Intro

Content marketing is big business, and it can be used to help give your site more of an edge. However, the competition for online eyeballs has never been more intense. Every day you wake up, there are thousands of articles, blog posts, and infographics published in your sector, all vying for a place in the top search engine ranking.

With such a vast array of content out there, how on earth do you ever stand a chance of getting noticed? The answer. Search engine optimization, or SEO for short.

SEO is essentially a marketing strategy that targets particular keywords, which a website will rank under on a search engine. There are tons of benefits of SEO. Primarily, your site can position itself as an authority in its field by targeting keywords and phrases, essentially becoming a go-to resource for those using specific search engines.

To be effective with SEO strategies, you must follow the best SEO practices, such as the right kind of content on your site. Whilst it is important that you have various types of content, there’s one particular type, known as “cornerstone content,” which can really help boost your SEO efforts.

What is cornerstone content?

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Cornerstone content is a form of web content consisting of prominently placed, topically organized information deemed valuable to the site visitor. It generally consists of educational resources and tools, such as schedules, FAQs, and calculators. It aims to increase traffic and brand awareness by showing what your business can offer.

Let's say your company manufactures digital cameras. You might have a website that provides digital camera reviews and photography tips to help people take better pictures. This type of content is considered to be cornerstone content because it’s featured prominently on your site.

Cornerstone content will help fuel your SEO strategy because it boosts your rankings in search engines. It also helps with your digital customer experience strategy because it helps people get what they need quickly and easily.

Why is cornerstone content so effective?

It's content that visitors to your site want to see

You may be promoting “sales tips for spring” on another blog because you have an article about the topic on your own site. Whilst this is fine if there are no sales tips to speak of on your site, even having the best article in the world won't help boost your SEO.

This is where cornerstone content comes in. It’s content that you have on your site. It allows you to link it back to the related posts on your blog, giving readers incentive to check out more of what you’ve written on a certain topic or about a certain product. For example, you may want to link to a how-to guide on Google analytics ecommerce from a post about the latest trends in online shopping. These two pieces of content are related and can complement each other.

It's content that will engage your customers

You know that customer engagement is key for success in business. You may already have customer engagement strategies, but it doesn't mean you can't look at improving them.

The more customer-focused your website is, the better your customer engagement will be. Cornerstone content provides an excellent opportunity to engage with the customer. It’s content that will be of interest to them, and it’s customer-oriented.

Your customer engagement strategy can include customer surveys, customer feedback on website, and customer case studies. If you run a B2B company, you may want to include customer testimonials on your site, allowing potential clients or employers to see what others have experienced when working with you.

It's content that search engines love!

This is the big one. Search engines are always looking for websites with helpful, interesting, and engaging content. Cornerstone content ticks all of these boxes, so you will rank higher in search results if you have it on your site.

How can you use cornerstone content?

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Using it to drive traffic back to your site

As we've seen, one of the most significant benefits of cornerstone content is that it attracts search engine results and potentially new visitors who want to check out all of the information that you have to offer.

Therefore, it's essential to make sure that it’s prominent and available on your site. You should make sure that this type of content appears in a prominent position - specifically on your homepage or any other key landing pages.

You may also want to make additional pages for it, e.g., a “Calculators” or “FAQ” page that links back to specific posts with relevant information.

Using it as content for your blog

If you've had success with this type of cornerstone content on your site, then you can even use it for guest posts! So long as it contains all of the essential information that your readers will value and is relevant to your target audience, then there's no reason why you can't repurpose it as a guest post on another site - who knows, perhaps you may even get some backlinks in the process!

Let's say you're a boutique hotel in Wales, for example. You might have a popular hotel post that includes all of the essential information about your hotel - from room rates to hotel facilities. That's enough content for a blog post itself, but you can use it as guest blogging content by repurposing it and publishing it on another travel blog. This is a great way of improving your hotel SEO.

So, now we know what cornerstone content is, its benefits and how to use it for your own site, let's see how you can create good content that will fulfill all of the above criteria.

How to write good cornerstone content

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There’s no magic formula for creating excellent cornerstone content for your site - but there are a few guidelines that you should follow!

Keep it relevant and engaging

As we've already seen, search engines place a lot of importance on relevant and engaging content. Therefore, you should make sure that every post is unique and contains all of the information your readers want - don't be afraid to get creative, though!

Keep it helpful

It's important to remember how people use search engines for their benefit. They do so because they want to find what they're looking for and don't have time to scour the internet themselves!

As such, you should make sure that each piece of content is helpful and provides the information that people are searching for. If it doesn't, then they will simply go somewhere else - and so will the search engine bots!

Keep it interesting

The final thing you need to keep in mind when creating cornerstone content is that it needs to be entertaining! It doesn't matter how useful the information is if no one wants to read it!

So, choose an engaging title - e.g., “What Is Cornerstone Content?” and then hook your readers in from the start with a strong opening statement. From there, you should include several different paragraphs so that your content is easy to read and enjoy!

What can cornerstone content do?

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Brand exposure

The first significant way that having cornerstone content can benefit your site is brand exposure. By creating unique and engaging posts, you’ll make a name for yourself.

Let's say your business teaches sales training techniques to SMBs. Your conversion funnel works well, but many of your prospects are still browsing the web for related information before they schedule a demo or sign up.

With strong cornerstone content on your blog, you can attract prospects to read about what your company does. Consequently, they’ll become more familiar with your brand and what you have to offer. When they're ready to book their demo, they're more likely to already know your name.

Increased conversion rates

Creating engaging and informative cornerstone content can help your visitors get drawn in. Once they are on your site, how do you keep them there?

You can do this by having a strong conversion rate optimization strategy in place. For example, be sure to make the most of your call to action by offering a free giveaway or downloadable file as an incentive.

More backlinks

The second way this type of content can help you is by getting more backlinks. Building up a base of high-quality backlinks to your site is crucial because it's very high up on the list of Google ranking factors. So, why not create some yourself?

Increased social signals

Finally, creating great cornerstone content can help you with social signals. The more people share your posts, the more authority they’ll give your site - resulting in even higher rankings!

Final thoughts

Cornerstone content is an integral part of any SEO strategy. If you want your site to rank high on search engines, then you must create great posts for it!

A fantastic way to ensure that your cornerstone content is boosting your SEO skills is by introducing a rank tracking tool into your organization.

These provide you with extremely accurate insights into your content’s performance.

Remember, creating quality content takes time and practice. But with the above tips, you should be a cornerstone content PRO in no time.

Good luck and happy content creating!

About Author

Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies to improve customer experience, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. She has also written content for UpDraftPlus and Tapfiliate. Here is her LinkedIn.