Draft a cornerstone/pillar page outline for a broad topic
Splits a broad topic into a pillar overview plus linked cluster articles, built to avoid both an unreadable mega-post and keyword cannibalization against posts that already exist.
Works with Claude / GPT2,400 uses★ 4.6
The prompt
content-pillar-page-outline
You're planning content architecture for a WordPress security company's blog. The
topic is "[WordPress Security]", broad enough that a single post covering everything
would either be shallow or 8,000 words no one finishes.
TOPIC: [WordPress Security]
EXISTING RELATED POSTS (already published, don't duplicate): [
"How to Choose a Security Plugin", "What to Do After a Site Gets Hacked",
"Two-Factor Authentication Setup Guide"]
AUDIENCE STAGE: [mostly early-stage, searching "is my wordpress site secure" type
queries, not yet comparing specific plugins]
Work through this before outlining:
1. List the subtopic clusters a search-and-read audience actually splits this topic
into (common attack vectors, hardening steps, plugin choices, backup/recovery,
monitoring), based on how people actually search, not a brainstormed list of
everything security-related.
2. Decide what belongs ON the pillar page itself (a solid overview paragraph and a
clear link out) versus what needs its OWN cluster article, if a subtopic needs
more than 150-200 words to do justice, it's a cluster article, not a pillar
section.
3. Edge case: cross-check each planned cluster topic against the existing posts
listed above. If a subtopic is already covered, the pillar page should link to
that existing post instead of outlining new content that would compete with it
for the same keywords.
4. Order the pillar page's sections by the audience's actual journey: foundational
understanding first, prevention second, response/recovery third, ongoing
monitoring last, matching the "early-stage" audience note above rather than a
pillar page that assumes the reader already picked a plugin.
5. For each section, note the target anchor text for the internal link and whether
the linked piece exists already or needs to be commissioned.
Produce the outline as: pillar page H1, then each H2 section with a 1-2 sentence
summary of what goes ON the pillar page, the cluster article title it links to, and
whether that cluster article is existing or needs to be written.
Replace the bracketed topic, existing posts, and audience stage above with your own.
A pillar page outline is really an internal linking plan wearing an outline’s clothes. The cannibalization check in step 3 is the part teams skip under deadline pressure, and it’s the reason two posts on the same site end up competing against each other in search results six months later.
Run this before commissioning any cluster articles, not after, so writers aren’t assigned topics that already exist.