Cornerstone Content: The Complete Guide and How to Make It

Cornerstone content is part of a content creation strategy that aims to increase your web page ranking and traffic. This type of content acts as the foundation of all of your content and is part of an advanced SEO strategy that website owners need to undertake.

To undertake such a strategy, you will need several important steps, including proper keyword research in preparing content that can attract more visitors.

In this guide, we will discuss more about what cornerstone content is, its importance for SEO, and how to create it.

What is Cornerstone Content?

Cornerstone content is the main foundation of a website that contains the most important information, the most relevant niche to your business, and attracts the most traffic. The content should be comprehensive, focusing on discussions regarding certain topics, providing many internal links to related articles, and not intended for conversions.

The purpose of such content is to serve as the main door for organic visitors who can give a positive impression on your website. The content will answer the needs of the audience so that they are willing to explore the website further. That way, you can easily assist your audiences to go to the next stage of their customer’s journey.

The Importance of Cornerstone Content in SEO

Content that is considered as a cornerstone plays an important role in SEO. It is a strategic method to get topic authority faster. You can use it as a cluster that discusses a topic in full and connects all related articles via internal links.

In addition, the content can serve as a solution to get high rankings in highly competitive business. Comprehensive content that has a lot of backlinks will be very valuable in the eyes of search engines.

Benefits of Cornerstone Content

Cornerstone or foundational content can bring several positive impacts on your website and business. The benefits of that you can get are as follows:

• Brand Awareness - Content that can be considered as a cornerstone acts as the main door to build a good first impression for the audience.
• Relevant Visitors - Your content will bring in visitors who look for answers about a specific topic.
• Link Building - Content that discusses a topic in a comprehensive manner will easily get backlinks from other websites.
• Topic Authority - Helps to gain authority on certain topics quickly.
• Marketing Funnel - It's easier to get your audience from one funnel to the next.

Examples of Cornerstone Content

Do you already understand the idea of cornerstone content? If not, here are some examples of such content that can be commonly found on websites:

Guideline Articles

Content that is most often used as a cornerstone is a guide article. This type of article discusses in detail about a particular topic, such as comprehensive guidance.

Guide articles tend to be highly searched, which make them valuable sources that bring in traffic to your website. You can also link guide articles to other related content on your website in the form of internal links. Thus, the audience will be encouraged to read them all.

Free Tools

A page of free SEO tools can also be considered as a cornerstone. Free tools like Word Counter Tool or Page Speed ​​Test from cmlabs are much needed and very useful for the audiences who need to optimize their websites.

When a website is able to provide something of value and for free, audience trust will be built. Hence, it can move them to use the tools and share it to other users.

Research Data

Another example of such content is research data. This type of content can bring in a lot of traffic, engagement, and backlinks. The reason is, research data is a type of content that is original, unique, and can not be found on other websites.

Research data must be properly created based on what the audiences need, so that the content can match their intent. You can create such content in the forms of case studies, interviews, survey results, experiments, and so on.

A Guide to Make Cornerstone Content

You already understand what content is considered as a cornerstone, its benefits, and examples. The next step is to understand how to create it. Here's a guide for you:

Conduct Research

The first process you have to do is conducting research. The three main things you need to analyze are your audience, keywords, and competitors.

• Audience Research - It is done to find out who will read your content. The end result is a buyer persona.
• Keyword Research - Conducting research to find keywords that are widely used by the audience. The end result is a list of target keywords.
• Competitor Research - Learn what kind of content is presented by competitors and how you can create better content.

Compose Content

Once the research is done, the next step you must take is compiling the content. You need to determine what type of content you will create, ranging from free guide content, listicles, insights, infographics, case studies, product reviews, e-books, to tools.

Make sure that the type of content you choose is included in the evergreen content strategy. It can help your content be sought after by the audience and long lasting on the SERP. You may need to decide the right time to publish the content as well. 

Produce Content

You have to make sure that the content, which is considered to be a cornerstone, not only fully answers what your audience wants to know, but also makes them want to learn more about your business.

Some things you need to remember in creating content are not using too many keywords or keyword stuffing, don't sell anything, provide attractive images or videos, and create better content than competitors.

Internal Linking

Cornerstone content is the right strategy to build topic authority through internal links. Find all articles with related topics and link them to it. Then, re-link its URL in the related article so that both of the contents are related to each other.

Many internal links a certain content gets from related articles on the same topic help forming a pattern. This pattern can tell search engines which page you want to rank on that topic.

Pay Attention to Content Accessibility

Usually, such important content will be placed on the homepage or main page of a website. This method will help assist the audience in finding this type of content since the homepage easily brings in the traffic.

Not only that, the first page that is crawled by search engines from a website is the homepage. Putting the content on the homepage will make it more accessible for search engine crawlers.

Share to Other Marketing Channels

One way to boost the performance of such important content is to take advantage of all the marketing channels you have. Use channels such as social media to get social shares, guest posts to bring in visitors from other websites, or email marketing to invite prospective consumers to revisit the pages.

Content Optimization

Content that is considered to be a cornerstone needs to be optimized in order to perform optimally. The trick is to make sure that the on-page SEO is done properly and build backlinks that lead to content. It also helps if your website has a mobile-friendly website display and there are no problems or issues with its page speed.

That was an explanation of what cornerstone content is, its role and benefits for websites, examples of its use, and how to create it. If you are interested in creating one, cmlabs is pleased to help you with SEO Content Writing and Content Marketing Services.