Content marketing has become a critical component of digital marketing for businesses of all sizes. But with so much content being produced every day, it can be challenging to stand out and capture your audience‘s attention. That‘s where cornerstone content comes in.
Cornerstone content refers to the most important, in-depth, and authoritative pages on your website. These are the articles that comprehensively cover the core topics in your niche, serve as the foundation of your content strategy, and have the potential to rank for competitive keywords and drive significant traffic to your site.
In this guide, we‘ll dive into what exactly cornerstone content is, why it matters, and how you can develop a winning content strategy by leveraging cornerstone articles. Whether you‘re a seasoned content marketer or just getting started with blogging for your business, read on to learn the key steps to creating cornerstone content that delivers results.
How to Identify Topics for Your Cornerstone Content
The first step to developing cornerstone content is deciding which topics to focus on. You‘ll want to choose subjects that are central to your niche, have high search volume, and align closely with your audience‘s needs and interests. Here‘s how to identify the best cornerstone content topics:
Analyze Your Niche and Audience
Start by taking a step back and thinking about the main subject areas or categories that define your niche. What are the overarching topics that your blog or business revolves around? For example, if you run a digital marketing blog, your core topics might include SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and paid advertising.
Next, consider your target audience. What specific questions, pain points, and goals do they have related to your niche? What kind of information are they searching for? Identifying topics that strongly align with your audience‘s needs will help your cornerstone content resonate and deliver value.
Conduct Keyword Research
With your niche and audience in mind, it‘s time to validate your cornerstone content ideas with keyword research. Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Ahrefs to gauge the search volume and ranking difficulty of keywords related to your topics.
Look for keywords with high monthly search volume, indicating that there‘s substantial interest in that subject. At the same time, consider the competitiveness of the keywords. While cornerstone content can help you rank for more difficult keywords over time, in the beginning it may be wise to target topics with lower keyword difficulty so you can gain some initial traction.
Map Out Your Cornerstone Content
Armed with insights about your niche, audience, and keyword research, it‘s time to map out your cornerstone content plan. Aim to choose between 3-5 cornerstone content topics that you want your site to be known for. Remember, the goal is to go both broad and deep with these articles.
For instance, a pet blog might choose cornerstone content topics like "Dog Training 101," "The Complete Guide to Cat Nutrition," "Bird Care Basics," and "Small Pet Housing and Supplies." These broad topics allow room to cover a lot of information in the cornerstone piece itself, while also leaving room for more niche articles related to each topic to be published as supplementary blog posts.
Tips for Creating Cornerstone Content That Ranks and Engages
Once you‘ve identified your cornerstone content topics, it‘s time to actually create that content. This isn‘t your standard 500-800 word blog post – cornerstone content requires going above and beyond in terms of depth, quality, and comprehensiveness. Here are some tips for crafting cornerstone content that will rank well in search engines and keep readers engaged:
Go In-Depth
One of the defining features of cornerstone content is its depth. Aim to create the most thorough, detailed resource on the topic available online. Depending on the scope of the topic, that could mean articles in the range of 3,000-10,000 words or even more.
The goal isn‘t just hitting an arbitrary word count, but rather covering every possible subtopic and angle that‘s relevant to the main subject. Leave no stone unturned – your cornerstone content should be the first and last resource someone needs to read to gain a comprehensive understanding of the topic.
Provide Unique Insights and Original Research
Cornerstone content shouldn‘t just rehash information that‘s already widely available online. To make it truly valuable and stand out from other articles on the topic, aim to include your own unique insights, analysis, and original research.
What new data can you bring to the table? Have you run surveys or case studies related to the topic? Do you have insider knowledge or a fresh take based on your industry experience? Incorporating these elements will make your cornerstone content more authoritative and linkable.
Optimize for Search Engines
While the primary goal of cornerstone content is providing value for human readers, it‘s also important to optimize for search engines so your articles can be easily found and ranked. This includes:
- Incorporating relevant keywords naturally throughout the article
- Using proper header tags to clearly define the content hierarchy
- Writing an engaging, keyword-rich title tag and meta description
- Optimizing images with descriptive alt text
- Building internal and external links to the cornerstone content
Make It Engaging and Visual
Even the highest-quality, most in-depth content will fall flat if it‘s not engaging and easy to consume for readers. Break up long blocks of text with plenty of headings, bullet points, and visual elements like images, infographics, and videos.
Use a conversational, engaging writing style that speaks directly to the reader. Include examples, analogies, and storytelling to illustrate your points and make the content memorable. Interactive elements like quizzes or calculators can also boost engagement.
How to Effectively Promote Your Cornerstone Content
Creating amazing cornerstone content is only half the battle – you also need to make sure it gets seen and shared by your target audience. Promotion is key to driving traffic, building links, and maximizing the impact of your cornerstone articles. Here are some effective promotion strategies:
Build Internal Links
One of the most important promotion strategies is building internal links from other pages on your site to your cornerstone content. This helps search engines understand the importance of these pages and spreads link equity to them.
Add links to your cornerstone articles in relevant blog posts, product pages, and your site‘s navigation and footer. You can also consider creating a dedicated resource center that links to all your cornerstone content pieces.
Strategic Link Building Outreach
Earning high-quality, authoritative backlinks is crucial for boosting your cornerstone content‘s search rankings. Identify other websites and blogs in your niche that might find your content valuable, and reach out to propose a link or guest post swap.
You can also leverage broken link building by finding relevant broken links on other sites and suggesting your cornerstone content as a replacement. Look for resource roundup posts or "best of" lists related to your topic, and pitch your cornerstone article for inclusion.
Paid Social Media Promotion
While organic social media promotion is a good start, investing in paid promotion on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can significantly boost your cornerstone content‘s reach and drive more targeted traffic.
Use eye-catching visuals and compelling ad copy to entice clicks. Experiment with different audience targeting options to get your content in front of the most relevant people. Consider running retargeting campaigns to bring back visitors who have already shown interest in your content.
Ongoing Promotion
Promotion isn‘t a one-and-done deal – to get the most mileage out of your cornerstone content, you need to continually promote it over time. Share it on social media multiple times, with fresh angles and visuals to avoid redundancy.
Include links to cornerstone articles in your email newsletters and marketing campaigns. Look for opportunities to mention and link to the content in guest posts, webinars, podcasts, and other external content you create. Regularly updating and refreshing the content itself also provides new promotion opportunities.
Using Cornerstone Content as the Foundation of Your Content Strategy
Cornerstone content is extremely valuable on its own, but its real power comes from its role as the foundation of your broader content strategy. By planning your blog content calendar around your cornerstone articles, you can create a cohesive, strategic approach to content that drives compounding results.
Plan Blog Posts Around Cornerstone Topics
Your cornerstone content addresses broad, overarching topics in your niche. Use these topics as the basis for planning out more specific, niche blog post ideas. Aim to publish several blog articles related to each cornerstone topic, diving deeper into specific subtopics and angles.
For example, if one of your cornerstone articles is an ultimate guide to email marketing, your related blog posts might include:
- X list building strategies to grow your email list fast
- How to write email subject lines that skyrocket open rates
- X examples of highly effective email newsletters
- The best times to send marketing emails based on data
- X automated email campaigns every business should set up
By publishing multiple blog posts on topics related to your cornerstone content, you establish greater authority and topical relevance in the eyes of search engines. Plus, all the internal links from the blog posts to the cornerstone article will boost its visibility and rankings.
Use Cornerstone Articles to Capture Leads
Cornerstone content can also be leveraged to grow your email list and generate leads. Because these articles tend to be high-value and comprehensive, they‘re perfect for attracting targeted subscribers.
Within the cornerstone content itself, include prominent calls-to-action and opt-in forms encouraging readers to download a related lead magnet or content upgrade. This could be a checklist, template, report, or other useful resource that supplements the information in the cornerstone article.
You can also use exit-intent popups or slide-in forms to present a relevant lead magnet offer when readers are finished consuming the cornerstone content and about to leave the page.
Funnel Traffic to Key Product or Service Pages
Another strategic way to use cornerstone content is directing readers to important product or service pages on your site. If you sell products or services related to the topics covered in your cornerstone content, be sure to include relevant internal links to those pages within the article.
You can also include more prominent calls-to-action promoting your offerings. For example, if your cornerstone content is a guide to choosing the right running shoes, you could feature your top product recommendations or a quiz to help readers find the perfect shoe, with links to product pages.
By driving cornerstone content traffic to your key conversion pages, you can turn information-seeking visitors into buyers and maximize the revenue-generating potential of your content.
Examples of Top-Notch Cornerstone Content
To help solidify the concepts we‘ve covered and give you some inspiration for your own cornerstone content, let‘s take a look at a few examples of businesses and bloggers who have nailed this strategy:
Example 1: HubSpot‘s "The Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing"
HubSpot is known for its incredibly thorough and helpful cornerstone content. Their ultimate guide to content marketing clocks in at over 10,000 words and covers every facet of the topic, from content ideation and creation to promotion and analysis.
What makes this cornerstone content exceptional is its strategic use of chapters, each of which could be its own standalone guide. This makes the massive guide easy to navigate and consume in smaller chunks. The page is also beautifully designed with custom graphics and well-placed calls-to-action promoting HubSpot‘s free courses and templates.
Example 2: NerdWallet‘s Credit Card and Personal Finance Guides
NerdWallet is a popular personal finance website that offers advice and tools to help people make smarter money moves. Their cornerstone content strategy revolves around comprehensive guides on topics like credit cards, investing, insurance and loans.
For example, their guide to the best credit cards breaks down the different types of cards, factors to consider when choosing a card, and detailed reviews of top cards in each category. The page features an interactive tool that helps readers filter cards based on their preferences and links to individual card review pages to drive conversions.
By creating authoritative cornerstone content around key personal finance topics, NerdWallet has become a go-to resource for people searching for this information online, driving significant organic traffic and affiliate revenue.
Maintaining and Improving Your Cornerstone Content Over Time
Finally, it‘s important to think of your cornerstone content as a long-term asset that you‘ll continue to maintain and improve over time – not a one-and-done project. Here are some tips for keeping your cornerstone articles fresh and effective:
Update Information Regularly
Make it a habit to periodically revisit your cornerstone content and update any information that may have become outdated or inaccurate. This is especially important for content that covers fast-changing industries or topics.
Updating your content regularly not only ensures that it continues to provide value to readers, but also shows search engines that the page is being actively maintained, which can help with rankings. Consider adding a "last updated" date to your cornerstone articles so readers know the information is current.
Expand and Improve Content
As time goes on, consider ways to expand and improve your cornerstone content to make it even more comprehensive and valuable. Can you add new sections or chapters to cover additional subtopics? Have you come across new research or examples that could enhance the piece?
You might also identify opportunities to add more types of media, such as embedding relevant videos or creating customized infographics to visualize key concepts. Continuously enhancing your cornerstone content will help it stay competitive and continue to drive results over the long term.
Cornerstone Content: Your Key to Content Marketing Success
Creating cornerstone content is one of the most effective strategies for driving more traffic, building authority, and generating leads and sales with your website. By identifying key topics, creating in-depth and valuable resources, and promoting them strategically, you can make cornerstone content the backbone of your content marketing efforts.
Of course, developing great cornerstone content takes significant time and effort – but the long-term payoff is well worth it. So what are you waiting for? Start mapping out your cornerstone content and take your content strategy to the next level!
