If you are a blogger and you don’t have a clue as to what cornerstone content is; or better yet, you have never heard of cornerstone content, I am here to bring you up to speed on the best cornerstone content strategy and why it is so important when it comes to blogging and improving your on-page SEO.
At the end of the day, most of us are blogging because we understand the financial rewards that come along with having a successful blog site. I don’t know about you, but I teach my blogging students that the goal is to earn passive income while sipping a drink on a beach with our toes in the sand. It doesn’t matter if you are a lifestyle, mommy, home decor, financial blogger, or something in between. Whatever type of blogger, a great deal of what you are working on is increasing your organic traffic with Google and other search engines; establishing brand authority, and getting to 100,000+ page views per month. One of the most effective ways to accomplish all of this is via Cornerstone Content. Let’s dig in and get you started on creating it.
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What Is Cornerstone Content
In content strategy, cornerstone content is the mainstay of your website. Often created for the sole purpose of creating interest and traffic, cornerstone content has the ability to engage readers and serve as an entry point for further exploration. Cornerstone content often brings in goals such as awareness or brand development. It is a high-value, foundational piece of content! It is the piece of content that you bookmark so that you can find it later on.
Cornerstone content serves as the backbone of your website. It encompasses the most valuable and crucial articles on your site, representing the content you aim to achieve top rankings for in search engines.
In order to have a successful blog, you need to have great content. But what exactly is a cornerstone blog post? A cornerstone blog post is a high-quality, well-researched article that serves as a foundational topic on your blog that is related to your niche and speaks to your target audience or avatars. It is a pillar part of your blog that other content builds upon. Some people may even refer to cornerstone posts as pillar posts. Ideally, your cornerstone blog should be published as soon as your website goes live.
Cornerstone pieces give your readers something to come back to again and again, and it will also help search engines index your site more quickly. But if you don’t have a blog post ready to go on launch day, don’t worry – you can always add one later.
A cornerstone blog post is one that establishes the key principles or foundation for a blog. It is typically published as the first post on a blog and is intended to introduce the blog’s purpose, scope, and tone to its readers. A cornerstone blog post should be well-written, informative, and engaging, in order to encourage readers to stick around and explore the rest of the blog.
If you’re not sure where to start with your blog, then try creating a cornerstone blog post. This will help you get started on the right foot, and it will give you a solid foundation to build your blog around.
What Are The Benefits Of A Cornerstone Blog Article?
Cornerstone Content has several benefits for your blog site, here are some key characteristics:
- It is well-researched and well-written
- It covers a topic that is relevant to your niche
- It brings the type of site visitors that you need and want
- Establishes authority and trust in your niche
- It enables you to create internal links (that Google looks for) as well as solid backlinks from other relevant sites.
- It can be used as a funnel to help you build your mailing list.
- It shows the reader that you are an expert on the topic and that you know your stuff.
Cornerstone Content Examples
If you were an SEO Expert like Neil Patel or Backlinko, then your cornerstone blog article would be on SEO, which both of these websites boast. Backlinko has The Definitive Guide To SEO in 2022 and Neil Patel has What is SEO? (Learn How To Do It In 5 Minutes). Think of it this way. If you had a blog site that was geared to Virtual Assistants, your cornerstone post (pillar post) might be the Ultimate Guide to Being a Virtual Assistant. It would be long (over 3,000+ words). It would be in-depth and cover all the ins and outs of what it takes to be a virtual assistant. You would use this as the main topic that additional articles would fall underneath. This is a topic that sets the stage for additional blog topics. You would give them all the ins and outs as well as links to various resources- in essence, your cornerstone post should equate to one-stop shopping for everything on the topic.
Cornerstone content may also be the top blog post in a blog series. I recommend to my blogging students that they write their blog posts in a set of three, five, seven, or ten in a series. Let me break this down and explain exactly what I mean. Let’s say that you are blogging about home decor and you write an article on the top cool gray paint colors from Sherwin Williams (oh, by the way, I’ve done this and I rank in the top 5 searches for cool gray paints on Google) This post could be my pillar post as it discusses not only the top cool gray paints but also provides you with an in-depth overview on paint. I will write a minimum of two other articles that I can link to this main cornerstone article.
Cornerstone content is usually evergreen, meaning it’s relevant no matter when someone reads it. It’s also usually comprehensive, covering all the key points on a given topic. And finally, it’s usually high-quality, offering readers valuable insights and information.
What Goes Into Cornerstone Blog Posts
Here are the main elements of Cornerstone Blog Posts
- Directly tied into your overall niche. Think of one of the main categories on your blog site
- Write on a topic that you are either
- Length matters- on average it should be over 3,000+ words. Make it in-depth
- Answer a pain point for your reader – what does the reader need an answer to? Provide the most comprehensive answer
- Include all the keywords that you would like the article to rank for. Do not engage in keyword stuffing. Use keywords in a natural way. Make sure that you use keywords that people are searching for.
- Internal linking – make sure that your article interlinks to other blog content; this provides Google and other search engines a roadmap to what your blog site is all about (don’t overthink it, just do it.)
- External linking- your cornerstone post should also link to authoritative external links. This lets Google know that you aren’t a spam website and it adds value to your content.
How To Create Cornerstone Content That Scores
- Identify your audience. -Who are you writing for? Who is your target audience? Once you know who you’re writing for, you can create content that appeals to them.
- Know your niche. -What makes your blog unique? What are you an expert on? Use your niche to your advantage
- Choose Your Topic Carefully – Identify the problem that you are trying to solve. Ensure that your article addresses the topic in depth. You want your cornerstone blog post to be the go-to resource on the web. Put yourself in your reader’s shoes. What is something that you search for, that you never seem to get quite the answer you are looking for?
- Make your cornerstone article linkable from your home page. The ideal situation would be for it to have its own link in your menu. You can also have a link from your sidebar, thus your cornerstone content is present on every blog post page.
Your topic should be something that is relevant to your niche and that will be of interest to your target audience. It should also be something that you are passionate about and that you have extensive knowledge of. If you’re not sure what topic to write about, try brainstorming a list of potential topics with a friend or colleague. Once you have a few ideas, do some research to see which topics are being talked about the most in your industry.
Which Articles Are Your Cornerstones?
You should have several articles that are cornerstone articles. These articles are the most important articles on your website. When I think of our sister website – Brag Differently, we focus on teaching women how to earn, save, invest, live & thrive in a global world, hence it would make sense for me to have four different cornerstone articles that cover these main areas.
I should have an in-depth topic article on how to earn money; how to save money; how to invest and how to live and thrive.
Using the above as an example, if my cornerstone was on “earning money” I would subsequently have different articles that are all about ways to earn money. Thus I might write an article on how to earn money on Etsy, and a different article on how to earn money flipping clearance items. Both articles would then be linked back to the main cornerstone article on earning and vice versa.
In Summary
Cornerstone content is the foundation of your website or blog. It is designed to show that you are an expert on a topic. It is the most important content that you have, and it should be well-written, informative, and engaging. If you have good cornerstone content, your readers will like, follow, and comment on your blog or website.
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