Cornerstone Content: Everything You Need to Know (With Examples)

Table of Contents 

• Importance of Cornerstone Content 
• 6 Examples of Cornerstone Content 
• Key Takeaways 
• Conclusion
• FAQs 

Have you ever come across an engaging blog post that eventually convinced you to visit its associated website? But then, the moment you visited said website, you became unsure of how to proceed with the relevant, highly informational articles or blog posts? Well, imagine if the website had a page guiding you to the most critical content on the website. 

This is what cornerstone content is. Cornerstone content is usually placed on a dedicated page and covers the important areas your visitors might be interested in. But what is the need for cornerstone content, you ask? Well, not everyone is interested in every single aspect of your website. Therefore, you can reduce your bounce rate by pinpointing crucial web pages. 

So, with some key examples, let’s understand why cornerstone content is important and how to use it effectively. 

Source

Importance of Cornerstone Content

Let’s say you are consistently driving traffic to your blog. But what if we tell you that you can retain visitors and give them a real insight into your entire website? All you have to do is ditch your earlier practice of SEO blog writing. Invest time and resources in building your cornerstone content strategy. 

Here’s how creating cornerstone content will benefit your website:

• It will help establish a foundation for all your core content pieces. 
• Your new visitors will be able to make better sense of your website.
• Your SEO efforts will see considerable improvement, and organic traffic and brand awareness will increase.
• Your content marketing efforts will have better results. 
• Convey the right message to your target audience and rank higher in SERPs. 
• Increase your chances of generating backlinks by putting your most valuable content right before your target audience.
• Establish yourself as an industry expert by uploading highly detailed content pieces on the page. 
• Drive continuous value for your business.  

6 Examples of Cornerstone Content

Cornerstone content can be of various types – ebooks, detailed guides, a series of podcasts, etc. Whatever type of content it may be, relevance must be the crux for your content piece to qualify as cornerstone content. It should speak for your business or the types of products and services you offer.

Some people might confuse cornerstone content with lead magnets. But, these aren’t necessarily the ebooks you offer for developing your mailing list. In fact, it could be any of your most-detailed blog posts, video, etc., that include content pieces that your audience genuinely cares about. 

Source

Here are a few examples of websites using relevant cornerstone content that speaks for their business.

1. Moz: Detailed guides for learning SEO

Moz, an SEO software company, provides detailed SEO guides on its homepage. These guides tackle the most common problems that beginners deal with. One can either download a pdf or read it on their website. The knowledge imparted by these guides is especially beneficial for beginners. As a result, professionals often recommend these guides to their contacts who aspire to learn more about SEO.

One of the primary reasons people love these guides is that they cover the basics with relevant examples and easy-to-understand technical terms. Moz drives a significant amount of traffic through this content.

2. Hubspot: Soft-selling their tools through landing page content

Hubspot’s marketing and sales tool focus on inbound lead generation to save people from the time-consuming efforts of cold-calling and emailing. With most marketing professionals still resorting to traditional methods, Hubspot realized the importance of breaking the pattern. They developed a landing page specifically to educate their audience on the importance of inbound marketing.

Hubspot’s team knew the importance of highlighting this to avoid losing a large part of their prospective clients. The page does a deep dive into inbound marketing and talks about the enormous benefits of using Hubspot’s tools.

3. Salesforce: Simplifying technology

Salesforce sells a cloud-based CRM system. And, they realize that the functionalities of cloud computing often flummox the layperson. Hence, they aim to educate their prospects about cloud computing while the tool helps businesses efficiently manage sales processes.

They do this with the help of infographics that creatively break down complex information and present it in an engaging format. This ensures people with a lack of knowledge in tech don’t refrain from investing in the SaaS product.

4. Paula’s Choice: Informing the audience about the chemical content

Most beauty brands are so involved in promoting their products and standing out from the crowd that they fail to provide adequate information regarding their products’ contents to their audience. 

Paula’s Choice does it right by including an ingredient dictionary that mentions the names and the detailed meaning and benefits of every ingredient. As a result, people who have been using the brand’s products are incredibly loyal to it. 

In addition, the brand has a separate website called Beautypedia that helps break common myths and reviews similar products to keep the audience updated with relevant information. This allows the customers to make an informed decision while buying their beauty products. 

5. Neil Patel: A step-by-step guide

Neil Patel’s in-depth guide to growth hacking is long, educational, and serves to promote his services. Even his general articles are long and filled with value. If you go through his content, you can observe how he attaches relevant examples to enhance every point. In addition, he often talks about his company’s performance to make his point. This helps people develop credibility and return to his website for more content. 

This cornerstone content piece is filled with relevant links taking visitors to different pages of his website. He adds a lot of visuals instead of loading a page with textual content. Another goal that Patel achieves through this piece is walking prospects down the funnel through relevant CTAs at every point. Furthermore, he engages with people in the comment section to clear their doubts, confusion, and more.

6. Amplitude: A guide to mobile analytics

Amplitude provides users with analytics products, including Amplitude Analytics, Amplitude Experiment, and more. The team created a page that goes into the details of mobile analytics to convince people to invest in their products. 

One of the highlights of this cornerstone content piece is that it’s long yet visually appealing. It covers all relevant aspects of mobile analytics and works on the soft marketing of its products. The blog consists of highly-researched articles in the area, which they link back to in this content piece. They successfully achieve an excellent ranking in search engines with the right SEO strategies.

Key Takeaways

• Cornerstone content plays a vital role in educating new customers about your website. 
• It could include anything that provides relevant information (blogs, ebooks, guides, etc.).
• Work on identifying topics that your target audience is least knowledgeable about.
• Make sure you include relevant links that educate your audience instead of leading them directly to your pricing page. 
• Use the right blend of short-tail and long-tail keywords while creating this content piece.
• Experiment with different cornerstone content pieces to see what works best for you. 
• Step up your content marketing and SEO results by focusing on relevant cornerstone content pieces. 
• Generate natural links back to your site by establishing yourself as an industry expert. 
• Analyze your competitors’ cornerstone content pieces to see what works best for them—work on preparing a better strategy for your business. 

Conclusion

Almost everyone is involved in creating content. But they rarely make it to the top of search engines. That is why it is time to create cornerstone content if your current content and SEO efforts hardly provide any results.

Start by analyzing the areas that confuse your target audience the most. Put yourself in their shoes to develop pieces that convey the right message. Then, make sure you educate your audience on the selected topic. Finally, be careful with attaching links to your content pieces, as the aim is to provide value to your audience while giving them the right direction on your site.

If done right, you will see a significant increase in your ranking on search engines.

FAQs