If you regularly add fresh content to your website (as all good website owners should..), you may have got to thinking about cornerstone content.
So, what exactly is cornerstone content?
Cornerstone content is solid, well-written content that is on point, defines your business and explains what you do. It’s no coincidence then, that this type of content is also the kind of content that you will want to rank for in search engine results.
How do I choose my cornerstone content pages?
Lets say you’re a book keeper. If someone new to business was looking for a book keeper, but wasn’t entirely sure what that might entail, how would you describe what you do? Out of all the pages on your website, which pages are the ones that your potential new client would likely read to find out about what you have to offer and how you could help them? Which articles include your keyword and other keywords you want to rank for? Which articles best explain how you can help solve your potential customers immediate problem?
Let’s look at an example.
The keyword you want to rank for is ‘book keeping’. You have an incredibly informative, well written, helpful page on your website all about book keeping. It explains what you do and how you can help businesses in their day to day accounting. Your keyword is used throughout and it’s peppered with insights and tips that will be useful for your intended audience. So far so good. This is the page that we want to be our cornerstone. It’s basically the most informative and relevant information you have about a specific topic.
Now, if you visit Google and type in:
site:yourwebsiteurl.com book keeping (or your keyword of choice)..
..the results will be a list of pages on your site that include your keyword. Next, you need to go to each of those pages and where possible, add an internal text link to your cornerstone page.
Do I really need cornerstone content?
Yes! For the same reason that you need cornerstones on your house! It’s there to support the rest of your content and will in turn be supported by other related content that you create. It will help to organise your site structure and can only mean good things for the Search Engine Optimisation of your site.
In conclusion
Cornerstone content should be part of your ongoing SEO strategy. If fact, it should be part of your website content strategy from day dot. Apart from the SEO benefits, creating well written content that’s hierarchical by nature is great for your users too. Don’t make them think!