What Is a Pillar Page?

Pillar page basics

Pillar pages are the foundational columns in your site architecture, around which all your other content is built.

Pillar pages offer a broad but authoritative overview of a particular topic, with links to more in-depth articles and keyword-based blog posts on relevant sub-topics scattered throughout.

Not only are pillar pages a neat way to organise your content, they also make it easy for readers to navigate your site, which boosts engagement rate and session durations, and signal your authority on key user queries to Google, resulting in higher rankings.

With fewer than five per site on average, according to databox.com, a handful of pillar pages are responsible for supporting a lot of content on your site. In order to do so, they need to follow some golden rules:

Golden rules for pillar pages

1. Broad - your pillar page should be broad enough to support anything from six to 20 additional posts. Anything less than that could be a sign that your pillar page is too narrow in focus, anything more and it could be too broad.


2. Relevant - understand the search intent and address the key user query that brought them to your page as soon as possible and tease further revelations later.


3. Readable - remember, your pillar page has to serve as a shining example of the fantastically readable and informative content you have on the rest of your site to ensure readers will keep clicking. That means punchy, active, engaging prose broken up by plenty of visual aids.


4. Skimmable - pillar pages tend to be longer than the average post, and readers often have a specific intention when researching a topic, so make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for when scrolling down the page with clearly defined sections, strong headers, highly relevant images, and bullet points to break up the paragraphs.


5. Navigable - a table of contents with anchor links to relevant sections, and links back to the top, and a floating table of contents that follows the user down the page will enhance user experience and improve your bounce rate.


6. Optimized - it’s no good putting all this work into creating great content if your page doesn’t rank. Make sure your page is SEO optimized using the 9 steps in our on-page SEO checklist.


7. Leave them wanting more - if your pillar page is too long, it’s probably because you’re covering the topic in too much detail. You need to provoke interest in your subtopics without laying everything out on the table. That way, your pages will be neater and more concise, which makes it easier to digest information, and your reader will be encouraged on their journey deeper into your website.


8. Evergreen - your pillar page should be able to stand the test of time, with a few updates now and again. Check out this page on creating evergreen content that grows your traffic.

1. How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy That Converts More Customers

What makes this a pillar piece?

Our first pillar page example is a big guide to content marketing from the Similarweb blog. It’s addressing a broad topic – building a content marketing strategy – with clear, information dense sections, each peppered with links to blog posts on highly relevant subtopics.

What do we love about it?

How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy ticks off a lot of our golden rules for pillar posts. It’s highly readable, with conversational and engaging prose; it’s generous with internal links to everything from how to do a competitive content analysis to conducting keyword research and it’s easy to navigate thanks to a sticky table of contents that follows the reader down the page.

What can you copy?

Clocking in at just over 4,200 words, this is a long article, even by pillar page standards. And that’s justifiable – content marketing is a massive topic. However, thanks to a progress bar at the top of the page, the reader isn’t abandoned to seemingly endless scrolling. The progress bar lets the reader know how much of the post they’ve already read, and how much they have left to go, which can encourage them to keep going to the end of the post.

2. Wine Folly

What makes this a pillar piece?

From top to bottom, this post from Wine Folly is so rich in information that you’ll dip in for a section and end up finishing the whole article. ‘What Is Wine Exactly?’ is a vintage example of a pillar piece, taking the broadest possible angle on a topic and encouraging the reader to venture further into the website and even make a purchase.

What do we love about it?

We love the no frills copy. It delivers clear, concise information to the reader on everything from the difference between wine and table grapes to the combination of elements that explain wine’s unique taste, with well-placed links to more in-depth articles. Know your target audience. For some topics, conversational and humorous can aid understanding. For others, it can be best to just deliver the information the reader came for.

What can you copy?

The infographics. They’re genuinely useful and really enhance the page, rather than seeming tagged on. Use infographics on your own pillar page to illustrate data and statistics or simplify complex subjects.

3. Population Healthier

What makes this a pillar piece?

This post from The Atlantic is widely cited in compilations of excellent pillar page examples, and rightly so. Focusing on one US city as an example of the state of American healthcare, it uses a combination of text, graphs, and dynamic infographics to tell a story and encourage readers to learn more by linking out to other compellingly titled pages like ‘The Culture Wars: Healthcare Edition’ and ‘The Beauty of Shared Risk’.

What do we love about it?

Population Healthier is a study in how great page design can enhance user experience. Content and graphics are boxed off from each other in clearly defined sections that stick to a strict palette, and the dynamic infographics build on the storytelling in the copy.

What can you copy?

Tell a story. Whether you’re writing about US healthcare or content marketing, find a way to craft a narrative that has the reader at its centre. Take them on a journey from writing their first post to becoming a marketing machine, with all the pitfalls they might encounter, and useful sidequests (subtopics) they can venture down for more information.

4. Artificial intelligence

What makes this a pillar piece?

As you can see from the title, this page is absolutely dedicated to answering two big questions on one big topic: What is AI? And how does it work? From an explanation of the four types of AI to how AI is used by Netflix to recommend shows to its users, the page covers everything you need to know about this increasingly prevalent technology, with plenty of links to on-site further reading.

What do we love about it?

AI is a complicated topic, so the inclusion of a couple of embedded YouTube explainer videos is a welcome relief from the text, and an efficient way to deliver even more information while cutting down on copy.

What can you copy?

You won’t go far wrong with a video, but we also admire the ‘top to bottom’, ‘bottom to top’ links that enable the reader to jump up and down the page with ease. This is great for user experience, which prevents readers becoming frustrated and leaving your site.