Pillar Pages: How to Find the Under-Linked Ones

A pillar page is the page you want to rank for a subject: the complete guide, the main service page, the one every related article should lead to. Most sites have a few, and on most sites they are under-linked. New posts get written, link to each other or to nothing, and the page that was supposed to sit at the centre ends up with fewer links pointing to it than last month's news item. This guide shows how to decide which pages are your pillar pages, how to count the links each one has, and how to add the missing ones.

What makes a page a pillar page

A pillar page has three properties:

• It covers a subject broadly. It answers "what is this and what do I need to know", and points to detail elsewhere.
• It targets the broad search. "Sourdough baking", where the supporting posts target "how to feed a starter" or "why is my loaf dense".
• Related content links to it. This is the part that makes it a pillar. A long guide nobody links to is only a long guide.

The supporting posts and the pillar together are a topic cluster. The pillar links down to each supporting post, and each supporting post links back up.

Some tools call the same thing cornerstone content. The idea is identical.

Why the links to it matter

Internal links do two things for the page they point at.

They tell search engines which of your pages you consider important. A page linked from thirty related articles is plainly more central to the site than one linked from two. And through the words used in the link and around it, they say what the page is about.

They also decide what readers find. Someone reading about feeding a starter who meets a link to the complete sourdough guide may follow it. Without the link, the guide depends on being found from a search or a menu.

The pillar page is where both effects matter most, because it competes for the broadest and hardest search. It needs every relevant link the site can give it. Our internal linking guide covers the general principles; this article is about one specific check.

Step 1: choose your pillar pages

Write the list before opening any tool. For each main subject or service your site covers, name the one page you would want a searcher to land on. Typical lists:

• a blog: one complete guide per main topic
• a service business: each main service page, perhaps the pricing page
• a shop: the main category pages and the buying guides
• a documentation site: the getting-started page for each product

Keep it short. The value of the list is that it is a list: if a third of the site is on it, it no longer tells anyone what to link to. And choose one page per subject. Two pillar pages for the same search compete with each other, which is keyword cannibalization.

If you cannot name the page for one of your main subjects, you have found a different problem: the pillar does not exist yet, and writing it comes before linking to it.

Step 2: count the links each one has

You want one number per pillar page: how many of your other pages link to it from their content. Links in the menu and footer appear on every page and do not tell you whether your articles mention it.

By crawl. A site crawler reports inbound links per URL. Export the list, filter to your pillar pages and look at the unique linking pages. Most crawlers count navigation links too, so the numbers look healthier than they are; if the tool can separate links in content from links in the page template, use that view.

By search. For a small site, search your own content for the pillar page's address, or search the site for its main phrase and open each post that mentions it. This is slow, and it finds the more useful thing: posts that mention the subject and do not link.

By a running count in WordPress. Hydrogen SEO keeps a count of which posts link to which and shows it on the Posts screen (the internal link counter, from version 0.0.30). From version 0.0.31 you can also mark pillar pages and filter on them:

1. Open each pillar page, open the SEO Settings sheet, and under Robots Meta switch on Pillar content. For several at once, tick them on the Posts or Pages screen and use Bulk Edit → Pillar content → Mark as pillar content.
2. Marked pages show a Pillar badge in the SEO column.
3. In the All SEO dropdown, choose Pillar content with fewer than 3 incoming links and click Filter.

The list that comes back is your pillar pages that fewer than three other published posts link to in their content. The option is there only while link counting is on, and a page that has not been counted yet is not listed, so let the first count finish on an existing site. Details are in pillar content.

Whichever method you use, read the number against the page. Three is a floor, not a target: a pillar with forty supporting posts and four links in is still under-linked.

Step 3: find the posts that should link to it

For each under-linked pillar, make a list of candidate posts.

• Search the site for the subject. On the WordPress Posts screen, search for the pillar's main phrase and its obvious variants. Every post that comes back mentions the subject somewhere.
• Look at the category. Posts filed in the same category as the pillar are the natural supporting posts.
• Start with the posts people read. A link from a post that gets visits is worth more than several from posts nobody opens. If you have analytics, sort the candidates by traffic.
• Check the pillar's own outbound links. Every post the pillar links down to should link back up. This is the quickest win: the relationship already exists in one direction.

Step 4: add the links properly

Open each candidate post and find the sentence where the subject comes up. That is where the link goes.

• Put it in the body text, in a sentence that makes sense with or without the link. Not in a "related posts" box at the bottom, which readers skip.
• Use descriptive anchor text. "our complete guide to sourdough baking" says what is behind the link. "this guide" and "click here" do not.
• Vary the wording. Thirty links with identical anchor text look mechanical and read badly. Describe the page the way that sentence needs.
• Link once per post, near the first relevant mention. A second link to the same page adds nothing.
• Do not force it. If a post has no sentence where the pillar belongs, it is not a supporting post. Leave it.

If you find yourself wanting to link and there is no natural place, consider adding a sentence. "For the full process from starter to loaf, see our complete guide to sourdough baking" is a perfectly good sentence at the end of an introduction.

Then check the other direction: does the pillar link to this post? If the post covers a subtopic in detail and the pillar only touches it, add that link too.

Step 5: make it a habit

Pillar pages fall behind because linking to them is nobody's routine. Two small rules keep them current:

• When you publish a post in a pillar's subject, link to the pillar before publishing, and add the new post to the pillar if it covers a subtopic.
• Once a month, open the under-linked list. If it is empty, you are done in ten seconds. If a page has appeared on it, usually because posts that linked to it were unpublished or rewritten, fix it while it is one page.

Revisit the pillar pages themselves on the same schedule. A pillar that every post links to and nobody has updated in three years is sending readers to stale advice.

Mistakes to avoid

Marking too many pages. If everything is a pillar, the filter returns half the site and stops being useful.

Counting the menu. A pillar page in the main navigation is linked from every page, and can still have no article that mentions it. Both kinds of link matter; they are not the same thing.

Linking from everywhere to hit a number. The goal is that every post which discusses the subject points to the pillar, not that the count reaches a figure. Irrelevant links confuse readers and dilute the signal.

Forgetting the pillar's own links out. A pillar that does not link to its supporting posts is a dead end. The cluster works in both directions.

Leaving the page thin. Links send readers and search engines to the pillar. If it does not deserve the attention, the links will not make up for it.

Common questions

How many internal links should a pillar page have? There is no number that search engines publish. A sensible rule is that every post on the pillar's subject links to it, which on most sites is more than it currently has.

Is a category archive a pillar page? Usually not. An archive lists posts automatically. A pillar is written content that explains the subject and chooses what to link to. Some sites turn a category page into a pillar by adding a proper introduction above the list.

Should a pillar page be a page or a post? Either works. Pages suit content that is not tied to a date and sits in the site's hierarchy; posts suit a blog where the guide belongs in a category.

What is the difference between an under-linked pillar and an orphan page? An orphan has no links in at all. An under-linked pillar has some, and fewer than its importance calls for. The method for orphans is in orphan pages in WordPress.

Does marking a page as pillar content change how it ranks? No. It is a label in your dashboard. The links you add because of it are what make the difference.