Cornerstone Content and Getting More Traffic
This week’s live Q&A session focused on creating cornerstone content, AKA pillar posting or evergreen content. We also talked a bit about Elementor vs Cornerstone, how to prepare for the tax man and what other YouTubers we all watch and like. That kind of lead onto me asking my subscribers what they liked, or didn’t like, about my videos, and what they would like to see more of. I wasn’t fishing for compliments but got some great feedback so, thanks for that. Your feedback is always welcome.
I briefly introduced the changes I’ve been making to the WP Eagle site and it’s looking good, Hopefully, it is more user-friendly, and I’ll be ramping up the content, so there’s always something fresh and new.
Cornerstone Content/Pillar Posting/Evergreen Content
Our main topic of conversation this week was how to create cornerstone content and why (from here on in, we’ll call it cornerstone content).
What Is Cornerstone Content?
You may have heard the terms ‘cornerstone content’ or ‘pillar posting’. They both mean the same thing. They are the really meaty pieces of content on your website that you want to rank highly for in the search engines. They are the hubs of important content that then link to lots of smaller articles on your site. They are usually thoroughly researched, well written, longer pieces of content with images, video, graphs and graphics.
Which articles on your website are the most authoritative? You’ve probably got a few pages on your website that you want people to land on and read when they first hit your website. Are these the articles written about the keywords you want to rank for? Then these articles are the cornerstones, or pillars, of your website.
Why Produce Cornerstone Content?
Because it’s good for SEO! Cornerstone content could help you rank for those more popular, and therefore more competitive, keywords. If you write lots of articles on the same sorts of thing, you need to carefully use internal links to tell Google which article is the most important.
Your cornerstone content and articles should sit quite close to the surface of your website. In other words, a user should be able to go from your home page straight through to one of your cornerstone articles. Then, all your other, shorter posts should link back to their relevant cornerstone article.
Use your cornerstone article to create lots of shorter satellite articles and link each one back to the cornerstone piece. This internal linking structure will help your chances of your cornerstone content ranking higher.
How to Generate Cornerstone Content
Cornerstone articles are usually long, informative blog posts or pages that contain your most competitive keywords. They are supposed to be long and well researched and written but it’s worth the time and effort. You can update and refresh the content regularly to ensure its longevity.
Here are a few top tips to writing cornerstone content:
- Because the articles are generally very long, use lots of headings and sub-headings
- Add an index at the beginning of the article
- Think long and hard about your keywords
- Go through your existing content and find your best/most popular post and use that as a basis for your cornerstone content
- Make sure you get the linking structure right between your cornerstone content and your shorter, more specific posts
- Aim to have a handful of cornerstone pieces on your website
- Update and pad out your cornerstone content on a regular basis
- Use Yoast SEO plugin – it has a feature where you can indicate the articles that are cornerstone content. This will help the search engines identify the posts that most represent your brand or niche
Get in touch if you have any questions about Cornerstone Content. If you liked the video, you can subscribe to the WP Eagle YouTube channel here.
PLUS, if you haven’t already, check out the new WP Eagle t-shirts on sale. Thanks to everyone who has bought one. If you’ve bought one, don’t forget to send us a picture!
