Despite specializing in search engines, SEO experts will gladly gain any visitor regardless of the channel. Even though these marketing professionals focus on organic search traffic, they don’t mind getting clicks from social media, paid advertisements, email visitors, and referral marketing. In the end, it’s all about making sales.
Nevertheless, when creating content, some pages will always have a higher priority than others. We call these articles cornerstone content pages. Unlike your regular blog post, these pages are much more focused and are meant to “carry” your entire website.
In this article, we’ll explain the term and why it is so important for your SEO strategy.
What is cornerstone content?
The cornerstone article is the focal point of your website. It’s the main post you’d like to rank and is highly relevant to your business. For example, if you have a pet shop, you’d like to rank something like “How to find the best pet shop in your area?” or “Why do your pets need quality food?”
These types of articles are best explained as “High risk, high reward.” They usually belong to the category of Ultimate Guides and are meant to provide extensive knowledge on a particular topic. However, to better understand cornerstone articles, you first need to understand the concept of pillar pages.
What are pillar pages?
A pillar page is an extensive article supported by numerous smaller articles. The point of creating a pillar page is to have a single, enormous source of information backed up by various ancillary posts. For example, if you’re using “Ultimate business guide” as your pillar, your ancillary posts will be “Guide to banking,” “Guide to accounting,” “Guide to marketing,” and so on.
The point of these pillar pages is to create a structure where you can support the main page (pillar page or cornerstone content) with internal links. By connecting all the posts together, you can propel the cornerstone article from within the blog. Of course, you’ll also need external links and good user engagement to rank, but it will be much easier to do so with this tactic.
Given that cornerstone content is generally hard to rank, you’ll need every help you can get. Ideally, you should use the pillar page technique to increase its chance of gaining traction.
Cornerstone content benefits
The main reason why we create cornerstone content is so we can rank for relevant keywords. These pieces are incredibly important for our business and should drive the majority of traffic to our blog. In many cases, it’s much better to spend several months building and promoting a cornerstone article than to push numerous irrelevant pieces.
Here’s why cornerstone content is so important for your content marketing:
Because of their complexity and, specifically, difficulty in ranking, many SEO experts prefer going for small wins.
7 Steps for creating cornerstone content
For the most part, creating cornerstone articles is very similar to making other posts. The main difference is that the entire process is taken up a notch, being noticeably more complex.
1. Select the main topic
Choosing the pillar page is the focal point of the entire cornerstone strategy. Most SEO experts and blog owners inherently know what to look for, so they don’t need as much research. Here are a few tricks that should guide your hand:
First off, a company needs to set a budget and timeline for executing cornerstone content with all its ancillary pages and promotions. They also need to consider how many people will work on the project and whether they need to outsource some of the work.
During previous phases, the SEO manager should’ve had a better understanding of how many articles are needed. The same goes for external links; you can use tools like Ahrefs to predict how many links are required to propel content to page one. Lastly, your team needs to establish track KPIs.
4. Content creation
Content creation is significantly different with these posts than your usual articles. You should always remember that successful cornerstone content should reach numerous people. Besides site visitors, it’s meant to dazzle influencers, news outlets, and other industry stakeholders.
Because of that, the piece needs to present different data than you would find in other articles. You need to perform extensive research and sprinkle your findings within the blog post. Alternatively, you can create a new intriguing theory that would cover the topic. Whatever the case, you should separate yourself from the field to make an impact.
5. Interlinking
Using internal linking is vital for any type of funnel, cluster, and, thus, cornerstone content. These pages should be connected to ancillary pages and other resources on your blog. With this, you achieve several things:
If the content quality sets the basis, promotion is what makes it go viral. Like every other part of the process, it’s crucial that you have a good plan. Starting from the most relevant audience and promoting through the most relevant pages/channels are the things that will put you on the right track.
7. Updates
It’s vital to keep all the articles on your blog up-to-date, and this is especially true of cornerstone content. These pages are evergreen content and should have an impact on your business for a longer period. If you ever manage to rank them, they’ll need continuous polishing to yield the same results.
Besides updating information, it’s a good practice to check how it scales in terms of SEO. For example, once page speed became an important factor, many bloggers had to revise their approach to hastening their blog posts.
Best practices for cornerstone content
Here are a few extra tricks that will help you out when creating these pages:
Think of budget
Regardless of its importance, bloggers shouldn’t create cornerstone content if they don’t have enough money. Just creating the initial articles can be expensive, especially when we consider the amount of research you need to put in. After that, you’ll likely need lots of external links to boost your placement.
Research as the focal point
Cornerstone content is very different from your usual blog posts. You can’t just go online, copy-paste what’s written on the other blogs, and expect great results. Instead, you need to invest heavily in research.
Some of the options at your disposal are surveys and data tracking. You can also quote other authoritative resources and studies, but you’ll also need to add something of your own. While other parts of the process are easy to calculate (like hiring content writers or buying links), research can easily break your budget.
Outsourcing as an option
If you’re already looking to invest in SEO, you’ll probably have to spend money on forming an internal team or hiring an external one. The very process of creating and promoting cornerstone content will take several months, so this is something to keep in mind.
Of course, MiroMind is a great option if you wish to outsource your content creation or link-building.
Analyze competitors
The competitive analysis is vital for cornerstone content, as with all other posts. However, in this particular case, you’re not necessarily trying to steal ideas from other bloggers; you’re trying to avoid what they’re doing. As mentioned, you need to ensure your post stands apart to get maximum exposure.
Create a table of contents
Cornerstone content is significantly longer than the usual posts. To improve skimming, it’s wise to add links and a table of contents. That way, people can skip to different sections and get the most from the piece.
Utilize visuals
Perhaps the best way to present complex data is by using visuals. Charts and other graphics are fantastic when you wish to share lots of information or to compare data. You can also use a Venn diagram to visualize data. Of course, depending on your business focus, you might also need professional photos (for example, for tourism and fashion blogs).
Add external sources
Almost every authoritative resource features other relevant content. While many SEO experts are reluctant to share other articles, these links can boost your authority and relevancy. By adding links to studies and other high-value blog posts, you also show readers that the information is based on quality information.
Analyze links
Many tools nowadays have metrics that show how many links ranking articles received. This is a good starting point for determining how many external hyperlinks your blog requires as well. Besides focusing on quantity, we also suggest that you go through all these links that the top 10 ranking articles received and figure out whether you can replicate their effort.
Create a list of influencers
When reaching out to other bloggers, start with those who are most likely to read and link to your post. Although hyperlinks from direct competitors would be perfect, it’s really hard to get those. Instead, find news outlets and similar resources that are within your industry but aren’t commercial competitors.
Of course, your best bet is people with whom you had prior relationships. Make sure to store all the data in an Excel sheet or within your outreach tool as a reference point.
Conclusion
Creating cornerstone content is a risky and expensive endeavor. Then again, this is the best way for a blog to gain traction and gain relevant organic traffic. Due to its complexity, this process should be handled by a veteran marketing team. You need people who are well-versed in research as well as link-builders who can increase the exposure.