Don’t get fooled into thinking that keeping a business blog is trivial. Here’s why a cornerstone blog that provides a wealth of relevant information is an essential resource for your readers.
Ahh, blogging. This form of public journaling is one of the simplest and fastest ways to get your message across to millions of readers at the click of a button.
Keeping a business blog, however, is not without its challenges.
While your new content may be easily accessible, old posts all too often get lost in the shuffle, preventing your readers from gaining the full value of the content you have to offer. And as you struggle to maintain your blog with evergreen content, keeping readers coming back for more may seem like trying to crack an impossible code.
However, you can help maintain your blog traffic and engage your audience by providing the means to get all the information your readers need in one place. With the help of cornerstone pages, you can promoting traffic, grow your subscribers, and increase interest in your material.
Why You Need Cornerstone Content
So what sets a cornerstone page apart from a run-of-the-mill blog?
By definition, cornerstone pages are posts of massive value, meaning they’re magnets for generating traffic, views, social media interest, and discussion. They are highly shareable and are designed to provide your readers with a one-stop-shop for your content as well as frame you as the authority on your subject. Not to mention that having a large amount of content grouped into a single home page increases keyword density, allowing cornerstone pages to rank highly in searches.
Think of your content as a bicycle wheel. Right now, as your readers click on pages, they’re jumping from spoke to spoke without any type of guidance or organization. This can severely limit the value of your content by only offering them a fraction of the whole picture.
A cornerstone page acts as the hub of this wheel that all spokes radiate from. The cornerstone page hosts the most important information on your topic, and can act as a starting point for your readers before they begin delving into various types of content.
Much like actual cornerstones form the foundations of buildings, your cornerstone content will form the foundations of your blog.
4 Steps to Creating Cornerstone Content
1. Curate Content
Cornerstone pages can be created from new content, or by aggregating the content you already have and putting it together using keywords, fresh headlines, and SEO optimization. Your goal is to build a valuable page that makes it clear that you’re the expert on this topic. Why would your readers need to go anywhere else?
2. Do Some Research
Research is essential for cornerstone content. Use links to reputable sources to add credibility to your posts. Better yet, if you have access to an expert in the topic of your blog post, interview them for insider info. This can be a great way to increase the authority of your posts and give your blog a unique, competitive edge.
WebDAM demonstrates the effectiveness of visual content
3. Make Your Content Diverse
According to data gathered by WebDAM, 65 percent of people are visual learners. That’s over half of your market, and your cornerstone page needs to reflect that. Diversifying your content with images, video, charts, infographics, or even podcasts helps engage readers with different types of learning styles, increasing the outreach of your material.
4. Promote!
Once your content is written, edited, and polished, you can post it and begin promoting it anywhere you can. This last step is essential, as all of your hard work will go to waste if your readers aren’t even aware that there’s a cornerstone page to be found. This is where your SEO and keyword efforts will serve you well. Research by Business2Community via Hubspot found that 60 percent of all organic clicks go to the top three search results found. If you’re writing about a niche topic that you’ve optimized for SEO, you may find that your cornerstone page falls neatly in that category.
Conclusion
In the digital world, content creation is necessary to attract readers and build a following. However, the sea of content out there means that this is easier said than done without the help of optimized pages that are specifically created to provide value for your readers.
Cornerstone pages can give your readers in-depth knowledge and increase your web traffic, click-through rates, and subscribers. However, to reach these goals you need to make sure your page is packed with value-driven information, diverse media, and reputable links. The information is already there; it’s up to you to utilize it.
Have you created a cornerstone page for your blogging content? How have you optimized it to give value to your readers? Let us know in the comments below!
