It may be cliché, but content remains supreme in the world of online marketing. How else can consumers make the right decisions or Internet users find the information they’re looking for?
But not all types of content work the same way, and in this already competitive field, it pays to have a few bets out there that will likely win—that is, help someone achieve their marketing goals, whether it’s to build brand awareness or sell a product or service.
One of the essential types of content is called cornerstone. Now, what is it?
Cornerstone is the content that serves as the foundation or core of a website that wants to be visible based on its chosen keywords. They are the ones that:
- Drive the right traffic to the right page
- Bring leads deeper into the sales funnel
- Gain the best favor from search engines, especially Google
- Engage Internet users until they become leads and then, later, customers (and loyal ones at that)
- Best represent the brand
This type of content doesn’t fall into the following wrong ideas:
1. It Has to Be Long
Many marketing experts today suggest writing long-form content. These can be landing pages, blog posts, podcast transcripts, or any text-based content between 700 and 1,000 words.
The rationale behind writing a long article is simple: it’s much easier to make the article more valuable. You can squeeze in more information, add more relevant keywords, provide more desirable outbound links, get more opportunities to promote the website’s essential pages, mention the brand more organically, and show off one’s credibility and authority in the field.
In other words, long-type content is likely to gain favor from both Internet users and Google.
Considering the essence of the cornerstone content, it does pay to make it long. However, it still depends on many factors, such as the goal of the content, the audience, the keyword, and the topic of the content. Online business owners can work with a digital marketing agency to help determine its direction and objective.
In the end, there’s no need to write a 1,000-word article for something that one can explain in 500 words or less.
2. The Cornerstone Content Should Be the Landing Page
What is a landing page? It is one of the pages of the website that users land on. It is often separate from a blog post or the website’s homepage, but it is always intentional or purposeful. One can use it to capture email addresses to build a mailing list or sell a product or service. To achieve the goal, it provides a specific call to action.
It is not surprising to make the cornerstone content into the site’s landing page. As mentioned, it can be the best representation of the brand. It can be comprehensive in scope and excellent in quality that it hooks readers, engages them, and, ultimately, drives them deeper into the customers’ journey.
But a cornerstone content can also be a blog post, an infographic, or specific content that can help the business rank well in search engines.
3. It Needs to Be only a Single Page
A lot of those that fall into the category of cornerstone content are just a single page. In reality, they can also become a series of long-form content or short blog posts. In fact, publishing the cornerstone content as a series can have many benefits for the website:
- It makes every topic discussion more precise and tighter.
- A content series can deliver more regular traffic to the site.
- It is a great tool for target marketing.
- Publishing a series of content can improve one’s credibility and authority.
- Breaking down what could be uber-long content makes it more engaging and less tedious to read.
4. Cornerstone Is Evergreen
There’s no doubt that the best cornerstone content is one whose information will last for a long time—to be more specific, years. Just imagine this as the foundation of a home. You want them to be stable indefinitely so that they can support all parts of the house.
However, that doesn’t mean that the content can’t benefit from an update, especially when new data can strengthen one’s claim, make the previous idea obsolete, or make the article more valuable and credible to the audience. Hubspot itself believes that repurposing content can be a powerful online marketing strategy.
By knowing what cornerstone content is—and what it’s not—you can create something that benefits your target market and search engines.