What is Cornerstone Content & How It Affects SEO?

What is A Cornerstone Content?

Building cornerstone content is one important action you can take to start branding your website. A cornerstone is a foundational introduction upon which something is constructed or developed. It is what people need to know to make use of your website and engage with your services.

Cornerstone articles are important aspects of your website that can help capture the interest of readers and prospects. This piece of high-value content can help you form the foundation for your goals. Its main goal is to establish a positive image for your brand or website, to make you look like an expert.

These articles are lengthy endeavours that might take a while to compile and publish, usually covering all the vital information on a particular topic. Cornerstone content in articles is meant to be informative rather than persuasive.

Not saying that links to your services or product page can’t be inserted since these articles are meant to be your strongest draws to traffic. The nature in which they are presented should not be overt or come at the end of the article instead. Additionally, these can come in the form of blog articles or pages containing longer writeups of information.

If you want an effective SEO campaign, marketing content is essential and cornerstone content is absolutely crucial.

How Long Should Cornerstone Content Be?

Because these are the posts that you want to rank highest in search engines, it is essential for cornerstone articles to be at least 1,000 words and longer. It is crucial to understand that long articles rank more easily than short articles.

Some cornerstone articles are even longer than that, reaching up to five digits in their word count. For example, this ultimate guide by Neil Patel is no short story.

The Skyscraper Technique is a great way to build cornerstone content. This technique searches for established and relevant content from competitors or more prominent sites. Your objective is to build upon what they have compiled and add your (valuable) input to improve the article.

This could take the form of case studies and clients with whom your business has found success or merging content from two different but compatible articles. Like its namesake, this “building on” portion is like adding more stories to an already towering skyscraper to make it your own. Bear in mind that while not all content can be original, some flavour or degree of individualism should be added to distinguish your article from the rest.

Additionally, the link structure of your other articles has to support your cornerstone content. Think of them like the main bus depot, where buses are stored before being sent to smaller interchanges. This represents traffic from smaller articles being linked and moving to your cornerstone articles, which should have considerably more outgoing internal links than the rest. Some pages prefer to have their products or services page as their cornerstone content, which works well with the marketing funnel to push users towards a purchase.

You should also do your best to update cornerstone content regularly, with updated information and statistics, and ensure that users can find it easily on your blog.

Is It Difficult to Create a Cornerstone Content Strategy?

It should not be challenging to develop a cornerstone content strategy. These content and articles should be in the direction of what your site is relevant for. Cornerstone content should have the most internal links on your site. You should aim to make cornerstone content comprehensive enough so that you can slide a link to it every time the topic is mentioned on your website.

For most industries and niches, the articles you chose should act as an introductory stance to those new to your website or topic. Your pillar of content deserves you to reference and guide users to read. Since you aim to tell the search engine scanners that this is your most relevant page, the keywords you aim to optimise for cornerstone content must be competitive.

The most popular user search related to your business niche is your goal.

For instance, our client homees.co as a firm dealing with interior design would optimise for keywords such as “best carpenters Singapore” for their carpentry service directory at https://www.homees.co/services/carpentry.

Their landing page has a link to their service directory, which leads to the link above with a comprehensive FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) section. The bottom of this page has a list of related articles such as cost guides and other interior design topics. Overall, a great example of how to structure your cornerstone content if your business is starting out.

Start by choosing your main keywords using keyword tools, such as Ahref or Ubersuggest.

Properties of Good Cornerstone Content

Proper URL Naming Structure

It should have a clear and concise URL name (www.yourdomain.com/cornerstone) to show your readers that what they read is a form of cornerstone content. Cornerstone content in the form of articles should be generalised, along with the page title, so something like “All you Need to Know About Home Renovation” would be good.

Proper Title Tags

Having good headlines and proper formatting helps guide your readers better.

For cornerstone content, you want your readers to read with ease. Avoid using poorly formatted or coloured fonts.

Landing Pages

Cornerstone content can either act as landing pages or direct users to landing pages. Either way, using a landing page is important for websites that want to convert their visitors into leads.

Landing pages are different from other pages on the website as their priority is to seek to capture your visitor’s information. This is once again linked to the marketing funnel, so the users can be first captured, engaged via mailing lists and email marketing campaigns, and eventually persuading them to make a purchase.

Internal Links

Good cornerstone content should have a proper link infrastructure. Links are around to guide your users. In the case of cornerstone content, it should provide your readers with a direction on where to obtain more resources and a call to action on what to do if they are interested to find out more.

Timelessness

Cornerstone content should not have a time stamp. They should also be regularly updated with statistics and references to keep them relevant. Regarding the cornerstone article, it is also important to ensure the internal linking structure is intact without any dead links.

Optimised

Keywords are everything to Google. Choose the most appropriate phrasing and keywords for your content so searchers will get an immediate answer from reading your articles. While these keywords might not always be grammatically correct, the intent here is to mimic what users would search on Google if they were interested, accounting for search intent.

If your business relies more on local footfall or region-based traffic, performing local SEO could be beneficial in driving traffic to your site. Local shops, small businesses or warehouses and workshops located close to industrial areas or shopping districts can gain from this, so the keywords for your site should be updated.

The goal of cornerstone content is to create useful and relevant content. With unique content, you give people reasons to visit your site, and that’s the first step of securing a potential lead. Your content, if compelling and comprehensive enough, can make people excited to read it. You might even get free organic backlinks to your content in the future.

Content Linking

Internal link structure is formed by creating anchor text links from other pages/posts on your website. These anchor text links are optimised for the “long-tail version” of the keyword you want your cornerstone page to rank for:

As a rule of thumb, try to create one cornerstone content for each keyword you are targeting, then cleverly make use of an internal link structure to support and pass link juice to your cornerstone content. Lastly, push your cornerstone content to as many sites as possible, including social sharing sites, social media, and blogs catered to niche markets.

A good link-building strategy can greatly help push the page authority (PA) of a site up. You can find out more about creating your content marketing campaign.

Hiring a Good Content Marketing Agency in Singapore

Content marketing can be a great way to implicitly tell your clients your level of expertise by showcasing and distributing content to web users.

It strengthens your positioning in the market as an authority in your field and allows you to build more trust with your customer base.

With a strong system and implementation in place, Leading Solutions can create a powerful leveraging system for your content marketing strategy, ensuring that we get the maximum value out of every article we have created.

Check out the top-rated SEO agencies for comprehensive digital marketing support.