WordPress SEO in 5 Minutes – What is Cornerstone Content?

WordPress SEO in 5 Minutes – What is Cornerstone Content?

When you build something, you make sure that the foundation is strong and secure. It is the same for content marketing. And the foundation of content marketing is Cornerstone content. In this article, our experts from the web development team in Perth will explain all about what cornerstone content is, its importance and points to note while writing one.

What is cornerstone content?

Cornerstone or flagship or evergreen content is the core of your site content. They will be your best and most significant articles that you want to rank in the search results. Cornerstone content is long, informative content that is aimed at providing useful information to the visitor rather than make a sales pitch. It should be a comprehensive write-up about a topic and should also reflect your business core competencies. It can be a post or a page and ideally directly reachable from your homepage.

The objectives of cornerstone content

The main two objectives of cornerstone content are:

• To expand audience reach by providing quality and value-adding content that can be shared.

• To create enticing and compelling content that will promote linking. Linking is a crucial part of SEO strategy that also portray how important authority and trust is for business success.

Why is cornerstone important?

Cornerstone content plays a crucial role in any Search Engine Optimisation strategy. It’s challenging to rank for popular search terms, and cornerstone content helps to solve this. Also, you would have many posts around your core competencies, and the posts will end up competing with each other for ranking. Search engines like Google will not be able to distinguish between which content is better (keeping other factors like links and UX same). If you have a cornerstone content for a particular topic, you can tell search engines which content needs to rank in the search results.
Since cornerstone content is informative pieces, it also helps in building authority and trust among the customers. They are more likely to come to you to make a purchase if they feel that you are an expert in your business segment.

Benefits of cornerstone content

Here are some benefits of cornerstone content for your business

• Builds natural links
• Add value to your website
• Promotes lead generation
• Establish trust and authority
• Increase traffic and brand awareness
• Makes other content more accessible

What are the features of a good cornerstone content?

• Should be informative content
• Should focus on providing solutions rather than on convincing the audience to make a purchase
• Should portray the uniqueness of your product 
• Should reflect your business or service niche
• Should contain a minimum of 900 words
• Should be relatively high in the site structure
• Up to date and easy to reach on your website 
• Should contain internal links from other relevant posts and pages 

When should you start writing cornerstone posts?

If you are planning a new website, you can set a cornerstone strategy at the outset. This will help you to plan the rest of the content around this core content.
If your website is already established, you should take some time to review your content and decide which should be considered as cornerstone. You may have to update or rewrite these content pieces.
Whether you are a new site or an established one, you should make it a point to update the content regularly to keep it relevant.

Points to note while creating an optimised cornerstone content

• Keywords

Optimise cornerstone content page for your most competitive keyword phrases. You need to do keyword research to ensure that you are using the right keywords. Choose short-tail keywords and try not to use cornerstone keywords in other posts. You can use long-tail versions for other posts.

• Title Tags and Anchor Texts

The title tag and anchor texts should be optimised for keywords. Title tags should be structured in such a way that it promises a solution or answer to the search query.

• Introduction

Use short and engaging sentences that could entice the readers’ attention and encourages them to continue reading.

• Content

Cornerstone tends to be longer content than an average-sized 500 words post. You should break the content with an image or illustration to avoid making it look like a wall of text. Use sub-headlines and bullet points wherever possible. Break the text into shorter paragraphs, each dealing with a specific point.

Want to know how to improve your website content? Read Improve content SEO of your website

• Satisfy user query for information

More than a selling pitch, the post should be about satisfying a user’s query for information. Cornerstone content, by definition, is meant to be informative articles.

• Media

Include media formats like images and videos that will make the content interesting and will encourage readers to share the page.

• Linking

Ensure that you link to and link from related articles. Not everyone who reads your post may understand the cornerstone content. So, linking to other related posts on your site will encourage them to stay on your site for more information and also build up authority.

Learn more about link building.

• Conclusion and call to action button

A solid conclusion leaves no loose ends and can lead the reader to call to action (CTA) button. Though CTAs are generally at the end of a post, you can also insert it more than once in a page.

• Social sharing

Using social media sharing options will encourage people to share it, bringing in more links. Social share buttons can be easily included on your site with the help of social media plugins. Read our blog on best social media plugins.

Cornerstone content should be pages or posts which leave an impression on the readers and as well as are optimised for search engines. Hope the article on what is cornerstone content was helpful for you. Our SEO experts in Perth can create remarkable cornerstone content for your business. Contact us or email at sales@computingaustralia.group to learn more.

Jargon Buster

UX – User eXperience is the experience of a person while interacting with a webpage or website. A good UX design ensure good user experience.
CTA – Call-to-action – a clickable button or link to prompt a website visitor to make an immediate response. For example, ‘buy now’, ‘contact now’, ‘subscribe now’.
Keywords – a specific word that best defines the content of your blog post or page. It is the search term that you would want your page to rank for.
Anchor Text – a word or short string of words that are clickable in a hyperlink.
Title tag – an HTML element that defines the title of a web page displayed on SERPs as the clickable title for a given result.

Article originally published on 26/08/2020
Revised on 06/07/2021
Added new sections:
The Objectives of Cornerstone Content
Benefits of cornerstone content
What are the features of a good cornerstone content?
Added new terms to Jargon Buster