Q: I'm building my first pillar page from scratch — what's the actual step order?

Q: I'm building my first pillar page from scratch — what's the actual step order?

Short answer: research the entity set first, structure second, write last. Most people write first and bolt structure on after, which is why pillars feel thin.

— Define the one broad topic the pillar owns (e.g. "email deliverability"), not a keyword
— Scrape the top 10 results and extract every subheading — that's your subtopic universe
— Group those into 6-12 sections; each section is a future cluster page
— Draft the pillar to give a complete overview of each section in 2-4 paragraphs
— Link OUT from each section to its (planned) cluster page, even before those exist as TODOs
— Add a short FAQ block answering the literal questions from People Also Ask

In practice: a pillar's job is breadth and routing, not depth. Save the deep dives for the cluster pages it links to.

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