Question about content strategy

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Christine Hansen: Why are they stand-alone pages?
  
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  Robbie King: I might be phrasing this badly, I mean just blogs that don`t have a pillar/cornerstone page. They`ll still link to other pages and suggest other relevant articles. They just won`t be part of the whole topic cluster architecture that resources like hubspot recommend.
  
  This is because some of my blogs whilst helpful, cover areas that are kind complete bits of knowledge on their own and feeding them into a wider topic could feel a little forced.
  
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  Christine Hansen: Robbie King When you say "blogs", you mean "posts", right? Or do you have several blogs? Anyways, I`d consider them a beginning cluster where there are no supporting pages (posts) as of yet.
  
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  Robbie King: yes I mean posts, all posted within one website
  
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  Robbie King: Thanks everyone! a little clearer on things now!
  
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  Stockbridge Truslow: Yes, sort of, and not really - all at once.
  
  Pillar and Cornerstones (or I like to call it a Pyramid because it describes the entire thing) are some ways you can organize things in a good IA (Information Architecture) structure. There are other ways to organize things too - but those tend to work the best in most web scenarios. Pillar has information at the center that goes outwards and Pyramid/Cornerstone starts at a top and works down to more and more specific elements.
  
  So... does the content NEED to fit in something existing?
  
  The question I always ask is this... if it doesn`t fit into something, then do I even need that? We create content to serve a purpose (and no, that purpose should not simply be: To cover keywords). That purpose, by its very nature, should fit into our IA or it doesn`t belong there.
  
  So now.. if you`ve got something that doesn`t fit into what exists already, then maybe a new cluster might be warranted. Is there enough you can (and should/need to) say about it to warrant that?
  
  Sometimes we end up with a pillar or pyramid built on the idea of tangent information. It`s not exactly a part of this, or a part of that, but it`s relevant to a couple of different things. As such it might be created to "live" over on the side, but then connect to the things that are relevant - even if they cross the borders of the structure you`ve set up.
  
  For this I tend to create things that make sense for that. Glossaries are useful for this... take a term, write your definition and supporting info, and then connect it everywhere that term is used.
  
  Sometimes you might make a "Miscellaneous" category in the blog for these one-off things that are important, but don`t really fit - they merely connect. (And if they don`t fit, OR connect - then again... the content probably doesn`t need to be there). Then, using tags or some other taxonomy system, you can connect the misc. topics to the specific posts and categories or whatever they connect to.
  
  So yeah... everything should "fit" and be "connected" but it may not always be connected in the same way everything else is. Supplementary details and data in a Knowledge Base that helps support and flesh out things by connecting back and forth between them in the main part of your site. There are lots of ways to do it.
  
  Hope that helps.
  
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  Robbie King: certainly does, thank you!
  
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  Michael Martinez: "Should all content either be a piece of pillar/cornerstone content or fall under a piece of pillar/cornerstone content?"
  
  If you`re following the strategy that uses these terms, then the answer is to follow the strategy.
  
  If you`ve just come across these terms in online discussions and are trying to figure out how they work together, understand that these are just labels people came up with to sell an SEO strategy to other marketers.
  
  You should publish the kind of content you want to share. Don`t burden yourself with labels you don`t understand.
  
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  Josh Levenson: There`s no rules except make things people like.
  
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