Reference
What is Pillar page?
A pillar page covers a broad subject comprehensively and links out to spoke pages covering each part in depth. It targets the head term, consolidates internal links, and signals that a site has genuine coverage of a topic rather than one article.
Also called: cornerstone content · hub page
What makes a good one
- It covers the whole subject well enough to be useful alone
- It links to every spoke, with descriptive anchor text
- It is the page you would send someone who asked to understand the subject
- It targets the broad term you would like to rank for eventually
What it is not
A table of contents. A pillar that only lists links to other pages provides nothing to a reader who arrives from search, and it will not rank for the head term it was built for.
The realistic expectation
A new site will not rank for the head term for a long time, if ever. The pillar earns its place by organising the cluster and capturing long-tail queries from its own subsections while the spokes do the immediate work.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. The 35 types of SEO, explained without the padding covers this properly — 6 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.