What is Cornerstone Content?

Have you ever heard of cornerstone content or cornerstone blogs? I was first introduced to it in SEO on Tap with Duo Collective. It’s part of your larger SEO and website strategy that can be used to boost your search rankings and user experience. I feel like it’s something not a lot of entrepreneurs know about, so I’m happy to educate you on this topic and teach you how you can utilize this strategy in your business.

I talked to Halle on the Take Your Shot Podcast about cornerstone content! Listen to the episode here:

What is a Cornerstone Blog?

A cornerstone blog acts as a main page on your website. It’s not a services page or a resources page, but a giant blog post that links to several other pieces of content on your website. The goal is for it to become a landing page for people to explore and find other more specific pages on your website. It touches on a lot of different topics and then links to other resources that go further in-depth. 

Think of cornerstone content as a home page. It has a ton of information and links to a bunch of other things someone might be interested in learning more about. A home page would link to your about page, services page, featured blogs, a freebie, and your contact page. A cornerstone blog is the same. 

If you’re a social media manager talking about how to create a social media content calendar, you might link to other blogs that talk about:

• How to use templates in Canva
• Scheduling tips
• Social media platform comparisons
• Scheduling tool comparisons
• Batching content

There are so many smaller, more specific topics within the broad topic of how to create a social media content calendar.

Why Do I Need Cornerstone Content?

Maybe this feels like extra work, but it’s an important piece of your overall SEO strategy. But first, you need a blog in general. It allows you to rank for more keywords related to your industry (your main web pages can only do so much!) Without an active blog, you won’t have a lot to link to in your cornerstone blogs. Any industry can benefit from a blog strategy.

Cornerstone content is part of a larger SEO strategy. Every new page you add tells Google to recrawl your website. When Google crawls your website, it learns more about what you do and when it should show your content in search results. The more crawls, the better it understands your business. When it crawls a cornerstone blog, it’s also seeing all these links to other content you have on your site, which again, just helps it understand your website better.

Like any blog, cornerstone blogs help drive qualified traffic to your website. The more specific you can be in your main topics within the blog, the more search engines will understand your content and show it to the right people.

They also help take users on a journey of your website with all the links you include. It provides a better user experience because everything they need to know about the topic (and more!) is right there. What might they want to learn more about while reading your cornerstone blog? 

Tips to Choose a Cornerstone Blog Topic

Start by thinking of big ideas related to your business. It should be loosely related to your services. You can also use your blog content pillars to help you decide on cornerstone blog topics. My blog categories are SEO, blogging, entrepreneurship, and community. I want to write cornerstone content that relates to those categories because they directly relate to my services. 

You can also use keyword research to brainstorm topic ideas. Pick the right keywords and you’ll start to be seen as an expert in your industry. The best keywords are high in volume and low in competition, which means a lot of people are searching for that term but not a lot of companies trying to rank for it.

BONUS: The topics within the cornerstone blog may inspire other smaller blog topics! Here’s an example: Your cornerstone content is about the steps to plan a wedding. Write a section in the cornerstone blog about picking a caterer, then you can write a different blog about how to choose the best caterer and your recommendations. 

I hope you’re starting to see how broad cornerstone topics can be and link to more specific blog topics. It all works together as part of a larger website strategy!

How long is a cornerstone blog?

They’re longer than an average blog post. This gets into the whole conversation around word count, which I don’t believe people should pay attention to. Instead, focus on writing enough to thoroughly cover the topic, whether that’s 500 words or 3,000. On average, my blogs are around 1,000 words, and cornerstones should be at least double. They should be huge blogs that cover a lot of topics.

And it shouldn’t be hard to write this much content. If it is, you may need to find a way to make the topic more broad or write about something else. 

How often do you update cornerstone content?

Since it should act as the main page of your website, I recommend updating it quarterly. You can update it with new links, images, content, statistics, or CTAs. Also, Google loves to see content being updated, so I recommend looking at all your blogs every 6-12 months to see if anything can be updated.

How many cornerstone blogs do I need?

Two to five cornerstone blogs give Google a pretty good idea of the main things you do. Once you have that many, continue updating them and only add new ones if you find a great topic to write about. You don’t have to consistently post cornerstone content like you do with regular blog content.

I include quarterly cornerstone blogs with my blog writing package! In addition to monthly blogs, you get a massive cornerstone blog every quarter. With all the content included in cornerstone blogs, it makes them easy to repurpose, too! If you’re interested in working together, let’s schedule a discovery call!