The pillar topic strategy, explained without jargon
Topical authority isn’t keywords. It’s depth.
Topical authority is the most useful SEO idea of the last five years and the most badly explained. Here it is without the jargon.
The short version
Google does not rank pages in isolation. It forms a view of what a site is about, and how deeply it covers that subject, and then ranks individual pages partly on the strength of that view. Depth on one subject beats shallow coverage of ten.
Pillars and clusters
A pillar is a subject your business could plausibly be the best source on. A cluster is the set of specific posts underneath it, each answering one real question, each linking back to the pillar and sideways to its siblings.
A coffee roaster's pillar might be "home espresso." The cluster underneath it: grind size, water chemistry, machine maintenance, why your shots taste sour, dialling in a new bag. Fifteen posts, one subject, all linked.
How many pillars
Three to five. Fewer than three and you run out of material. More than five and you are back to shallow coverage — the exact problem you were solving.
Choosing them
- List what customers ask before they buy.
- Cross out anything you are not genuinely qualified to answer.
- Cross out anything a national publisher already owns completely.
- What remains, ranked by commercial value, is your pillar list.
Measuring it
Cluster depth is the metric that matters: how many posts sit under each pillar, and how well linked they are. A pillar with two posts is a gap. A pillar with fifteen posts and no internal links is also a gap.
Fill the gaps in order. That is the whole strategy.