How Can I Make Foundational Content That Google Appreciates?

This article will teach you everything you need to know about cornerstone content, also known as evergreen content. You'll discover what it is, why it's important for SEO, how to create it, and how to link your posts to your cornerstone articles.

What is Cornerstone Content?

Your website's core is made up of cornerstone content. It's made up of your site's best and most important articles and the pages or posts you want to rank first in search results. Cornerstone articles are usually long, informative articles that combine insights from various blog posts and cover all of the important aspects of a topic.

Rather than selling products, their goal is to provide the best and most complete information on a given topic. Nonetheless, they should perfectly reflect your company or communicate your mission.

A blog post or a page can serve as cornerstone content. Whatever they are, make sure they're well-written, updated frequently, and geared toward ranking for your most competitive keywords.

Why is it so important to have cornerstone articles for SEO?

The importance of cornerstone content in any SEO strategy cannot be overstated. It can be difficult to rank for highly competitive search terms, but using a cornerstone approach can help you beat the competition. If you write many articles on the same topic, Google needs to know which is the most important. If you don't, you'll be sabotaging your own chances of appearing high in search results. Google can tell which article is the most important by using the proper internal link structure between your posts.

Structuring cornerstone content

Your website's cornerstone articles should be prominently displayed. Someone should be able to go straight from your homepage to your cornerstone articles in the ideal world. Also, all of your other posts on related topics should link back to the cornerstone article so its importance is clear from the structure of your site. As your site grows, you'll write several new blog posts about the same subject, each linking back to your cornerstone article. This internal linking structure will improve your cornerstone content articles' chances of being found in Google searches.

The following metaphor may assist you in comprehending this concept: Assume you're looking at a state or country map. Small towns and large cities will be linked in some way. On the other hand, the big cities will have far more roads leading to them than the small towns. Those are the cities that receive the most links, and they are your cornerstones. Small towns are where you write about more specific topics. A few roads (links) lead to them, but not nearly as many as there are to the larger cities.

How to produce pillar content that Google adores 

Let's go over the seven steps you'll need to follow in order to create your own cornerstone content now that we've established what it is and why you need it.

1. Choosing a topic and a format for your content

In fact, I would argue that choosing the appropriate subject for your cornerstone content piece is just as critical as the execution in this process' initial stage.

Start by imagining yourself in the shoes of your target audience, as these are the people you're trying to reach with your content. Pose questions like these:

• What are the major issues that my target customers face? What are the most pressing concerns they have?

• Which of those issues hasn't already been addressed by existing web content? Is there anything they need to know that they aren't getting answers to?

• Are there any of those issues that you're uniquely qualified to address? Do you have any unique knowledge, insight, or data that could be useful to people dealing with these issues?

Allow plenty of time to consider these issues. Collect suggestions from all members of your company. Speak with your current clients! The content you use as a cornerstone must be relevant to your target market.

When you've discovered a compelling problem or question, conduct competitive research to ensure you have something unique. A bed purchasing guide, for instance, may seem like a wonderful idea for a cornerstone content article, but the market is already crowded (and shockingly contested!) and you may not be able to provide anything new or 10X better than what's currently there.

2. Perform keyword research.

Conducting keyword research is the next step after choosing a topic. You should make sure there is a healthy keyword search traffic associated with your chosen topic since keyword volume is an indication of interest and demand. 

If many people search for something on Google or other search engines, you have a great chance of capturing that traffic and making a great first impression of your company.

Let's pretend we're trying to come up with a great cornerstone content piece for a men's grooming boutique that sells vintage shaving supplies, beard oil, mustache wax, and all that hipster nonsense. Based on a brief search on WordStream's Free term Tool, I can tell that the term "how to grow a beard faster" is VERY popular.

3. Content Strategy

Do it yourself or hire someone else to do it?

First, decide whether you'll create all of your content in-house or outsource it. Your current personnel and resources will largely determine this. You can probably do it in-house if you have a dedicated marketing team. It can be difficult to devote the necessary time and effort while keeping the rest of your business running if you're a one- or two-person operation.

Set some goals for yourself.

Think like a project manager and set some milestones to keep the project moving forward, no matter how you plan to make it. Remember that your cornerstone content piece must be truly amazing, so don't expect it to be completed in a few days.

Assemble your resources

Estimate the cost of your content piece and set aside a budget for it. Depending on the type of content you're trying to create, these costs will vary significantly. Costs that could be incurred include:

• Freelance writer fees (don't scrimp on this – a good freelance writer can charge up to a dollar per word)

• Costs of design

• The cost of development

• Budget for promotion (social media promotion can be quite cost-effective for content amplification)

4. The creation of content

It's finally time to roll up your sleeves (and, since you're so dapper and hip, maybe some sleeve braces) and start working on your content piece.

This process will look different depending on your topic and format, but whatever you choose, keep the following points in mind:

• Here, quality is extremely important. You want to stake your brand's reputation on this content. It should be completely accurate, extremely helpful, and provide prospects with a true "Wow" experience. So, to create it, hire the best talent you can afford, and leave time for review and revision. If you can, get an expert opinion before you launch it.

 • Quality is a general term that covers a range of elements. This content item should be aesthetically appealing, easy to use, and navigate regardless of the device visitors are using.

• Keep a close eye on your keyword research! Those keywords you mentioned earlier should appear naturally in your content's text. Allow them to shape the structure of your work. For example, your beard guide should have a "chapter" or section on how long it takes to grow a beard.

• It's critical to match intent. Try to take on a topic that you know inside and out, and make sure your content solves the problem and gets your visitor where they want to go. (Do you really want a 59 percent approval rating?)

5. Enhancement

Cornerstone content's primary objective is to draw in new customers and form their opinion of your business. However, since you're attempting to grow, you'll want to make sure your material is optimized for organic search. In an ideal world, it should be a resource that people want to bookmark and return to. In order for people to find it when surfing Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, it should also be optimized for sharing.

6. Publicity

It would be absurd to put so much effort into a piece of content and then fail to promote it. You want it to be noticed. Because new content takes time to rank in organic search (especially if you're a new company! ), you'll need to find other ways to get your content in front of people.

7. Maintenance

Give your beautiful creation a few months to gather attention, shares, and links while keeping an eye on performance. At first, the majority of traffic will likely come from email and social media, but over time, you should see traffic from organic search as well.