What is Cornerstone Content and How to Use It to Establish Your Brand Authority?

What is cornerstone content? As the name suggests, it is the foundational content of a website. Cornerstone content creates a focal point for your business offerings, establishing a definitive site hierarchy, and providing substantial information in line with your USP. For search engines, this facilitates crawling, indexing, highlighting your primary keywords, and establishing your niche authority. For users, cornerstone content should be relevant, engaging, and provide evergreen value without any obtrusive selling.

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What Constitutes Cornerstone Content?

Cornerstone content is often misconstrued as a standalone viral post or a CTA-driven webpage with high organic traffic or conversions. On the contrary, cornerstone content represents a comprehensive approach to link-building and content marketing. It is never limited to a single content piece but a collation of interconnected posts (text/images/video/audio) that provide comprehensive coverage of an important topic. By strategically interlinking, complementing, and citing one another, cornerstone content functions as an all-inclusive, cohesive, and robust resource for the target audience. Any reputed content marketing company your reach out to will incorporate the following attributes in developing your website’s cornerstone content:-

Holistic Coverage- Provide in-depth information on a core topic that is highly relevant to your target audience.
High-Authority- Establishes your authority, expertise, and credibility in the field (as an organization, business, or brand).
Premium Quality- Meticulously researched and accurate, going way beyond superficial coverage or clickbait posts.
Perennial- The topics covered are not topical and the information doesn’t lose relevance with time. (Hence the need to review and tweak these pages regularly to keep the information evergreen).
Linking and Share-Worthy- Focal point of your website for organic backlinks and social sharing.
Prominence- Prominently placed in your sitemap to solicit the attention of search engines and end users.

What is the Significance of Cornerstone Content?

While the aforementioned points have suitably answered the pivotal question of ‘what is cornerstone content?’, it is often wondered why businesses should invest time and effort into creating this valuable and comprehensive content resource. Well, the significance of cornerstone content is multifaceted and can be outlined as follows:-

Fosters Brand Building– By portraying your authority and expertise as a go-to source for credible information.
Boosts Organic Search Visibility– By ensuring your webpages have methodical interlinking, valuable backlinks, as well as well-optimized and well-structured content.
Prompts Social Sharing and Engagement- Users find it easier to share your content resources to foster higher engagement.
Functions as a Hub for Internal Linking– Helps both users and search engines navigate your site easily with a cohesive flow of valuable information.
Ensures Consistent and Relevant Web Traffic– Focusing on primary keywords in cornerstone content ensures relevant organic traffic.
Boosts Lead Generation– Using the right lead magnets (gated content, webinar invites, newsletter subscription) in cornerstone content pages will fetch high-quality leads.

How to Use Cornerstone Content to Establish Your Brand Authority?

Hiring a reputed content marketing company is recommended to create compelling cornerstone content and leverage it for maximum ROI. Irrespective of whether this project is initiated in-house or outsourced, businesses should be aware that it warrants consistent efforts and long-term strategizing. The best approach to use cornerstone content to establish your brand authority can be outlined as follows:-

Select the Right Subject– This should be of high interest to your target audience and broad enough to be divided into topics and sub-topics.
Conduct In-Depth Research– Reliable sources, case studies, metrics, case studies, expert insights, and more.
Create Exhaustive Content– Cover every possible niche and always structure the content impeccably for high readability.
Ensure Content Diversity– High content memorability is only possible if the textual content is suitably interspersed with captivating infographics and videos.
Optimize with the Right Keywords– Adhere to white-hat SEO methods and steer clear of keyword stuffing.
Interlink Related Content– Plan and link content pieces for a cohesive reading experience.
Content Syndication– Promote your cornerstone pages via the right channels.
Regular Updating– Even though the topic is evergreen, periodic updates are necessary to keep the cornerstone content fresh and relevant.

Conclusion

Focusing on cornerstone content certainly doesn’t imply that businesses ignore other content pages. In an ocean of mediocre content that has flooded the internet today, the only way to stand out as a brand is to have exceptional content. Your overall content marketing strategy should focus on providing maximum value and engagement for your target audience. At the end of the day, robust cornerstone content lies at the apex of a holistic, ICP-driven content marketing campaign for longstanding brand momentum.

Author Bio: – Rudra Kumar is an Assistant General Manager of search operations at Techmagnate with more than 10+ years of experience in search engine optimisation. He has helped many businesses in growing revenue via search engines of his strengths.