Glossary
Pillar Page
A page that summarises a broad topic and links down to detailed spoke pages. A pillar summarises; it never out-details its own spokes (Architecture Section 6.2).
In plain terms
A page that covers a broad topic well enough to be useful on its own, then hands off to detailed pages for each part of it. It summarises; it does not try to contain everything.
The discipline that keeps it working is restraint: a pillar that out-details its own spokes makes them redundant, and the site ends up competing with itself for the same searches.
Why it matters in Kenya
Our service pages are the example. Each one explains the service, states the price and the process, then links to the specialisms. The specialist page is always the deeper page for its own subject.
What to do about it
Four checks you can run on your own site this week.
- Write the pillar to answer the broad question and nothing narrower
- Give every section a link to the spoke that covers it properly
- Check the pillar is not ranking instead of its own spokes
- Update the pillar when a spoke is added, so the structure stays honest
More terms
Other words you will meet when commissioning web, e-commerce or search work in Kenya.
- Spoke PageA page that answers one specific head query in depth, links up to its pillar and across to sibling spokes.
- Entity OptimisationMaking a business unambiguously identifiable to search and AI systems as a single entity, through a consistent name, address and phone number, a connected schema graph, and a well-populated sameAs array.
- Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)Optimising content and structured data so that answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews cite the business as a source.
