We all know that SEO is changing so fast that we now need to write not just for normal search engines to pick our content up, but also to get cited by AI Search Engines aka Generative AI (GenAI) machines.
But just because we’re writing to appear in front of GenAI doesn’t mean we actually need to use them for your words. As I covered in part 1, the first stage of AEO writing (aka Answer Engine Optimization) doesn’t require you to do anything more than just normal research and listening.
Here’s another secret: You don’t need to use GenAI to figure out how to plan your content either. All you need is keyword research and buyer intent understanding.
Then you plan or reorganise your content according to the Pillar-Cluster model.
What is the Pillar-Cluster Model?
The Pillar-Cluster topical model for AEO/GEO and SEO writing basically refers to how you organise content according to topic. Pillar topic pages are generally long-form pages (think about 3,000 words) that cover a topic broadly. Cluster pages are related pages that cover related subtopics in greater detail.
The easiest demonstration is over at Wikipedia.
Take the Monarchy page. The Wiki entry for Monarchy breaks the topic down to the basics – what it is, what it looks like, its history in a nutshell, and what it looks like in our current world.
You’ll notice as you explore the page that there are multiple internal links to different subtopics, all related to Monarchy as a concept. These run the gamut, from exploring different types of monarchies and criticisms, to current royal families and imperial ranks.
Those links are key, by the way. For humans, the Pillar-Cluster works by gathering related articles into one big umbrella topic or group. For machines, we SIGNAL this by linking to and fro each other.
If you’re thinking old-school SEO tactics where more people linking to your website makes you seem more authoritative, this is a similar principle, except these are all INTERNAL links. If you’re doing a pillar-cluster topic, you’d ideally want to keep those links within the article strictly to the pillar topic’s group, and not link out to OTHER pillar topics.
Yes, not unlike how Wiki does it (I’m talking strictly within the body of the article, not so much external reference links at the bottom).
The biggest difference, of course, between Wikipedia and your client’s website is that while we DO want to keep readers on our site longer, we don’t quite want them to go through everything. Or rather, we don’t want the search engines bots to go down a wiki rabbit hole journey and waste crawl budget, so we’re much more careful about building out our pillar and cluster page links.
Why Use the Pillar-Cluster Model?
The biggest advantage from using the pillar-cluster model for your content is that it greatly helps in entity mapping for SEO. This ties in with Google’s own E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) criteria.
Writing comprehensively about a specific topic and connecting the right subtopic pages to that main pillar topic page and vice versa demonstrates to search and AI answer engines that your client knows what they are talking about. This helps your search ranking and improves citation opportunities.
And because you’re focusing on topics rather than keywords, this also means the site can appear in searches for related topics, without needing to invest in the actual keywords. After all, most search engines now sort by user intent, not just keyword mapping (this started happening long before GenAI, but is dialled to 11 now).
So using the pillar-cluster model can improve your client’s topical authority.
Topical Authority and the Pillar-Cluster Model
What’s topical authority?
According to Ahrefs, topical authority refers to when search engines and GenAI bots (italics me) recognise your client’s site as THE authority (or one of them, depending on how crowded your client’s industry is) on specific topics.
Not for keywords. Topics. Building topical authority thus means being viewed as an expert in that topic, and that helps both your search engine and AI bot rankings.
The Pillar-Cluster Model in action
This is where being a specialist helps. Remember that unnamed clinic from part 1? Let’s say that clinic is more than a regular GP. It’s also a specialist skin clinic, and they’re looking into AEO/GEO to improve walk-ins and consultations. So what pillar topics may they write about?
The clinic can cover things like identifying eczema symptoms and how to treat them. Maybe they are known for treating tinea versicolor, and thus create a bunch of articles talking about this fungal infection, using local vernacular (it’s called panau in Malaysia, by the way). So tinea versicolor is a pillar topic, followed by shorter articles about how it’s treated, what people mistake it for, its effects, and so forth.
The idea is not to rank or appear first when people Google or ask “What is Panau” though that helps. The idea is that when someone asks “I think I have panau. How should I treat it?” they will be presented information from this clinic, and if the questioner asks for recommendations, the search machines will be more likely to recommend them.
Step 1: Identify your client’s expertise
So when building your pillar cluster plan, ask your client, what’re their priority topics? What are they experts at? When all that fails, ask what is your client’s unique selling proposition (USP)?
Yes, I know, this is kind of basic but you would be surprised at some of the answers you get from clients. Sometimes the topics they want to be known for aren’t the topics people know them for, so the question then becomes, is this what they want to build their reputation as?
Step 2: Determine if your client’s topics are pillar or cluster candidates
The biggest difference between pillar and cluster pages are the breadth of a topic. Pillar topics tend to be quite general. In the Buyer Journey funnel, these are your Awareness topics. They are the 101s of your client’s topic, useful to get basic principles and understanding.
Clusters are 102 and 201s, depending on which education system we’re following. These start going beyond the basics, deep diving into specific aspects of that topic. The deeper you go, the more specific the information.
So when your client gives you their pillar topics, don’t just write to it. Look at the topics and see if it actually warrants being a pillar topic. If you need a rough word count, pillars are usually around 3k words, clusters about 1.5-2k, and blogs about the topic around 800 or so.
Step 3: Time to research
Now that you have the topics, it’s time to validate your client’s desires. Use your keyword research skills (or talk to your SEO person) and see if there’s any actual search demand for those topics.
If there’s no demand, then consider having a conversation with your client about their priorities and expertise. Also, you’re a writer. Come up with adjacent topic ideas and pitch that to your client.
This is also the stage where you do a content audit. Your goal here is simple – identify articles, pages, or blogs which can support your client’s pillar topics. Note, we’re not talking about the cluster content yet. We’re just validating that there are people interested in the actual pillar at this point.
Step 4: Building out your cluster plan
With the pillar topic selected and keywords identified, it’s time to examine potential clusters. The easiest way to do this is with buyer intent research.
Someone searching about AEO/GEO writing for instance, but doesn’t want to use GenAI in their process wants to know if it’s even possible (this is a 100% freehand draft btw).
A person looking at the patch of white on their forearm that appeared randomly that doesn’t hurt wonders if it’s panau, and if they need to see a doctor.
Do a search with these questions in mind. It should show you how buyers are searching, and more critically, the kind of follow-up questions they are asking. Where can you find these questions, you ask?
In the “People Also Ask” section. Use the questions in those follow-up queries to build your content plan. If you use Bing, you can also see a related query on the right side called “Deep dive into [topic]” which can also guide your content plan.
This is also where the results of your content audit will be extremely helpful.
Chances are, if your client has been writing about their practice for some time, there should be a number of articles you can include in your pillar-cluster plan, especially if they’re articles with a lot of either good information OR traffic. You will probably need to update them according to best AEO practices (that’s another cluster idea) but including these articles in your suggested Pillar-Cluster map can strengthen authority while taking advantage of their existing SEO juice.
Plus, you hopefully won’t have to write from scratch as much.
Conclusion
The Pillar-Cluster model works for building topical authority because it goes beyond simply keywords. It accounts for buyer intent, and more critically, because you’re organising content by topics, enables you to cover more and in greater detail compared to writing a one-off article.
And I hope you’re taking notes, because notice – there’s nothing here that would really justify the need for introducing GenAI into your workflow. Everything here are things we human writers have been doing since forever (to varying degrees of expertise, let’s not talk about that). Yes, manual, but this is something we can do. No GenAI needed.
Next up: Buyer intent. Maybe.