What Are Blog Content Pillars (And How Do You Find Yours?)

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If someone asked you right now what your blog is actually about, what would you say?

Go on, take a second. I’ll wait. 🕐

If your answer was something like “oh, you know… a bit of everything” or you found yourself waving your hand vaguely in the air … firstly, same, and secondly, this post is for you.

Because that vague, hard-to-pin-down feeling? It’s one of the most common things I hear from bloggers. And more often than not, it comes down to not having a clear sense of what your blog content pillars are.

Which sounds very official and marketing-y, I know. But I promise it’s not. Stick with me.

So what actually is a content pillar?

A content pillar is just one of the main topics your blog keeps coming back to. That’s genuinely it. Super simple.

Most blogs have somewhere between 3 and 5 of them. They’re the big, broad themes that sit at the heart of your blog. They’re the things you could write about over and over, from a hundred different angles, and never really run out of material.

Or they’re literally pillars like on the Parthenon in Athens that are holding up the building. Ya know?

Here are a couple of examples from different blog niches:

A lifestyle blog might have pillars around home, slow living, and personal growth
A food blog might have pillars around weeknight dinners, baking, and eating on a budget
A book blog might have pillars that are reviews, interviews, and book lists (or fiction, non-fiction, fantasy etc if they just did reviews)
A blogging tips blog (hi 👀) might have pillars around writing better posts, growing an audience, and the mindset side of blogging

Pretty simple right? It’s basically ‘what are the main things your blog is about?’

And actually, even if you don’t think you have any content pillars for your blog … you probably do. You just haven’t named them yet.

Many bloggers will instinctively write about the things they love and know, and over time, patterns start to emerge. We’re just going to make those patterns a little more official and get you to nail down your content pillars so that it becomes easier to write, easier for your audience to understand what you blog is about, and easier for google to rank you.

Note: In this blog post, I’m mostly thinking about bloggers rather than busines owners who also have a blog. You might be thinking about your blog content pillars a little different, in more of a business, customer/client/products so of what.

Why does having content pillars actually matter?

Okay, so if most bloggers already sort of have them without realising it, why does it matter to actually name them and think about them properly? Great question.

Your blog starts to feel like a cohesive thing that exists

When a new reader lands on your site, they’re making a really quick decision about whether to stay or go. Unfortunately, I’ve been to many a blog where I’ve left quite quickly because I can’t seem to get what I need. Or rather, I can’t find what I’m after.

If your last ten posts are all over the place (a recipe here, a travel post there, some thoughts about your morning routine, a product review from two months ago), it’s hard for them to get a feel for what you’re about.

Content pillars give your blog a cohesive thread of topics. A sense of “oh, I get what this is.”

Coming up with post ideas gets so much easier

I don’t know about you, but I’ve often stared a blank Word Doc and not known what to write about for my blog, even though I needed to get a blog post out that week.

💡 Psst check out the Blog Post Idea Vault if you never want this feeling!

This is where content pillars can come in super handy. Instead of staring at a blank page every week thinking “what do I write about?”, you’ve got 3-5 clear buckets to pull from. Or files to open. Or jars on a shelf to choose from. I don’t know – pick your metaphor.

Every time you’re stuck, you just ask yourself: what could I write about within this pillar that I haven’t covered yet? What is something inside this pillar that leads on nicely from another blog post I’ve written?

It really helps give some structure to our blog posts and how we go about clustering our content together.

It quietly helps your SEO, without needing to think too hard about it

When you write a lot of posts around a specific topic, search engines start to see you as someone who knows that topic well.

They start to trust your site as a resource on those themes.

You don’t need to overthink this or get knee-deep into SEO strategy … just know that going deep on a few topics consistently beats going wide on everything, every time.

You may be thinking “but Anjali, you blog covers quite a few different topics – books, travel, blogging tips” .. yeah I know. And I’ve been doing this since 2009. Things were different back then.

But my blog has had time to mature, to grow, to exist. If you’re new to blogging, yours hasn’t. Times have changed, and if I were starting a blog from scratch today, I’d definitely be focusing on just one of those topics, and not all three.

Internal linking becomes obvious rather than forced

When your posts all live within a handful of themes, they naturally connect to each other. You’ll find yourself linking between posts without having to hunt for something relevant, because relevant posts are everywhere. That’s good for your readers (who stick around longer), and it’s good for your blog overall.

How to figure out your blog content pillars

Right, here’s where we actually do something with all of this. How do we figure out what those content pillars are going to be? Don’t worry, it’s actually simpler than it might sound. Phew!

A note: You want to be thinking about not just what you enjoy writing about (although that really helps!) but what you want to be known for. For exmaple if you want to be known for sharing about history in your local area, and being the go-to for local knowledge, then adding in a content pillar about your business strategy isn’t going to be that worth while.

Ask yourself what you want to be known for, what your audience is looking for, and what you love to write about.

Step 1: Look at what you’ve already written

If you’ve already got posts published, go back through them. What topics keep coming up? What do you find yourself writing about even when you didn’t technically plan to? Where do your best posts live?

Those are probably your pillars trying to sneak through.

If you’re brand new to blogging, then it’s really important to be thinking about those content pillars for your blog before you start, or as you start your blog. If you’ve been at blogging for awhile and you don’t have any content pillars, yesterday is the best time to look back through and see what you’ve got going on. And today is the next best time. 😉

Step 2: Think about what your reader comes to you for

What questions are they asking in your comments, your DMs, or on social media? What problems are they trying to sort out? What do they want to know more about?

Your pillars should map to what your audience actually needs, not just what you feel like writing on any given Tuesday. They can overlap, but the more your pillars sit at that crossover point between “what I love talking about” and “what my readers actually want,” the better. It’s similiar to figuring out what your blog niche is.

Step 3: Ask yourself what you could talk about forever

This is probably the most useful filter, lens, whatever you want to call it.

Pillars need a bit of stcikability. If you can only think of two or three post ideas on a topic, it’s probably not a pillar … it might be a category, or a one-off series, but not a foundational theme.

You want topics you could write about for years without feeling like you’ve said it all. (And if that feels impossible, I’ve got a whole post on creating evergreen content when you feel like you’ve run out of ideas. It’s more doable than you think!)

Step 4: Aim for 3 to 5, not 10

This is where a lot of bloggers go a bit sideways. They identify twelve things they love writing about and try to make all twelve into pillars. And then their blog is right back to feeling scattered again.

3 to 5 is plenty. You can always review and adjust as your blog grows and evolves, but start with a tight, focused set. It makes everything else easier.

A good practice, and you can read more about it on Natty’s blog post on content pillars here, is to brainstorm 10 and then narrow down to 5. That’s a really great way of doing it.

This is something that I really failed at when I was starting what would become what you see today. And if I were starting again, I’d do things differently, for sure.

What content pillars are NOT

Worth a quick mention, because the term gets used in a lot of different ways online, and things can get a bit murky.

They’re not the same as categories. Categories can be more specific. Pillars are the bigger themes that categories might sit within. Your pillar might be “baking,” and within that, you might have categories for cakes, bread, and biscuits.
They’re not permanent. You’re allowed to review them. If your blog evolves, your pillars can too. It happens, and it’s fine. Just be prepared for a little clean up, and really think about it before you change anything.
They’re not a cage. Having content pillars doesn’t mean you can never write about anything outside them. You’re a human being, not a content robot. The occasional off-pillar post is absolutely fine … at the end of the day, your blog is about your readers and if you think something would be helpful for them, brilliant.
They’re not just for serious or business bloggers. Personal bloggers, hobby bloggers, lifestyle bloggers … everyone benefits from having a sense of what their blog is about. If anything, personal bloggers sometimes find this even more useful, because when you’re writing about your own life, it can be easy for things to sprawl in every direction.

What content pillars look like in action

Okay so what do these content pillars look like in action? Say you’re a blogger who writes about living more intentionally – slowing down, spending less, finding more joy in the ordinary stuff.

Your pillars might look something like this:

Pillar 1: Simple living
- Post ideas: decluttering without the overwhelm, how to slow down your mornings, why I stopped buying things to fix how I feel
Pillar 2: Mindful spending
- Post ideas: what a no-spend month actually taught me, how I budget without a spreadsheet, the things I stopped buying (and don’t miss)
Pillar 3: Finding joy in the everyday
- Post ideas: small things that made my week better, how I started actually enjoying cooking again, why I keep a gratitude list (even though I thought it was cheesy)

See how each of those pillars could support a heap of blog posts? And see how a new reader landing on any one of those posts would quickly get a sense of what the whole blog is about?

That’s the thing that content pillars do: They make your blog feel like a destination rather than a random collection of posts.

You’ve probably already got them

The most reassuring thing I can tell you is this: you almost certainly aren’t starting from scratch here.

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, your pillars are already in your archives. They’re in the posts that performed best, in the topics you keep coming back to, in the questions your readers ask you most often.

We’re just naming them, which makes everything that comes next – planning, writing, growing – feel a lot more intentional.

So here’s what I’d suggest: go and look at your last 10 to 15 posts. Not to judge them or rewrite them 🙈, just to look at them. See if any themes start to jump out.

Because I’d be willing to bet your blog content pillars are already right there, just waiting to be noticed. Now pull them out, sort them out, and then …

Come on back and let me know what they are! I’d love to hear from you.

Psst… if you want a bit of help sorting this out for your own blog, blog coaching might be just the thing. We can work through your pillars together.