Your website most likely has some articles that you consider to be the best content you have to offer.
Now, you wouldn’t want to let those articles go unnoticed, right? Well, in order to draw people’s attention toward them, you will have to implement what is called a cornerstone content strategy.
You probably have many questions right now, but rest assured. In the following article, I will explain everything about cornerstone content and I will go into detail on how you can implement this strategy. Buckle up!
Cornerstone Content Explained!
So, what exactly is cornerstone content? Well, just as the name suggests, it is that piece of content on your website that you consider to best represent your vision.
Generally, it comes in the form of lengthy, well-written and informative articles.
Pause for a moment and think. If you could only show one article on your site in order to impress a first-time visitor, which one would it be?
This is the type of content that you definitely want to rank for.
Perhaps you’re hesitant to consider your content as being the most impressive, but that’s ok.
This is the perfect opportunity for you to create that type of content. And once you’ve created something that you can truly consider cornerstone, you can look into the ways to make it rank higher and be more prominent on the internet.
A Badass Cornerstone Content Strategy
The following lines will provide the basics of creating amazing cornerstone content. Or, if you already have it, it can help you improve it.
And where there’s great content, people will absolutely have a positive response. Here are the steps that you need to go through:
1. Ensure Your Cornerstone Content Is the Best it Can Be
Cornerstone content is very rich in information. It’s relevant and provides true value to the reader. As a result, it has to be long-form content, lengthier than your average blog posts.
Whether you are creating an article from scratch or you’re editing an older one, you’re aiming for at least 1000 words in length.
Readability helps a lot, so make sure your content is engaging and easy to follow. You wouldn’t want the reader to click away because the text was structured poorly and thus hard to peruse.
To avoid that, you want to write short, easy to read sentences and separate them into paragraphs. Make sure to use headings to structure your ideas and to distinguish between the points you’re making.
Insert pictures alongside your text to add a level of variation, but don’t overdo it so as to disrupt the reading experience. After all, remember that the text is the main attraction.
Afterward, an important aspect that you’ll have to consider is to keep the load time for your page to a minimum. This means that the pictures shouldn’t be too large in size.
You can use photo editing software to lower their resolution and make them suitable for online posting. Having a lower filesize will make them load faster in a browser.
Once everything is in place, congratulations, you have a piece of quality content.
Next up, you’ll learn how to integrate it better on your site to give it as much visibility for incoming visitors as possible.
2. Incorporate the Content in Your Website’s Structure
Once you have an incredible piece of content, you wouldn’t want it to go unnoticed. That’s right, you want to take it from the dark corner of your website and to put it into the spotlight.
In order to do this, you will need to have the content in a very accessible location within the website’s structure. This ensures that site visitors can access it without too much hassle.
Another very important step that you need to take is to link to the articles that you want to highlight. By doing this, you create an entire web of links within your website’s structure.
From a user’s standpoint, this ensures that your website is easily navigable. Furthermore, a website that is easier to navigate is more likely to be indexed by search engines.
Whenever you get the chance, be sure to include a link to your cornerstone article.
Keep this in mind for your upcoming posts. Whenever you create a new post, be sure to give people a way to read more on the subject by linking to your cornerstone articles.
3. Optimize Your Content
Now, we have to make sure your content’s SEO is in pristine condition.
At first, you’ll have to do some keyword research. This is done to see how you can rank for the particular topic that your cornerstone content is about.
Once you’ve come up with a strong, high-opportunity keyword, be sure to integrate it into your content. For example, you can add the keyword a few times in the article’s text and it’s a good idea to use it in a headline as well.
If all the SEO duty seems to be getting overwhelming, then you can always resort to a plugin to make your work much easier.
I use Squirrly SEO to help me with my entire keyword research and SEO optimization. It’s a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily handle the SEO of your content and website.
It comes with a lot of neat features such as a keyword management tool called Briefcase. If you want to give it a shot, you can try the plugin, full-featured, at a special price by accessing the Squirrly coupon.
Go Get Them!
Once you’re done with each of these steps, you can safely say that you’ve got a grasp of implementing an effective cornerstone content strategy – your content should be better and your SEO should skyrocket.
This just about wraps it up. If you implement the advice I gave you in this article and go through the process mentioned – step by step – you’ll surely see an improvement.
You now have the methods and the tools you need to make this happen.
In the meantime, I want to hear how it went for you. So, feel free to share your cornerstone content strategy success story in the comment section below!
