What Is Cornerstone Content?
Cornerstone content is a term used to describe the best articles on your website. It's the content you want your website to be known for and to achieve higher rankings in search engines. It is the foundation of your content marketing strategy, which covers key topics essential to your niche.
Cornerstone content is usually comprehensive, well-researched, and informative. It answers your audience’s most pressing questions, making it a go-to resource for readers.
For example, we want our website to be known as a great resource for learning digital marketing, and our Digital Marketing Guide is one of our cornerstone articles that reflects this.
The guide provides an introduction to digital marketing for beginners and ranks high on Google for several related terms. It's also one of the posts promoted on our homepage, blog page, and other posts.
How Can Cornerstone Content Help SEO?
Cornerstone content can benefit your SEO in several ways. First, it helps establish your website as an authority in your niche. By providing comprehensive, high-quality content, you build trust with your audience and demonstrate your expertise.
Second, cornerstone content improves your site's search engine rankings. Because these articles are typically long-form and well-structured, they naturally incorporate a variety of relevant keywords.
They also act as link magnets, helping search engines understand your site's context and rank your content higher for those keywords.
Third, cornerstone content enhances the user experience. Visitors to your site find valuable information that addresses their needs in one place, increasing the engagement rate and time spent on your website.
Lastly, cornerstone content supports your internal linking strategy. By linking related articles together, you create a clear site structure that helps both users and search engines navigate your content more effectively.
Cornerstone Content vs. Pillar Pages vs. Topic Clusters
Before proceeding to the steps for creating cornerstone content, it's important to explain how cornerstone content differs from pillar pages and topic clusters to avoid confusion.
While these are different terms used in content marketing, they essentially refer to the same thing.
Cornerstone content is usually in the form of pillar pages, usually part of a topic cluster. I say "usually" because it depends on the type of content and the niche you are in.
Generally, pillar pages or cornerstone articles are comprehensive articles that cover broad topics in detail and link to more specific, related articles.
Topic clusters consist of a pillar page (or cornerstone article) as the central hub, with various supporting articles (cluster content) all interlinked to provide complete coverage of a topic.
For instance, if your niche is SEO, a cornerstone article could be "The Easy Guide to SEO."
This guide would serve as the pillar page, providing an extensive overview of SEO.
It would then link to cluster content such as "On-Page SEO Best Practices" and "Technical SEO Techniques."
Here is a visual representation of the relationship between cornerstone content and topic clusters.
Best Practices For Creating Cornerstone Content
Any content you publish on your website has to be "high-quality." the difference between cornerstone content is that it should be the best content on the Internet about the specific keywords or at least better than your competitors.
Remember that the primary reason for creating cornerstone content is to rank high for keywords that can benefit your business, so it has to be the best you can do.
Let's see the best practices to follow to create awesome cornerstone content repeatedly.
1. Identify Topics / Keywords You Want Your Website To Be Known For
The first step is to decide what topics and keywords your cornerstone content should target. Remember, this should be your best content and directly aligned with your business objectives.
Start by focusing on the core areas of your business or niche. Consider what your audience is searching for and what questions they need answered. If you're selling products, think about what information is valuable to help your readers understand your offerings and make a purchasing decision.
If you spend time and effort creating awesome content, it must have a business value, which is to generate conversions.
Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush to find topics with enough search volume and diversity of keywords (head and long-tail keywords).
Use the head keywords to create comprehensive and helpful content, and use the long-tail keywords to publish related content.
Don't forget to analyze each keyword difficulty before deciding if it's a good candidate.
For example, if you run a website selling coffee beans, you might choose keywords like "best coffee beans for espresso" and provide a useful guide on selecting the best beans for home espresso.
Another topic could be a guide on"how to brew the perfect cup of espresso,". These topics should not only attract traffic but also align with your expertise and business goals.
Here is a real example of a post ranking on Google for that term. It is comprehensive, insightful, well-structured, and provides useful information and solutions to readers.
2. Create Better Content Than What Is Already Available
Understanding search intent is crucial for creating superior content. Search intent refers to the reason behind a user's query – what the user wants to achieve from the particular search. Your content should directly address this intent to satisfy the user's needs better than your competitors.
Start by analyzing the top-ranking pages for your target keywords. Look at what type of content they offer, how they structure their information, and what user questions they answer. Then, aim to create more helpful, easier-to-read, and more engaging content.
In most cases, the content already ranking in the top positions should be of good quality; otherwise, it would be in the top positions. So, to do something better, you'll have to innovate (if possible) or approach the content from a different angle.
Incorporate unique insights or original research that competitors lack. This could be expert interviews, case studies, or data analysis that adds real value.
Create downloadable ebooks, free tools, templates, or anything else that will 'make' users engage with your content.
For example, in the espresso beans guide, you could add a nice infographic in PDF format with great visuals to help users understand the pros and cons of each brand at a glance.
It's not easy to make something better, but it will be difficult to outrank your competitors and 'steal' their traffic if you don't put in the required effort.
3. Make It Easy To Find On Your Website
After publishing your content, you should make it easy to find on your website. This will help you put your best content in front of your users and signal to search engines what your ranking priorities are.
Here is what you should do:
1. Add it to your homepage. Users are likely to visit it even if they land on a different page, and having a link to your cornerstone content makes it more discoverable.
See below how we added our digital marketing guide as a featured guide on our homepage.
2. Make it sticky. Pin your cornerstone content to the top of your blog page. This ensures it remains visible to users regardless of adding new content.
3. Add it below your blog posts. Include a recommended reading section at the end of your blog posts that directs readers to your cornerstone content. This provides additional value and keeps readers engaged with your site.
4. Add it to your newsletter. To drive traffic from your subscribers, feature your cornerstone content in your email newsletter. Highlight its importance and value, encouraging readers to click through and explore the content.
5. Link to it from other related posts. Use internal linking to connect your cornerstone content with other related articles on your site. This helps search engines understand your content's hierarchy and importance while guiding users to your most valuable resources.
4. Publish Related Content
One way to improve topical authority and help your cornerstone content rank higher is to publish related content on your site and link to your cornerstone articles.
This is similar to creating a topic cluster (as explained above) but without using the exact same format.
For instance, if your cornerstone content is about "The Ultimate Guide to Organic Gardening," you can write related articles such as "Top 10 Organic Pest Control Methods" and "Best Plants for Organic Gardens."
Each of these articles should link back to your main guide, signaling to search engines that your cornerstone content is the central, authoritative piece on the topic.
This internal linking strategy also enhances the user experience. Visitors who read your related articles will likely click through to your cornerstone content, increasing its visibility and engagement.
5. Update It Regularly
Your cornerstone content should be updated regularly and always remain current and up-to-date. This benefits your readers and signals to search engines that you really care about this piece of content, which can positively impact its rankings.
Caution should be taken not to make 'false' updates for the sake of keeping the content fresh. Search engines can easily compare versions of your content to understand if real changes have been made, so don't try to fake them.
Changing the updated date of a post without making substantial changes can result in a loss of rankings.
What you can safely do is the following:
- Check your cornerstone content regularly for broken links.
- Update statistics, add new research, and rewrite parts of the content to ensure accuracy and relevance.
- Monitor relevant forums and answer new questions your audience might have. This keeps the content fresh and expands its scope and usefulness.
- Enhance your content with higher-quality visuals or videos.
6. Promote It Through Digital PR
Last but not least, the success of your cornerstone content depends largely on your content promotion methods.
Your goal is to use modern digital PR methods to get more eyeballs to your hard-written content and the attention of search engines by acquiring links (backlinks) and unlinked mentions. Both elements will contribute to higher rankings in SERPs.
Here are the best ways to do this:
1. Influencer marketing: Identify influencers who might find your content relevant to their audience. Send them personalized emails to connect with them and find ways to work together. This usually entails paying a fee for the promotion, but nowadays, it's one of the most effective ways to spread the word.
2. Leverage paid social media advertising: Utilize the power of social media ads to reach your target audience on social media channels. Analyze your website traffic to determine your audience's demographics and use that as the basis for your paid campaigns.
3. Engage with Online Communities: Online communities such as Reddit and Quora are getting a lot of exposure in Google search results and this is a great opportunity to get traffic from and recognition as an expert in your niche. Join relevant forums, answer questions, and provide value, including links to your cornerstone content when relevant.
4. Content Syndication: Syndicate your content on platforms like Medium and LinkedIn. Ensure you include canonical tags to avoid duplicate content issues and link back to your original post.
For more content promotion ideas, read our off-page SEO guide.
Learn More About Content Marketing
Content marketing, and particularly content writing, is a skill that can be mastered through a lot of practice and the right education. Our Content Marketing Course will teach you how to create cornerstone content and other content types to succeed in content marketing and SEO.
