<b>Q: Should I publish the pillar page first, or the supporting articles first?</b>

<b>Q: Should I publish the pillar page first, or the supporting articles first?</b>

Short answer: write supporting pages first, publish the pillar last. The pillar is a summary-and-routing page, and you can't summarize or route to pages that don't exist yet.

If you ship the pillar early, it links to nothing, has nothing linking up to it, and sits as an orphan until you backfill. Worse, you're tempted to make it long to compensate, and it bloats into a page that ranks for nothing specific.

A cleaner sequence: build 3 to 4 supporting pages, then write the pillar as the connective layer that links down to each and gets links back up. Add the remaining children after.

In practice: treat the pillar as the last brick, not the foundation. Its job is to consolidate authority that already exists, not to manufacture it.

Questions on sequencing? Send them in.