately, my SEO agency in Sofia has hand-picked a list of quality writers that are ready to be used at any time and for almost any project.

– Graphic designer;

If you want your power page to be successful, then it has to include plenty of custom designed graphics that won’t be available anywhere else online.

This is why having a budget for a graphic designer will help you get a one step further.

But what types of graphics are we talking about here?

Well, there are plenty of formats that can be used.

Here are just some examples:

1.Graphics that display statistics and prices

Here is an example of such graphic.

This particular one is taken from our website pricing guide.

Content like tutorials is an extremely effective content marketing method especially if the tutorial is based around your own product. This is why you need to include various types of Screenshots that indicate various data or step by step tutorials screenshots.Here is how Brian Dean is using screenshots at Backlinko: 

Using screenshots like this will help you in boosting your content’s value to the reader by providing them context and easy to follow guide.  Also, you can probably tell by now that I am a HUGE fan of Brian.

2.Infographics

Although infographcis have been around for many, many years, it can be safely said that they are still around.The goal of infographics is to present various forms of data and information in a highly visual way.It is important to keep in mind that there are several infographics formats.

Back in the day, the popular infographics were huge images such as this one.

And for a while, these content pieces were highly efficient in generating publicity, traffic and, of course, backlinks.

However, as the time went on, their value started to decline.

Of course, infographics are still relevant, but you should figure out various ways on how to adapt them to various types of data, content and blog posts.

3. Custom Graphics 

Custom graphics are a great way to boost your power page’s value. Why? Well, simply because these graphics are unique and provide additional value to the overall blog post. For example, power pages can be quite huge in terms of length and the user may appreciate it if there is a way to navigate the content in an easy way. Here is an example with one of our own power pages:

Quite a cool way to have a table of contents, isn’t it ? 🙂

– A developer;

A developer will be very handy if you want to expand your power page’s concept and include some extra functionality such as a calculator, for example.

We have done this before and the results were pretty cool.

In the end, you will get a piece of content that is not packed with useful information, but on top of that the content will provide additional usefulness by having various tools such as a calculator included.

This will make things easier when it comes to link building.

And since we mentioned link building, let’s talk about it in more details.

– Link builder/outreach manager;

Even though it is 2020, links are still essential part of how the website ranks on Google.

This is why you will need a link builder/outreach manager if you want your power page campaign to be successful and actually help you get quality backlinks.

There are several steps included in the outreach campaign. They include the following:

• Prospect gathering: this means building a list of hundreds or even thousands of websites to outreach to and finding the right contact information;
• Creating email templates that will be sent out to the email addresses gathered in the previous step;
• Monitoring the open rates of the emails and replying back;
• Negotiating with the various web masters. Most of the web masters will ask for money so they can put your link. We try to go around this by offering them something else of value like a free SEO audit;
• Tracking and updating the database;

As you can see, this is why intensive part of the power page campaign and this alone can cost at least $500.

So, as you can see, you should expect to invest at least $1200 for a decent power page.

What is the ROI of a power page?

Unfortunately, it is impossible to come up with a precise way to calculate the return of investment on a power page.

If you are thinking like this, you will have to be open-minded if you are going to take advantage of the power pages method.

However, even though power pages can’t provide direct monetary benefits, they still offer incredible value and advantages.

Some of these advantages include the following:

• Direct increase of website traffic via social shares;
• Power pages provide a base for an ever-growing organic traffic via Google;
• Power pages will enable you to generate new contacts in the relevant industry;
• Power pages will position your business as a thought leader in your industry as you display your knowledge and expertize by create content;
• Power pages will help you build up your email subscribers list;

And these are just the obvious, non-technical, benefits of a power page. If you are interested in the technical benefits of power pages please let me know in the comments and I will create a blog posts that goes over them if there is enough interest.

Anyway, back to the ROI.

So, I hope that you have a better understanding of how this type of content works and why it will be useful to you and your business even if doesn’t generate direct return on investment.

However, you should still be careful with making an investment in a power page.

Besides all the obvious benefits, there are some reasons why your power page may fail and they are not so obvious especially if you are not familiar with this topic.

Why your power page may fail and what to do about it?

Even though I would love to have dozens or even hundreds of inquiries about power page creation, the hard reality is that I won’t be able to take on all of them.  There are many reasons for this and I will outline some of these below.

Poor website:

A great power page has to be with a great design if you want it to succeed.

The same goes for your business’ website. Does it have a great design and user experience? What about easy to use menu structures?  Is the design outdated?

If you answer at least one of these question as a “no” then perhaps you should consider redesigning the entire website first instead of putting the horse before the cart, so to speak.

Little to no promotion:

Publishing a power page is good. However, if you want it to be successful, you will have to consistently promote it.

Here is the thing: there are millions of blog posts published each day. And this is not an exaggeration.

How do you expect your blog post, even if it is power page, to be noticed?

Fortunately, we use a variety of proven promotion tactics that regularly get decent results.

However, it is important to note content promotion is a long-term activity that should be done with a very high volume if you wish to get good results.

This is why we recommend building a list of at least 1000 relevant websites and contacts and doing consistent outreach over the next several months.

Once all the contact opportunities are exhausted, you should build another batch of several hundred contacts and do the same again.

This is an activity that should go on for as long as possible and we recommend dedicating at least three months to promote a specific piece of content.

Domain age:

Domain age is important when it comes to SEO and ranking organically on the search engine results.

The younger the domain is, the more difficult it will be to break-through on the first page.

Although it is not directly confirmed by Google, domain age is a factor and will have an impact on your website’s rankings.

This is why you should boost your authority by doing link building outreach.

However, if you stick with it and just carry on working on the website, you will find it that in the not so distant future your articles and blog posts will begin ranking without much of an effort.

So, don’t give up, build up your website over time and the rankings will start happening by themselves as the time passes.

Poor choice of a topic and/or not a suitable industry:

Even though you can create content for almost any type of industry, there will be some industries where it will be extremely tough to get websites to link to your content.

So, how can you avoid this?

First, you have to make sure that the topic you are going to cover is wide enough. Also, you can use tools like Ahrefs in order to determine the average difficulty of keywords within your industry.

When you are checking out the various keywords it is important to remember to look for keywords with the highest possible difficulty estimate.

At first glance, this sounds counter-intuitive.

However, the goal is to identify competitors who have at least several hundred backlinks each pointing to them.

This is because the ultimate goal of the power page is to help you build links from authoritative sources that point to your website.

And performing this simple and quick competitors analysis is one of the best ways to identify power page topics and link building opportunities.

Lack of funds to do more than one:

Let me make one thing clear: a single power page could see some decent results by itself.

However, the goal is to break through the crowd and become an authority in your industry.

This is why you need to think of this as a long-term project and an investment.

Let’s talk about Brian Dean, whom we mentioned above, again.

Today he is considered to be one of the top experts on SEO and content marketing.

He was able to build up his reputation by consistently publishing, promoting and updating (we will talk about this in another blog post) a good amount of power page without sacrificing their quality.

Nowadays his website gets hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

But it is important to understand that although possible, success requires consistent long-term work and investments.

And this is why you also need to prepare a budget that is adequate to your goals.

We are not saying that you should do a power page every month unless you are super committed to the project and your long-term goals.

But in reality, doing one power page every three months and using the rest of the time and budget on promotion is more than enough especially if you are just getting started out.

Examples of Power Pages

We have talked about what are power pages, why they are useful tool in online marketing, how much they cost and what goes in the pricing and so on.

Now is the time to go over some successful examples.

SEO In 2020

Of course, we are going to start with Brian Dean himself.

This power page is about SEO in 2020 and is one of my favorite pieces he has ever produced.

As you can see, it has over 20000 shares across social media and probably generates thousands of monthly visitors via organic search.

Ultimate Guide To Building Muscle

This is a great example for a power page that covers a non-technology industry. In this case, the power page talks about how to build muscle.

It is published by Bodybuilding.com, which is one of the leading fitness brands on the Internet.

The way this power page is created is that it puts together various articles that were already published on the website into one place so that it is easy for navigation.

Also, there is an e-commerce element to the power page. This is a great idea if you are an e-commerce based brand.

Website Pricing: The Definitive Guide

Last, but not least, I decided to include a power page created by me for my own website. The topic is on website pricing and as you can see the whole thing is incredibly detailed.

Essentially, the power page goes over the various costs that go into a website – from its’ planning, development and launch and all the way to the various content marketing formats and how much each costs.

As you can see, it is heavily inspired by Brian Dean’s work.

My goal is to publish at least 5 more such guides this year and promote them heavily.

Also, just a quick note, this guide is recently published (at the time of publishing this blog post), so it is natural that it doesn’t have the social media shares, backlinks and comments like Brian’s guides.

Still, it is quick a decent example, I believe and I am quite proud of it.

Conclusion

We have many popular sayings in the digital marketing world. But one of the most famous ones is that “Content is king”. And this is absolutely true.

And even though we are in 2020, the basics are still based on content and building links to that content.

The problem, however, is that content takes time, experience and money to create. If you are not willing to invest any of these resources into your project then you will fall short of any results.

So, what will your next move be? Are you going to waste your money on the same old type of content that gets you pretty much nowhere? Or are you going to move over to producing in-depth content?

Whatever you decide, the choice is yours.

And if you are wondering how much my content marketing agency is charging then please check out our rates here.