If you work in the content marketing niche, you have probably heard the term, ‘cornerstone content’ but do you know what it is?
Cornerstone content has emerged as an important SEO strategy for enhancing online visibility, establishing authority, and improving user experience.
In this guide, I’ll discuss cornerstone content and its significance for SEO and share some of my best practices for creating evergreen content that resonates with your target audience.
Let’s start!
What is Cornerstone Content?
Cornerstone content, or pillar content, refers to a set of foundational, in-depth articles, case studies or web pages that are the backbone of your website’s content strategy.
These pieces of content are crafted to cover core topics central to your niche, industry, or business. They are designed to be comprehensive, authoritative, and evergreen, providing valuable information to your readers.
Unlike regular blog posts or simple copywriting with a shorter shelf life, cornerstone content is long-form content intended to remain relevant and valuable for an extended period.
It serves as the foundation upon which you can build a content ecosystem, with smaller, more targeted pieces of content linking back to and supporting the cornerstone content.
To create cornerstone content, you should use content optimization tools like SEOBoost. And if you’re a WordPress user, download the SEO plugin, AIOSEO to optimize the cornerstone content.
Examples of Cornerstone Content
To better understand the concept, let’s explore some examples of cornerstone content across various niches:
- Fitness Industry: A comprehensive guide on “The Ultimate Guide to Building Muscle” or “Mastering Healthy Meal Prep for Busy Professionals.”
- Personal Finance: An in-depth article on “Investing 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Building Wealth” or “Debt Management Strategies for Financial Freedom.”
- Digital Marketing: A comprehensive resource on “The Complete Guide to SEO for Beginners” or “Mastering Social Media Marketing for Businesses.”
- Travel: An extensive guide on “The Ultimate Backpacker’s Guide to Europe” or “Family-Friendly Travel: Tips and Destinations for Unforgettable Vacations.”
These examples show how cornerstone content can be a valuable resource for readers looking for relevant content and authoritative information on specific topics.
Why is Cornerstone Content Important for SEO?
Incorporating cornerstone content pages into your SEO strategy can benefit your Search Engine Optimization strategy.
Here are some key benefits it offers:
1. Improved Search Rankings
Well-structured and comprehensive cornerstone content can significantly boost your website’s search engine rankings, particularly for competitive, relevant keywords.
Creating a piece of cornerstone content can demonstrate your expertise in a particular topic. Creating more cornerstone articles helps you enhance your credibility and authority in the eyes of both users and search engines.
This is particularly important for meeting Google’s E-E-A-T quality standards.
2. Enhanced User Experience
Cornerstone content offers visitors a comprehensive understanding of a topic, making their experience on your website more valuable.
This can lead to increased engagement and reduced bounce rates, which are all positive signals for search engines.
3. Authority Building
Cornerstone content provides an excellent opportunity to establish your website as a go-to source of information within your niche.
By consistently delivering high-quality, authoritative content, you can build trust and credibility with both users and search engines, ultimately boosting your brand’s visibility and reputation.
4. Improved Site Structure and Internal Linking
Cornerstone content is a central hub, allowing you to create a well-organized internal linking structure.
By strategically linking related content to your cornerstone pages, you can improve your website’s overall crawlability and indexability, making it easier for search engines to understand the relationships between different pages and topics.
By creating cornerstone content, you can enhance your search engine rankings, provide a superior user experience, establish authority, and create a strong foundation for your content marketing efforts.
Moreover, by strategically linking your cornerstone content with other relevant pages on your website, you can improve the internal linking structure. This not only facilitates better crawling by search engine bots but also contributes to your site’s overall SEO performance.
6 Best Practices for Creating Cornerstone Content
To maximize the impact of your cornerstone content and ensure its effectiveness for SEO and user engagement, here are the 6 best practices that you can adopt:
1. Conduct Keyword Research
Step 1 would be to start with a thorough keyword research.
You should start by identifying the most relevant and high-traffic keywords related to your core topics, particularly targeting long-tail keywords that align with keyword intent.
Target keywords help you create a good content creation process and optimize your cornerstone content for better search engine visibility.
Try not to go after the most competitive keywords initially. You can start by targeting lesser competitive keywords but more search visibility to build up the initial viewership.
To do that, I use SEOBoost and LowFruits.
LowFruits helps you do better keyword research by assessing crucial metrics of the top SERPs like:
- Content word count,
- Search Volume,
- Title relevance,
- Website types.
It analyzes these metrics to identify top-ranking positions occupied by websites with low Domain Authority (DA).
Once you’ve identified your target keywords, feed those into SEOBoost’s Topic Reports feature. It then picks up on your keyword to analyze the ranking of the top 30 SERPs for that keyword. It creates a complete keyword map of what you should add to your content to create better-ranking content for Google searches.
2. Create Scannable Content
Cornerstone content is typically longer and more comprehensive than regular blog posts or articles.
Making your content scannable is essential to ensure that readers can easily navigate and consume the information.
To do that as a writer, do the following:
- Break up long paragraphs into shorter, more digestible pieces.
- Use subheadings and divide the content into them.
- Use bullet points wherever you can to break up the text monotony.
- Add visuals and multimedia, such as images or infographics, to enhance readability and engagement.
To create scannable content for on-page SEO, you can use SEOBoost’s content optimization feature. The feature lets you edit your content in an editor-styled doc in real time. It provides suggestions and recommendations on improving your work’s readability and content quality.
You can also check out our complete content optimization checklist to create scannable and high-quality content consistently.
3. Do Internal Linking
Internal linking is a critical component of an effective cornerstone content strategy.
By strategically linking related content to your cornerstone pages, you create a well-structured content ecosystem that improves site navigation and helps search engines better understand the relationships between different pages and topics.
This is why it’s important to have a linking strategy in place.
One powerful tool that can streamline the internal linking process is AIOSEO’s Link Assistant feature. This feature provides internal linking suggestions, allowing you to easily add relevant links to your posts and pages directly from the Link Assistant dashboard.
This tool ensures that your cornerstone content is seamlessly integrated into your website’s overall content structure.
4. Use a Table of Contents
Consider incorporating a table of contents (ToC) into your cornerstone content to further enhance the user experience and improve on-page engagement.
A well-crafted ToC allows readers to quickly navigate to specific sections or a subtopic of interest, improving content accessibility.
Additionally, incorporating a table of contents can positively impact your search engine optimization efforts.
That’s because web pages with tables of contents are more likely to be picked up for search snippets, including jump links, which can increase your visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) and potentially boost organic click-through rates.
If you’re a WordPress user, adding a ToC is just a click away with AIOSEO’s Table of Contents feature. It automatically generates a complete ToC for your content. You can rearrange the list or even hide anything from it if you want.
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5. Add an FAQ Section
Incorporating a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section into your cornerstone content can enhance its value and user experience.
An FAQ section lets you directly address common queries and concerns, providing concise and informative answers catering to your audience’s needs.
Beyond improving user engagement, an FAQ section can also benefit your SEO efforts. By structuring your FAQ section with appropriate schema markup, you can help search engines better understand the content and potentially rank for relevant queries in the “People Also Ask” section of search results, increasing your overall visibility and organic traffic.
6. Update Your Cornerstone Content Regularly
Cornerstone content is designed to be evergreen, meaning it should remain relevant and valuable over an extended period.
However, as industries evolve and new information emerges, it’s essential to regularly review and update your website content to ensure its accuracy and relevance.
Regularly refreshing your cornerstone content maintains its value for your audience and signals to search engines that your content is up-to-date and authoritative. This can positively impact your search rankings and help you stay ahead of the competition.
To update any piece of content, use SEOBoost’s content audit feature to assess its current standing first.
SEOBoost’s Content Audit gives you a comprehensive analysis of all your ranking metrics in less than two minutes.
Just add your target keyword and the content URL. The AI algorithm will then analyze your content for over 25 ranking factors and produce a report on optimizing it further for improved ranking.
FAQs
1. What is cornerstone content?
Cornerstone content, or pillar content, refers to a set of comprehensive, in-depth articles or web pages covering core topics central to your niche, industry, or business.
These pieces of content are designed to be authoritative, evergreen resources that serve as the foundation for your content strategy and internal linking structure.
2. What is the difference between cornerstone content and pillar content?
While the terms “cornerstone content” and “pillar content” are often used interchangeably, they essentially refer to the same concept.
Both terms describe the foundational, comprehensive pieces of content that serve as the backbone of your content strategy and internal linking structure.
3. How do you write cornerstone content?
To the following:
- Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant, high-traffic keywords related to your core topics.
- Outline the content structure, ensuring it covers all essential aspects of the topic comprehensively and logically.
- Create scannable, easy-to-read content by breaking up long paragraphs, using subheadings, bullet points, and visuals.
- Incorporate internal links to related content, creating a well-structured content ecosystem.
- Consider adding a table of contents and an FAQ section to enhance user experience and SEO.
- Regularly review and update the content to ensure its accuracy and relevance over time.