SEO
How To Drive Traffic & Engagement With Push Notifications

This post was sponsored by Notix. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Do you want to drive more traffic to your website?
Do you need visitors who are engaged with your content to return to your website again and again?
As a publisher, you need a steady stream of engaged traffic to generate revenue from advertising.
In this article, we’re going to look at ways publishers can increase traffic with Notix push notifications.
How Major Publishers Generate Traffic
According to Similarweb, publishers like New York Times (nytimes.com) receive over 40% of their traffic from organic search, 6% from social media, 4% from referrals, and 2% from emails. The majority of traffic comes from direct sources (46%).
The Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) receives over 30% from organic search, 7% from social media, 7% from referrals, and 1% from emails. Like the New York Times, the majority of traffic comes from direct sources (53%).
Direct sources of traffic can be harder to pinpoint, but often include returning visitors who enter the URL of the website into the browser or use a saved bookmark.
Website analytics tools like Google Analytics will also reveal the number of visitors who are new to your site versus the number of returning visitors.
You can analyze the behavior of these visitors to see which traffic is most engaged with your content between the time spent on-page and the average number of page viewers between both segments of visitors.
How do you create a higher amount of returning visitors, who appear to make up a large piece of traffic that comes from direct sources?
- Subscription Lists.
- Push Notifications.
Email & Social Media Subscribers: Common Challenges Of Subscription Lists
To convert a visitor into a subscriber, many publishers will use email opt-in in various formats throughout the website.
When it comes to increasing that returning visitor number, there are a few specific challenges when it comes to email opt-ins.
- You are dependent on the visitor to correctly enter their email address.
- You are dependent on the email server to deliver your email to the subscriber’s inbox instead of their spam box – assuming they haven’t created a filter to sort your email into a folder other than the inbox.
- You are dependent on the subscriber to open your emails and click through to your website for return traffic.
Publishers also rely on social media to help keep visitors loyal to their content.
Challenges can arise when converting new visitors to returning visitors using social media channels.
- You are dependent on the visitor to leave your website and decide to follow you on an external social network.
- You are dependent on the social network to place the posts you make to your social media profile or page in the newsfeed of your new follower.
- You are dependent on your followers to notice your post in their newsfeed and click through to your website for return traffic.
In both cases – the email inbox and social media newsfeed – you are competing against a flood of other messages from acquaintances and other brands that your subscriber follows.
Enter push notifications.
Image created by Adex, March, 2022
Push notifications can be a faster, easier solution to increase the number of returning visitors to your site.
How To Drive Traffic & Engagement With Notix Push Notifications
How do Notix push notifications help publishers generate more returning traffic?
- Instantly implement high-conversion: While a new visitor is enjoying your content, they will be prompted to get instant browser notifications for any new content you publish.
- Capture audiences with ease: With one click of a button to allow notifications, you can convert a new visitor into a subscriber.
- Get seen with high-visibility techniques: When you send a push notification to your subscriber, they will be notified by their browser in the notification center, regardless of what website they are using at the time.
- Get more returning visitors: A higher amount of new visitors become returning visitors, allowing your traffic to increase through visitor repetition, in addition to your constant flow of new visitors.
As you can imagine, the single click to sign up makes it easier to grow your notification list – you don’t have to rely on your visitors to enter a correct email address or follow you after leaving your website.
You are no longer relying on email servers or social media algorithms to properly filter your message into your subscribers’ main view.
You also won’t be working with the personal data of your subscribers as you would with email notifications.
Now that your site is set up with push notifications, how can you make sure they’re performing at their highest potential?
Discover The Best Timing For Push Notifications
Notix push notifications give you the ability to send notifications to all or segments of your subscribers immediately, at a scheduled time, or automatically when you publish new content.
With immediate and scheduled notifications, you can reach your subscribers at the times you think they are most likely to be online and ready to engage with your content.
Scheduled notifications by time zone can help you reach your subscribers at the right time, no matter where they are located in the world.
Automate Your Push Notifications
As a busy publisher, you can also automate your notifications to go out along with your new content.
This allows you to generate return traffic without doing any additional work.
Use Audience Segmentation
To keep your subscribers happy, you can segment your subscribers based on interests and other factors to ensure that the messaging you send fits with their needs.
Websites that cover multiple topics will find this useful when ensuring fans of one topic aren’t fed messages from another.
International publications can use audience segmentation to tailor content to subscribers’ regional interests.
Book A Demo
With a WordPress plugin and free plans for up to 30,000 active subscribers, it’s easy to integrate Notix.
Learn more and book a demo to see how Notix can help you re-engage your visitors with your content and drive valuable return traffic to your website.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Notix. Used with permission.
fbq('trackSingle', '1321385257908563', 'ViewContent', { content_name: 'push-notifications-drive-traffic-notix', content_category: 'adnouncement web-development ' });
SEO
8 Pillar Page Examples to Get Inspired By

Pillar pages are high-level introductions to a topic. They then link to other pages, which are usually more detailed guides about parts of the main topic.
Altogether, they form a content hub.
But not all pillar pages look the same.
In this guide, we’ll look at eight examples of pillar pages to get your creative juices flowing.
Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 1,200
Backlinks: 6,900
Referring domains: 899
This is our very own pillar page, covering the broad topic of search engine optimization (SEO).
Why I like it
Besides the fact that I’m biased, I like the custom design we created for this page, which makes it different from the articles on our blog.
Even though the design is custom, our pillar page is still a pretty classic “hub and spoke” style pillar page. We’ve broken the topic down neatly into six different chapters and internally linked to guides we’ve created about them. There are also custom animations when you hover over each chapter:
We’ve also added a glossary section that comes with a custom illustration of the SERPs. We have explanations of what each element means, with internal links to more detailed content:
Finally, it links to another “pillar page”: our SEO glossary.
Takeaway
Consider creating a custom design for your pillar page so that it stands out.
Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 92,200
Backlinks: 21,600
Referring domains: 1,700
Diet Doctor is a health company focusing on low-carb diets. Its pillar page is a comprehensive guide on the keto diet.
Why I like it
On the surface, it doesn’t exactly look like a pillar page; it looks like every other post on the Diet Doctor site. But that’s perfectly fine. It’s simply a different approach—you don’t have to call out the fact that it’s a pillar page.
Diet Doctor’s guide is split into 10 different sections with links to its own resources. The links bring you to different types of content (not just blog posts but videos too).
Unlike the classic pillar page, Diet Doctor’s guide goes into enough detail for anyone who is casually researching the keto diet. But it also links to further resources for anyone who’s interested in doing additional research.
Takeaway
Pillar pages need not always just be text and links. Make it multimedia: You can add videos and images and even link to your own multimedia resources (e.g., a video course).
Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 5,600
Backlinks: 2,800
Referring domains: 247
Wine Folly is a content site devoted to wine knowledge and appreciation. Its pillar page, as expected, is about wine.
Why I like it
Wine Folly’s pillar page is a classic example of a “hub and spoke” style pillar page—split into multiple sections, with some supporting text, and then internal links to other resources that support each subsection.
This page doesn’t just serve as a pillar page for ranking purposes, though. Given that it ranks well and receives quite a significant amount of search traffic, the page also has a call to action (CTA) to Wine Folly’s book:
Takeaway
While most websites design pillar pages for ranking, you can also use them for other purposes: capture email addresses, sell a book, pitch your product, etc.
Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 11,100
Backlinks: 3,400
Referring domains: 457
Yoga Journal is an online and offline magazine. Its pillar page is an A-Z directory of yoga poses.
Why I like it
Yoga Journal’s pillar page is straightforward and simple. List down all possible yoga poses (in both their English and Sanskrit names) in a table form and link to them.
Since it’s listed in alphabetical order, it’s useful for anyone who knows the name of a particular pose and is interested in learning more.
What I also like is that Yoga Journal has added an extra column on the type of pose each yoga pose belongs to. If we click on any of the pose types, we’re directed to a category page where you can find similar kinds of poses:
Takeaway
The A-Z format can be a good format for your pillar page if the broad topic you’re targeting fits the style (e.g., dance moves, freestyle football tricks, etc.).
Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 115,200
Backlinks: 3,200
Referring domains: 860
Atlassian is a software company. You’ve probably heard of its products: Jira, Confluence, Trello, etc. Its pillar page is on agile development.
Why I like it
Atlassian’s pillar page is split into different topics related to agile development. It then has internal links to each topic—both as a sticky table of contents and card-style widgets after the introduction:
I also like the “Up next” feature at the bottom of the pillar page, which makes it seem like an online book rather than a page.
Takeaway
Consider adding a table of contents to your pillar page.
Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 114,400
Backlinks: 2,900
Referring domains: 592
Muscle and Strength’s pillar page is a massive database linking to various categories of workouts.
Why I like it
Calling it a pillar page seems to be an understatement. Muscle and Strength’s free workouts page appears to be more like a website.
When you open the page, you’ll see that it’s neatly split into multiple categories, such as “workouts for men,” “workouts for women,” “biceps,” “abs,” etc.




Clicking through to any of them leads us to a category page containing all sorts of workouts:
Compared to the other pillar pages on this list, where they’re linking to other subpages, Muscle and Strength’s pillar page links to other category pages, which then link to their subpages, i.e., its massive archive of free workouts.
Takeaway
Content databases, such as the one above, are a huge undertaking for a pillar page but can be worth it if the broad topic you’re targeting fits a format like this. Ideally, the topic should be about something where the content for it is ever-growing (e.g., workout plans, recipes, email templates, etc.).
Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 39,100
Backlinks: 1,100
Referring domains: 308
Tofugu is a site about learning Japanese. And its pillar page is about, well, learning Japanese.
Why I like it
This is an incredible (and yes, ridiculously good) guide to learning Japanese from scratch. It covers every stage you’ll go through as a complete beginner—from knowing no Japanese to having intermediate proficiency in the language.
Unlike other pillar pages where information is usually scarce and simply links out to further resources, this page holds nothing back. Under each section, there is great detail about what that section is, why it’s important, how it works, and even an estimated time of how long that stage takes to complete.
Another interesting aspect is how Tofugu has structured its internal links as active CTAs. Rather than “Learn more” or “Read more,” it’s all about encouraging users to do a task and completing that stage.
Takeaway
Two takeaways here:
- Pillar pages can be ridiculously comprehensive. It depends on the topic you’re targeting and how competitive it is.
- CTAs can be more exciting than merely just “Read more.”




Key stats
Estimated organic traffic: 890
Backlinks: 4,100
Referring domains: 1,100
Zapier allows users to connect multiple software products together via “zaps.” It’s a 100% remote company, and its pillar page is about remote work.
Why I like it
Zapier’s pillar page is basically like Wine Folly’s pillar page. Break a topic into subsections, add a couple of links of text, and then add internal links to further resources.
In the examples above, we’ve seen all sorts of execution for pillar pages. There are those with custom designs and others that are crazily comprehensive.
But sometimes, all a pillar page needs is a simple design with links.
Takeaway
If you already have a bunch of existing content on your website, you can create a simple pillar page like this to organize your content for your readers.
Keep learning
Inspired by these examples and want to create your own pillar page? Learn how to successfully do so with these two guides:
Any questions or comments? Let me know on Twitter.