Wondering what cornerstone content is? Keep reading to find out what it is and the different benefits it can give your brand or business.
Let’s assume your friend introduced you to a new website that has a topic that interests you.
Let’s say the website is about how to start a blog or a topic that you’ve been searching for for a long time. So you clicked on the link your friend sent to you and you landed on the blog and read some contents.
You also got interested in learning more. However, there was no roadmap to walk you through the blog page. Apart from the standard options in the menu, you did not find any other feature to guide you. This may make it difficult for you to find other useful content on the website.
The dedicated page on a website that leads you to its most important sections is the cornerstone content page. The content on that page is known as the cornerstone content of the blog.
Websites with a dedicated content page ensure that their website visitors are not confused when they land on their web page. The page must also give them access to the most important content published on the website via a single content. This must be easily accessible from the website’s homepage.
As you proceed in this article, we will shed light on what cornerstone content is, the benefits of cornerstone content, how you can create cornerstone content that ranks in search results, and how to use it to get backlinks, leads, and social shares.
What is Cornerstone Content?
Cornerstone content is the most crucial aspect of your website. It is the content that offers the highest value, and the most basic pieces of content that help in increasing traffic and boosting brand awareness.
The essence of cornerstone content is to create an impressive image of your business, reflect your business uniqueness, portray your brand’s value, and establish you as an authority in your niche.
It is usually found at the top of the funnel. Thus, don’t expect everyone that lands on your page to buy from you or convert. Note that the main essence of cornerstone content is to create a positive, long-lasting impression so that when people are ready to buy what you offer, they are more likely to think of you and patronize your brand.
Benefits of Cornerstone Content
Cornerstone content has many benefits that your business can tap from. Some of these benefits include the following:
- Increases your brand awareness
- Improves your website’s SEO by building natural links
- Brings in targeted site visitors
- Portrays you as an authority in your niche. This helps you to build trust and a positive brand image, and
- Nurtures your funnel
The above outcomes are what content marketing gives. Cornerstone content is the single most effective way to channel your content marketing efforts on a task that will yield long-lasting value for your brand.
Examples of Cornerstone Content
If you still don’t understand what cornerstone content is, I will show you some examples in this section.
Let’s consider Moz.
The cornerstone content published by Moz would be ‘Beginner’s Guide to SEO‘. This resource is big and authoritative. You can read it online and can also download it as a PDF. If you’re trying to learn SEO, you can check it out.
This content served as a huge source of traffic, links, as well as leads for Moz. That’s why they invest lots of effort in updating it. If you check their homepage, you will discover that they promote this content right there.
Other amazing examples that you can check out include:
- How to Write a Book (Jerry Jenkins)
- How to Promote Your Podcast (Polymash)
- YouTube Marketing Hub (Backlinko)
- How to Memorize a Speech (Magnetic Memory Method)
4 Tips For Creating Google-Friendly Cornerstone Contents
Digital marketers are aware that it is difficult to rank for popular search terms in Google. However, cornerstone content can help you tackle this challenge. It is a very effective SEO strategy, provided you adhere to the best practices that I will shed light on in this section.
1. Optimize the content for the best keywords
Carry out extensive keyword research to find the right keywords for the content. After the keyword research, make sure the primary keyword is in the title tag and the URL. The title tag is also referred to as the headline of the content. It needs to be intriguing and appealing to your audience.
The keywords should also be found in the body of the content. For instance, if you are writing a long-form guide, you should include the keywords in the section headers. This will make your content to be relevant to the search engines and your readers.
2. It must be accessible
Your blog’s cornerstone content must be easily accessible on your website. It shouldn’t be hidden from your site visitors. Your website visitors should be able to land on the content right from your homepage.
You should also cross-reference it in similar posts so that it can gain better exposure. Google and other search engines love this type of internal linking and link authority.
3. The content must have high quality
Cornerstone contents are long and more detailed when compared to other forms of content. They provide informative material for readers. That does not mean shorter articles cannot perform in search engines, however, cornerstone contents need to offer impressive quality and value. They must be carefully developed, inspirational, comprehensive, and persuasive enough to encourage others to link to them.
Do not forget that cornerstone contents are top-of-funnel, thus, don’t be aggressive about selling on the page. The goal of the content is not to sell but to offer value by solving a problem in a way that will make people trust you.
4. Update the content at all times
Your job is not complete after creating and publishing the content. You also need to keep the content fresh by updating it with new trends, new features, and relevant products and prices.
When you update your cornerstone content regularly, it shows search engines that it is fresher than before. This can help with ranking in organic search.
If you don’t update the content, your cornerstone page will look outdated. I’m sure you don’t want this. So ensure you revamp it by making use of updated images, layouts, and fonts amongst others.
The goal of your cornerstone content page is to direct new visitors to your website.
It can also make your website more popular by getting backlinks, leads, and social shares.
Let’s see how you can use this content to achieve each of the tasks above.
Backlinks
A cornerstone content page can attract lots of backlinks since it contains relevant content.
When you link back to it while guest posting, you will be able to boost your website’s SEO. When your content page has lots of quality backlinks, the page’s authority will increase, and it will rank high in search engine results.
Leads
Promoting your cornerstone content will make it a popular section of your website. This helps it to attract lots of high-quality leads.
You can start building a list of targeted leads by adding a subscription form to your cornerstone content page.
Social shares
When your audience finds your resource valuable, they are more likely to share it with others.
Having social sharing icons on your cornerstone content page will go a long way in boosting your reputation on social media platforms.
Social signals play a crucial role in Google’s ranking algorithm. It is, therefore, important to make your cornerstone content page shareable.
Wrapping It Up
I hope you’ve learned something from this article. Although crafting this type of content is a lot of work, however, you will reap lots of benefits from it.
As you will deduce from this article, cornerstone content can improve your blog’s life.
You need to note that the topics you decide to write on and how the page is designed are completely up to you.
All that matters is to make it helpful and valuable.
Which cornerstone content are you planning to write for your brand?