<b>Q: How long should a pillar page be? I keep seeing '3,000+ words.'</b>

<b>Q: How long should a pillar page be? I keep seeing '3,000+ words.'</b>

Short answer: long enough to introduce every sub-topic and route readers onward, no longer. Word count is a symptom, not a target. A pillar's job is to cover the breadth of a topic at a summary level and hand depth off to the supporting pages.

If you're stuffing a pillar to 5,000 words by going deep on every sub-topic, you're stealing content the child pages need to rank. The pillar then competes with its own cluster.

A better structure: one tight section per sub-topic, a few hundred words each, ending with a link to the full child page. That naturally lands most pillars between 1,500 and 3,000 words, but the number is downstream of the structure.

In practice: if a pillar section fully answers a question, cut it down and move the depth to a child page. The pillar summarizes; children explain.

Length questions? Send them in.