What is Cornerstone Content?

Why is it called cornerstone content?

Cornerstone content gets its name from the fact that it’s a crucial part of your website content’s ecosystem. In this respect, it’s similar to a building requiring cornerstones for the rest of the structure to stand. 

Besides demonstrating authority, you also need to think about how cornerstone content impacts search engine optimization (SEO). It also must assist with user site navigation. 

Why is cornerstone content so important?

Most go-to websites in different industries have cornerstone content, and you should adopt a similar principle. Here are some of the reasons you need to think about cornerstone content in your overall strategy: 

• Target Audience: Use cornerstone content to provide value to your target audience; make sure you answer their pressing questions and understand the challenges they might face. 

• Search Engine Rankings: Cornerstone content can influence search engine rankings through backlinks and keywords; you’ll often see results after posting linked related articles/videos. 

• Trust and Credibility: You need trust and credibility if you want to build an audience, and one way to do this is by publishing in-depth content about core topics in your niche. 

What is the benefit of cornerstone content?

Consider each of these when developing cornerstone content. 

• SEO: Cornerstone content can impact organic traffic from search engines; use high-value keywords and adopt a link-building strategy. 

• User Experience: Cornerstone content is essential for allowing users to find the information they’re looking for. 

• Brand Authority: Establish yourself as a thought leader by comprehensively covering the main topics within your space. 

How does cornerstone content boost SEO?

Some of the ways that cornerstone content can affect your rankings within search engines are: 

• Keyword Targeting: Cornerstone content should focus on keywords with a lot of traffic, and these need to be relevant to your brand. 

• Backlinks: You want to get natural backlinks from other websites, which is what should happen over time if you publish high-quality cornerstone content. 

• Internal Links: Besides getting external links, you want to utilize an internal link-building strategy. Link other articles you write on similar topics to your cornerstone content. Consider using content clusters and pillars for this. Internal links should benefit crawling and indexing for search engines. 

How do you identify or choose cornerstone content topics?

Think about these core areas when thinking about what your cornerstone topics will be. 

• Products/Services: Consider your most important products and services, and subtly demonstrate how you can fix your audience’s problems in your cornerstone content. 

• Target Audience: Think about your target audience’s needs, and speculate on the questions they’re most likely to ask. Consider asking your audience what their biggest challenges are, before identifying how you can solve these. 

• Keyword Research: Use keyword research software to find high-volume keywords. These must relate to your target audience and industry, and you should also look for keywords that balance traffic and ease of ranking. 

What are the key characteristics of effective cornerstone content?

Cornerstone content should cover all of these bases when it’s published. 

• Comprehensive: Answer all questions and cover topics in as much detail as possible. You shouldn’t write words for the sake of it, but cornerstone content is often 2,000+ words long.

• Evergreen: Topics in your cornerstone content should continue to be relevant for the long run. For example, “What Is a Website Builder Plugin?” is an evergreen topic.  

• Quality: Your content must have no errors, whether grammatical or factual. You should also research comprehensively before writing, and create readable content.

• Search Engine Optimized: Besides keywords, you need to follow SEO practices. For example, you must optimize meta titles and descriptions. Choose a custom permalink, too. 

• User-Friendly: Readers should be able to navigate via headings and subheadings. Use visuals to break up large bodies of text, such as infographics, photos, videos, and illustrations. 

What should be the frequency of updating cornerstone content?

Cornerstone content should be updated at least twice a year, but in some cases, you may need to update it more frequently. Industry fluctuations could result in more frequent updates, and you should also monitor your target audience’s needs to see if new things need to be covered. 

When updating cornerstone content, think about how to optimize each section; if needed, you can add or remove areas. 

Conclusion

Cornerstone content is a key part of any brand’s website, and you should invest heavily in developing the best possible articles/videos. Identify your audience’s needs and answer all of their most important questions. You should also understand the fundamentals of SEO and commit to building your content database over the long run. 

Updating cornerstone content regularly is vital, and you should also hire a writer with industry knowledge. Check that everything, from facts to grammar, is correct before publishing.