What is Cornerstone Content?
Cornerstone content is a term referring to web site content that provides an overview of the main topics for your website, a focal point for visitors. It’s also known as pillar, or foundation pieces of content on a website.
This type of content is crucial to the overall success and structure of a website, as it provides a broad overview of the site’s main topics and sets the tone for the rest of the content.
Cornerstone content is often the first content that visitors will encounter, as it is usually linked to from multiple pages within the site, making it easy to find and navigate.
One more thing, it is meant to be evergreen, meaning it’s relevant and valuable regardless of the date it was published.
Why is Cornerstone Content So Important?
Cornerstone content is important for several reasons:
Establishes Authority: Cornerstone content should be informative content, explaining something to your visitors. You want them to know more about the subject, ideally, using the information and taking informed action.
By providing comprehensive information on the main topics related to a website, cornerstone content helps establish the site as a credible source of information and authority on those topics.
Improves Navigation: Cornerstone content acts as a hub, internally linking to other relevant pages and content within the website helps with SOE and improves the overall navigation and user experience.
Take time, think about the mapping of these links make sure they form a clear hierarchy in, or journey through your website. This way visitors that find your cornerstone article can then follow clear and obvious, logical, links to more content and pages in your website.
Increases Search Engine Visibility: Well-optimised cornerstone content can improve a website’s search engine visibility by attracting backlinks and getting found by providing context for search engines to understand the main topics and theme of the site.
So, make sure you use a well-structured keyword strategy, if you would like to know more about that here an article on keyword research we published earlier – then use these keywords in your content, we discuss this more below.
Provides Consistent Message: Cornerstone content ensures that all pages and content on the website are aligned with the site’s core message, reinforcing the brand, and making it easier for visitors to understand what the site is all about.
Overall, cornerstone content plays a crucial role in establishing a website’s identity, improving its user experience, and attracting more traffic and engagement.
How is Cornerstone Content Important for SEO?
Optimising cornerstone content for search engines can help improve a website’s visibility and rankings for relevant keywords, making it easier for search engines to understand the queries that your website answers, and improve your websites ranking on the Search Engine Results Page’s, SERP’s, (if you would like to know more about SERP’s, our article What is SERP explains in more detail) and of course, thereby help potential customers to find the site.
Additionally, cornerstone content can attract backlinks from other websites, which also helps boost the site’s search engine visibility, as well as the websites credibility. Search engines view backlinks as a vote of confidence by the linking site, and so are a key factor in determining a website’s credibility and ranking in search results. Basically, if website owners are willing to endorse your content, by providing their visitors with a link to your website, then they have confirmed their opinion that your content is relevant, valuable, and trustworthy. Search engines really like that.
Simply having cornerstone content is not enough to guarantee backlinks. Like all your content, cornerstone content must also be high-quality, relevant, and useful to attract backlinks and achieve success with search engines.Also remember that cornerstone content is just one aspect of a comprehensive SEO strategy. Other factors, such as technical optimisation, user experience, and content relevance, are also important for achieving success with search engines. (We have a number of articles on SEO if you would like to find out more.)
How Do I Decide What Cornerstone Content to Produce?
Here are some steps to help you decide what cornerstone content to produce:
- Identify your target audience: Understand the needs, interests, and pain points of your target audience. This will help you determine the types of content that will be most valuable and relevant to them.
- Research Keywords: Use keyword research tools to identify the keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for. This will give you insights into the types of content that are in demand and can help you identify opportunities for creating cornerstone content. if you would like to know more about keywords, our article What is Keyword Research, should help.
- Analyse Competitor Content: Look at what your competitors are doing and what types of content they are producing. This will give ideas for content that is already resonating with your target audience and can help you identify gaps in the market where you can create unique and valuable content.
- Evaluate Your Own Content: Review your existing content to see what has performed well in the past. This will help you identify the types of content that your audience is most engaged with and can give ideas for new cornerstone content that builds upon your existing strengths.
- Consider Your Objectives: Consider your business objectives and what you hope to achieve with your cornerstone content. This will help you prioritise the types of content that are most important for your business and ensure that your content aligns with your overall goals.
By using these steps, you can identify the types of cornerstone content that will be most valuable and relevant to your target audience, helping you attract more traffic, engagement, and conversions.
Could You Have Some Cornerstone Content in Your Existing Content?
If you haven’t consciously created your cornerstone content, a starting point may be identifying any candidate cornerstone content in your existing content. To that end, you can use the following steps:
Identify Key Topics: Review your website’s content to identify the main topics or themes that your site is focused on. This is a great exercise, consider it an audit, and check that these topics are closely related to your business or brand, the main topics should reflect the information that you want to be known for. If they do not, well – that’s a problem that needs fixing, but well done, you have found a discreet problem that once fixed could result in more traffic to your web site.
Evaluate Relevance and Quality: Consider the relevance and quality of each piece of content to determine which pieces are the most comprehensive and valuable. Look for content that provides a broad overview of your key topics and covers the main aspects of each topic in detail.
Be honest, if the articles were not evergreen, no longer appropriate for your business/goals, or have degraded with age – new technology, market conditions, fashion even politics and opinions – many changes can render content out of date, remove them or re-write them.
Track Traffic and Engagement: Use analytics tools to track the traffic and engagement of each piece of content on your site. This can help you determine which pieces are attracting the most attention and engagement from visitors. Pay attention to the visitor profiles to be sure the right visitors are finding and engaging with your content. If you are attracting the wrong visitors, well done, you have found another problem that once fixed could result in better quality traffic to your web site.
Look for Internal Links: Check for internal links within your site to see which pieces of content are being linked to from multiple pages. This can help you identify the cornerstone content that is serving as a foundation for the rest of your content. At the time of writing there were a few tools available to help here, including Google Search Console and Semrush.
Consider Evergreen Status: Consider the evergreen status of each piece of content, meaning whether it will remain relevant and valuable regardless of the date it was published. Cornerstone content is usually evergreen, providing value to visitors over time.
By using these steps, you can identify the cornerstone content on your website and prioritise it for optimisation and promotion, helping to establish your site as a credible source of information and improve your search engine visibility and rankings.
Conclusion
Cornerstone content plays an important role in the success and structure of a website. It provides a broad overview of the main topics, sets the tone for the rest of the content, and has internal links, from multiple pages within the site, as well as hopefully external links from other websites.
To produce effective cornerstone content, it’s important to understand your target audience, research the keywords to use, evaluate your own content, analyse competitor content, and consider your business goals.
By creating evergreen, valuable, and relevant cornerstone content, you can establish your site as a trusted source of information, improve search engine visibility and rankings, and attract more traffic, engagement, and conversions.
If You are Struggling with Cornerstone Content
Copywriting is an essential aspect of any online business and having the right words on your website can make all the difference in attracting and retaining customers. Now you know more about how important cornerstone content is, if you are struggling with creating your own copy for your cornerstone content Our team of expert copywriters is here to help.
Our copywriters don’t work in isolation but collaborate with our clients to create SEO-friendly and engaging copy. They know how to structure content and craft compelling words that work online. With their expertise, you can be confident that the copy on your website will be of the highest quality, helping to improve your website’s ranking and draw in more customers. If you’re looking to enhance your website’s content and drive more traffic, our team of copywriters is here to help. Get in touch to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.
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