Design, UI, UX, Insights, Inspiration, Website Examples
10 High-Performing Pillar Page Examples for Inspiration
We’ll break down 10 pillar page examples alongside their cluster pages to see how the main topic keyword connects to various cluster pages.
Think of a library filled with valuable content, but without a clear system to organize it. Books are scattered randomly without any order of genre or topic so readers will have to sift through countless books to find the one they’re looking for, which can be frustrating and time-consuming. Now imagine the same for your website: you have hundreds of valuable articles and resources, but they aren’t connected and if users want to find your best articles, they will have to weed through endless pages to get to them. Which, of course, they wouldn’t want to do.
Here’s where pillar pages come to serve as an organizing framework for your content. These comprehensive pages help both search engines and users make sense of your site by highlighting the main topics and linking to related articles, which makes it easy to navigate and explore.
In this article, we’ll explain what pillar pages are, why they’re useful, and share some great examples of pillar pages and how they relate to their cluster pages.
What Is a Pillar Page?
A pillar page is a comprehensive web page that dives deep into a broad subject.
It’s called a “pillar” because it serves as the main support for the topic, offering the main information, like a guide. This page is linked to other resource pages called “cluster pages,” which expand the topic through more specific subtopics in more detail.
These pillar pages link to their cluster pages and vice versa, creating a network of information that helps readers explore the topic from various angles. This way, readers can deepen their understanding of the main subject.
With this out of the way, let’s check out some excellent examples of pillar pages.
Pillar Page Examples
Here we packed 10 excellent pillar page examples alongside their cluster pages to give you an idea of how to create your own ecosystem of pages on your favorite topics.
1. Sheep and Stitch – How to Knit
The first example comes from Sheep and Stitch’s article “How to Knit for Beginners.” It’s a comprehensive guide on how to cast on and off, and knit stitches, and considers everything from gathering the proper supplies to detailed tutorial videos.
Below the full guide, the page includes a few linked tutorials that serve as a cluster content for the pillar page that focus on more specific topics such as how to knit a scarf and how to knit a hat.
- Pillar Page: How to Knit for Beginners
- Keyword: how to knit
- Cluster content pages: How to Knit a Scarf; How to Knit An Infinity Scarf; How to Knit a Big Hat
- Additional topics: How to Fix Dropped Stitches and Weird Holes; How to Fix Tight Knitting; How to Join a New Ball of Yarn
2. Brides – Planning a Wedding
Next, we have a pretty huge page dedicated to everything about planning a wedding. The magazine Brides specializes in weddings, with entire categories of articles about how to hire wedding coordinators, book venues, and find the most affordable rings. So it’s no surprise that The Complete Guide to Planning a Wedding has a big topic cluster with related linked pages with or without the specific ” wedding planning keyword.”
The specific linked pages related to the keyphrase include detailed info for wedding planning checklists, wedding planning tips, and planning a wedding after-party.
- Pillar Page: The Complete Guide to Planning a Wedding
- Keyword: wedding planning
- Cluster content pages: The Ultimate Wedding Planning Checklist; Wedding Planning Tips; Everything You Need to Know About Planning a Wedding after-Party
- Additional topics: Wedding dress shopping; Wedding budget; Hiring a live band for your wedding; Determining your wedding style; Ideal wedding dates, and more.
3. HubSpot – Marketing 101
HubSpot has one of the best blogs related to marketing with endless resources and articles that can help beginners and expert marketers alike. Occasionally, they create comprehensive guide pillar pages that sum up the information for numerous resources and are carefully linked to them. In this case, we have The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing 101 containing step-by-step guides, explanation videos, and related resources and articles for research, strategies, and templates to start with.
- Pillar Page: The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing 101
- Keyword: content marketing
- Cluster content pages: The Ultimate List of Content Marketing Statistics 2024; Content Marketing Templates; How to Develop a Strong Content Marketing Strategy; Content Marketing Workbook.
- Additional topics: Blog posts; eBooks; Infographics; Inbound marketing; Outbound marketing; Demand metrics, and more.
4. Kids Health – ADHD
Next, we have KidsHealth’s website which serves as a go-to resource for parents and educators to learn about physical and mental health for kids and teens. The ADHD in Kids & Teens pillar page offers a full guide on ADHD in that group, including signs, causes, how to diagnose it, how to treat it, and more. The page is linked to a huge number of valuable articles on the same topic, starting from the featured sidebar in the beginning of the page. This element is designed with tabs and serves as a navigation for more specific ADHD articles, separated in three groups-: for parents, for kids, and for teens.
The pillar page also links these pages throughout its content when you scroll down, so you can also check the specific medicine for treating ADHD, types of therapy for the condition, how it affects kids in school and more.
- Pillar Page: ADHD in Kids and Teens
- Keyword: adhd
- Cluster content pages: Parenting a child with ADHD; Parenting a teen with ADHD; ADHD and school, Therapy for ADHD; ADHD medicines; and others
- Additional topics: psychologist vs psychiatrist; IEP; 504 plan
5. Geeks for Geeks – Introduction to JavaScript
GeeksforGeeks is a popular platform that offers resources for computer science, coding challenges, and preparation materials for interviews and exams for programmers and tech enthusiasts. The pillar page dedicated to Introduction to JavaScript is an educational guide for anyone who wishes to start writing in JS. It has linked articles dedicated to JavaScript Hello World, commenting in JS, Strict Mode, versions, and of course, offers comprehensive tutorials and additional lessons all related to JS.
- Pillar Page: Introduction to JavaScript
- Keyword: javascript
- Cluster content pages: JavaScript Hello World; Comments in JavaScript; Use STrict in JavaScript; JavaScript Versions; Variables and Data Types in JavaScript, and more
- Additional topics: Node JS; HTML5; Angular JS; Vue JS; React JS
6. Rei Co-op Expert Advice – How to Train for a Marathon
REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) is a consumer co-op dedicated to helping people enjoy the outdoors. They provide outdoor gear, organize events, and focus on protecting the environment, with its members playing an active role in shaping the organization. As the website title suggests, they also offer expert advice on outdoor activities such as hiking, climbing, camping, and many, many more. This particular pillar page is dedicated to everything one needs to know about How to Train for a Marathon. Cluster content that is specifically related to the key topic includes linked articles about more specific marathons such as taking part in marathons over 5 hours, training for half a marathon, and doing a 10-road run.
- Pillar Page: How to Train for a Marathon
- Keyword: marathon training
- Cluster content pages: How to Train for a Marathon Completed in over 5 Hours; How to Train for Half a Marathon; 5K Training for Beginners; 10K Road Run Training for All Levels.
- Additional topics: heart rate zones training guide; how to design an inclusive running race; increasing running distance and endurance; speed training.
7. Facebook Help Center – Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account
Facebook’s help center is a great example of a topic cluster with articles related to your account privacy, security, and all necessary settings. Here we have the Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account article that acts like a pillar page for other solutions if deleting sounds too final. For example, the page will guide you to other linked articles about how to just take a break by temporarily deactivating your account, the differences between deleting, deactivating or reactivating your profile; and of course, how to reactivate your account once you’ve taken a break.
- Pillar Page: Permanently Delete Your Facebook Account
- Keyword: facebook account
- Cluster content pages: Temporarily Deactivate Your Facebook Account; Reactivate Your Facebook Account.
- Additional topics: Delete, deactivate, or reactivate an additional Facebook profile
8. Zapier – Zoom Recording
- Pillar Page: Recording a Zoom Meeting
- Keyword: recording zoom
- Cluster content pages: Where do Zoom recordings go?; How to automatically upload Zoom recordings to GoogleDrive?; Upload new Zoom recordings to Google Drive Workflow; Send Slack channel messages for new Zoom recordings Workflow; Upload new Zoom recordings to YouTube as videos workflow; and more.
- Additional topics: find links to your Zoom meetings; blur your background in Zoom; not see your own face during Zoom meetings; facilitate workshops on Zoom, etc.
9. James Clear – Productivity Guide
James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits and a motivational speaker whose blog with the same name has a collection of articles and resources on creativity, decision-making, focus, productivity, habits, and more. The pillar page in this example is The Productivity Guide that offers strategies for readers to be more productive, simple practical tips, a list of books on productivity and other related content.
- Pillar Page: The Productivity Guide: Time Management Strategies That Work
- Keyword: productivity
- Cluster content pages: The Ivy Lee method: The daily routine experts recommend for peak productivity; A different way of thinking about productivity; Best Productivity Books; The physics of productivity; The only productivity tip you’ll ever need
- Additional topics: Being in motion vs. Taking action; How to stay focused when you get bored; The downside of being effective.
10. Vinepair – Beer 101
Like we already saw with the other examples, pillar pages are usually comprehensive content-heavy pages structured in sections. This one, however, looks more like a catalog for articles related to the keyphrase beer. It has almost no text other than an introduction paragraph for each category, while most of the content of each section consists of a dynamic grid of buttons, each linked to an article. Most of these articles carry the keyword, as you can see in the screenshots below.
- Pillar Page: Beer 101: The Guide to Drinking & Enjoying Beer
- Keyword: beer
- Cluster content pages: What is beer; A brief history of beer; The role of yeast in beer; Beer and food pairing guide, and many more.
- Additional topics: What is brewing; Bottle conditioning guide; What is Cicerone; Hard cider guide; Belgian dark ale, etc.
What is NOT a Pillar Page?
Blog posts are usually written to target individual keywords without much consideration for how they connect to other related keywords. This isolated way of creating content often makes it harder for users to find the information they’re looking for. Plus, it can cause your own URLs to compete against each other in search results when multiple posts cover similar topics.
The topic cluster model solves this issue by organizing content around a central theme, with interconnected articles and pages. These links help users explore the topic more easily and find better answers, while also increasing the chances for search engines to discover more of your content.
Basically, if pillar pages link to other pages that relate to the keyword, topic clusters link to pages that cover the broad umbrella topic, regardless of the keyword.
Here are some examples:
Topic Catalog
The Ultimate Style Guide by My Style Box is not a pillar page or even an article, as neither of its linked pages has anything to do with the keyword “style guide”. It does, however, feature a lot of links for articles that cover style, such as how to dress according to your specific body shape.
The catalog also has other great resources on the topic of fashion style personality, where you can choose a specific aesthetic and learn how to dress accordingly. All these resources are completely unrelated to style guide keywords but are still related to the umbrella topic of fashion and styling and are valuable to readers who want to upgrade their fashion knowledge.
Topic Cluster Page
Unlike catalogs, these pages have written content, separated into different sections, bot the links follow the same principle. The linked pages don’t feature the keyphrase of the main article, rather offer content related to the broader topic.
In Outside’s guide to fishing, you will find the rules of how to leave no trace behind, how to hire a guide or how to make basic knots. Neither have “hiking” in the keyword, but all of them offer important knowledge that any hiker must have.
What are the Types of Pillar Pages?
Pillar pages generally fall into three categories:
- Guide Pillar Pages: These serve as a comprehensive guide to a topic. They address broad questions like “What is [topic keyword]?”, “What do you need to know about [topic keyword]?”, “ [topic] keyword 101 for beginners”, and “10 practical tips for [topic keyword]”
- What-Is Pillar Pages: These focus on defining a topic and providing background information. Besides answering “What is [topic keyword]?”, they often dive into the origins and key concepts such as “What is the difference between [topic keyword] and [a similar concept]?” or “What are the types of [topic keyword]?”.
- How-To Pillar Pages: These offer step-by-step tutorials on how to accomplish something related to the topic. They may include visuals like diagrams and videos to help explain the process. Pages may have titles such as ” 10 steps to [topic keyword]”, ” The ultimate guide to [topic keyword]”, or “[topic keyword] in 5 simple steps”, for example.
These categories can overlap. For example, guide pillar pages usually include elements of “what is” and “how-to” content, while “what-is” and “how-to” pages may also touch on broader guide-like aspects.
Rather than trying to fit your content into a specific category, focus on identifying valuable keywords and creating well-rounded content pillars that deliver meaningful insights. Which brings us to the next question:
How to Find Pillar Page Keywords?
You’ll want to start with a broad term that captures your main topic. Let’s use “content marketing” as our example.
Keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz Keyword Explorer and others, can help you discover related phrases, questions, and broad matches. These tools will give you a list of popular search terms, showing how people are searching for your topic, and how popular is the topic. You’ll likely find keywords like “content marketing strategies,” “how to start content marketing,” or “benefits of content marketing.”
Of course, it’s helpful to look for variations, including long-tail keywords and common questions, as these can shape your content to meet your audience’s specific interests.
Once you have your main pillar page keyword, the next step is to identify subtopics for your cluster pages. For “content marketing,” you might find subtopics such as:
- “Content Marketing Strategy”
- “SEO and Content Marketing”
- “Best Practices for Content Creation”
- “Content Marketing Tools”
- “Measuring Content Marketing Success”
These subtopics will make excellent cluster pages for your guide to content marketing, as each will dive deeper into a specific aspect of the main topic. This way you will organize your content and improve your site’s search engine visibility through internal links.
Hey, before you go, don’t forget to check out our other awesome articles on UI/UX design! We’ve got loads of tips and inspiration to help you create stunning designs that will blow your mind.