What is Pillar Content and Why Is It Important?

You’ve probably heard the term “pillar content” before. It’s one of those terms like domain authority (DA) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that’s thrown around a lot in the world of content marketing.

But what exactly is this so-called pillar content, and why should it matter to you and your engineering business?

In a nutshell, pillar content (often also called cornerstone content) is a long-form article or blog post that covers a very broad topic quite extensively and is meant to be used as a main piece of content from which other, smaller content pieces arise.

Let’s use an example to better illustrate this.

Sarah is a Marketing Director at a prestigious engineering firm, looking to position the company as one committed to sustainability. She’s considering pillar content as a good strategy, and while she already has numerous shorter blog-post ideas, she’s come up with a content piece titled “The Ultimate Guide To Sustainable Engineering Practices”. This is a very broad topic that can cover a multitude of things. To write about this effectively, she’ll need to produce a piece that’s quite long, very in-depth, and likely broken up into smaller, more manageable sub-sections.

This would be an excellent pillar content piece.

What’s great about deciding on a piece like that is that Sarah can then repurpose sections of her pillar article and create independent content pieces that can take the form of shorter blog posts, infographics, videos, email newsletters, and social media posts. Depending on how she plans on adapting them, she knows that she can then share this content on other platforms or on her company’s social media channels.

By making that one pillar content piece her focus, Sarah is able to set a content marketing, social media marketing, and email marketing plan for at least the next quarter, and possibly also beyond that.

As you can imagine, creating this type of pillar content definitely takes time and effort. But, if you’re looking to position yourself as an authority on a particular topic, like Sarah is, or are seeking a core content idea that will give you a whole host of further content opportunities, setting pillar content as your goal is a great strategy to follow.

Characteristics of pillar content

From the above, you will have likely gathered what pillar content is all about.

But before I dive into how you can create pillar content for yourself and why this is an SEO strategy you should definitely keep in mind, let me take a step back and go through some of the basic characteristics of pillar content.

This will help you identify pillar content ideas better going forward.

1. Pillar content is definitely not filler material that can be written quickly or copied from other sources. Instead, it’s a very in-depth piece that dives into a certain subject at length and offers a great deal of detail. If you’re writing a pillar content piece, it’s likely that you’ll have to devote a huge chunk of time to it, doing extensive research and then committing to writing and layout. Perhaps the best way to think of it is not as another blog post but as a little book that you’re writing – it needs that scope of research.
2. Because pillar content is quite lengthy and so detailed, it has to be very well structured. This means you need to break up your article into various sections, sub-sections, and so on. The structure should be clear and logical. This is very important, as readers – especially readers on the internet – may struggle to work their way through a long piece of text if it’s not structured very well. You can take a look at my guide on writing good web copy for some ideas on this.
3. Pillar content is usually evergreen. This means it has a longer “lifespan” than other topics and will remain relevant for a longer period of time. Investing a significant amount of time into pillar content is generally worth it because that one piece of content will still be relevant a few years down the line and continue to serve you and your company well. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can publish it and then never look at it again. Pillar content should be refreshed with the newest data and latest developments at least once a year. This is vital because you’ll likely use pillar content to establish yourself as an authority in the industry, and if you reference outdated sources or incorrect statistics, this will very quickly work against you and your brand. This feeds directly into my next point.
4. Pillar content usually establishes the writer or organization producing it as an authority on the topic. This is why Sarah, from the previous example, wants to focus on a pillar article on sustainable engineering practices to position her company as a thought leader in this field. Because the content is so comprehensive, readers assume (often rightfully so) that the publisher knows what they’re talking about.

The above characteristics will probably already give you some insight into why pillar content may matter, but it’s important enough to look at in more detail.

Why is pillar content important?

Google introduced a few core algorithm changes in the 2023 – 2024 period that prioritized helpful content focusing on reader value above all else. This has led to some debate on whether or not pillar content is actually still relevant.

But what the changes should highlight is that pillar content matters more than ever – if it is exceptionally well done. Creating pillar articles won’t necessarily be relevant if every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the engineering field is creating similar content!

For example, if Sarah, from our previous example, starts chatting with some of her engineering friends and finds out that multiple companies are planning on publishing a long-form article to serve as an ultimate guide to sustainable engineering practices, followed by a series of more-niche supporting blogs, as they’ve established this as a great keyword to focus on, she may have to go back to the drawing board and rethink her pillar content idea.

After all, how valuable would this guide be to her if everyone else is positioning themselves as an authority on the topic?

What becomes important is not blindly chasing high search volume keywords but looking at where you can position yourself as a thought leader and create something of true value.

So if the pillar content you’re planning on publishing is directly related to your field or something you already have a lot of authority on, then it can still be a vital piece that can really help propel your engineering blog forward. Sarah knows, for instance, that her company is already a thought leader on sustainable engineering practices and that the pillar content she was planning would be a perfect match and create a world of value, both for her company and the readers she knows it will attract.

But what benefits would publishing this quality pillar content have?

1. It helps build your engineering authority

When you publish high-value content, site visitors begin to recognize your company as an authority in the industry. After all, publishing something as in-depth as pillar content already suggests that you know what you’re talking about.

In the world of digital marketing, this can help build your engineering firm’s online visibility and reputation. It’s likely to also have offline benefits since digital and real-world values are ever-merging.

If Sarah executes her pillar content strategy well, she’ll not only come out of it with one incredibly high-value piece that can be widely shared, but she’ll also have a multitude of smaller content pieces she can distribute on various channels, continuously positioning her company as a thought leader in sustainable engineering practices.

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2. It improves your search engine rankings

Google values high-value content, consistently pushing it further up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).

But why would pillar content necessarily rank higher than more generalized blog points? This isn’t a given, of course, and simply producing pillar content doesn’t automatically mean it’ll rank well on Google.

But, pillar content does fulfill a certain set of criteria that makes it more likely to be seen as valuable in the eyes of Google.

1. Since pillar content is so in-depth, readers will likely spend quite a bit of time going through it. This increases your average session duration (the time someone spends on a page) and decreases bounce rates (how quickly someone moves away from a page), both of which are valuable Google ranking factors. I explain this a little more in my article on website traffic, so please feel free to head over there if this is a topic that interests you.
2. Pillar content is often a great resource for other sites to refer to or quote from, so you might find other sites linking to your engineering pillar content more frequently. This works wonders for your backlinking game, driving up DA scores, another Google ranking factor. I’m sure you’re familiar with DA (and I explain it more in my domain authority guide), but, just in case, the general gist is that other sites linking to your site are seen by Google as a stamp of approval that your site is authoritative and adds value. The more quality backlinks directing to your site, the higher your domain authority score will be, and the more value your page will have in Google’s eyes, making the algorithm more likely to rank you highly in the SERPs.

An important point to note is that your pillar content can only do the above if it is enticing enough to keep readers engaged. Otherwise, your strategy may backfire.

If Sarah’s sustainability guide fails to answer burning questions or doesn’t offer much value, for example, readers will quickly click away and go elsewhere. This would increase the bounce rate on her article, a negative ranking factor, and the content she’s just spent ages creating will then work against her.

3. The content is usually evergreen

I’ve briefly discussed this above, but this is both a characteristic and a fundamental benefit of producing pillar content.

Evergreen content, as I’ve explained, is content that generally remains relevant for much longer than many other types of content. Pillar content is more likely to be evergreen since it’ll cover fundamentals that don’t change as quickly.

This means that the time and research investment you make to produce pillar content pays off in the long run, since this one piece of content will work for you for a much longer period of time than, say, a short blog on the latest tech development.

That said, pillar content still has to be updated and refreshed regularly, especially when there have been major technological changes, like the introduction of AI.

Even if Sarah creates a world-class piece on sustainable engineering practices, she will still have to carve out time once or twice a year to ensure that everything in her document is still relevant and update it if need be. This will ensure that the content remains fresh and continues to work in her favor.

Tips for creating strong pillar content

So, by now you’ll be well familiar with some of the characteristics of pillar content and why it matters. And you’ll definitely have gathered that you can’t write a piece of pillar content quickly!

Creating something of this magnitude requires a significant investment of time and resources, and you want to make sure that you’re spending this time working on the right thing.

So, here are some of my top tips to help you with that:

1. Before you even begin planning your content, take a look at your ideal (or current) target audience. You could look at your existing real-life customer base or work through your Google Analytics data to see what’s already working well on your website and what type of audiences you’re attracting. This will give you some ideas of what type of content could work well as pillar pieces.
2. Also look at your brand, your product, and the services you offer to identify any core topics that would make for good pillar content. In Sarah’s case, her company is already positioned as a thought leader in sustainable engineering practices, so it would make sense for her to choose this as her pillar content piece. Generally, the broader the topic, the better. It’s difficult to aim for a long-form article if the topic is too specific (you may quickly run out of things to say), so really give yourself the space to discuss a range of topic subsets and related ideas.
3. While your actual writing is important, don’t forget about multimedia elements. Images, graphics, infographics, and even videos and animations help take your pillar content to the next level. They also work as great text breaks that make your content more digestible and help readers navigate your information better.

It’s worth remembering that graphics and text often work together quite well. Studies suggest that people remember approximately 20% of what they read but up to 80% of what they see, so incorporating visual elements into your pillar content is a great strategy to keep in mind.

Making the most of pillar content

Sarah’s spent a good deal of time working on her pillar content piece and has just hit that big publish button – now what?

While it’s likely to rank well in the Google SERPs, this might take some time, and there are many things she could be doing before it gets indexed so her valuable work gets the traction it deserves.

Once you’ve published a pillar content piece, you should use your existing audience and other channels to promote it. Here are some ideas:

1. Include a section or teaser of the content in your next email newsletter, together with a link to the full article on the website. Adding in a strong visual element can be helpful as well.
2. Share infographics or other images and videos on your social media profiles, with links back to your website. Sarah could, for example, share a video that’s part of the article on YouTube, promote the article itself on platforms like X, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and share unique content on Instagram or TikTok to gain more traction.
3. Promote the content in a press release or internal company announcement, if this is relevant.
4. Add internal links to other articles on your site that direct to the new pillar piece. This is also great internal linking strategy, and something you should be doing with all your content.
5. You could even temporarily (or permanently) add a link to your website’s homepage, together with a call to action, to promote your new content.

By promoting your pillar content as soon as it’s published, the article can work for you even before it gets indexed by Google.

You can even repeat the above every time you refresh your pillar piece.

Are you ready to create pillar content?

As all of the above has hopefully demonstrated, creating pillar content for your engineering blog is a very effective content strategy, and one you should definitely be considering.

But creating pillar content takes a lot of time and resources, which you may not necessarily have. If you need someone to help you create fantastic content, drop me a line – I’d be happy to help!

Pillar Content FAQs

Is there a specific length a pillar piece should be?

There’s no definite rule as to how long a piece of pillar content should be as this largely depends on the breadth and complexity of the topic you choose. Generally, though, you’re looking at 2,500 – 5000+ words.

How can I use pillar content to create other content?

Pillar content can inspire a whole topic cluster, giving you many further ideas to work on, but you can also repurpose aspects of the actual pillar content to create more content for a variety of channels.

Think about publishing smaller blog posts or featuring sections of your original content in an email newsletter campaign or as quotes on social platforms like X, LinkedIn, or Facebook. You can also share videos, images, and graphics on more visual-focused social platforms, like YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, or TikTok (if relevant to your industry). Thinking out of the box, you could even use your pillar content as the base for an eBook, webinar, tutorial, or podcast.

Is pillar content different from regular blog posts?

Pillar content is generally much longer and more comprehensive than a regular blog post, and it usually covers a much broader topic.