Table of Contents
What Is Pillar Content or Cornerstone Content?
Cornerstone content is foundation content, or commonly referred to as pillar content. This is very important for the optimization of On-Page SEO strategies. When you are on this page, then keep reading, we will discuss it in depth. What is the cornerstone content about?
Through this article, you will know why it is important for SEO, how to write this kind of content. And, how do you implement an internal link-building strategy, through this kind of great content?
Why is this type of content called great? Soon you will know.
Cornerstone Content is?
Foundation content is the core of your website. It consists of the best articles, the most important; the page or post you want to rank highest on the search engine.
Foundation articles are usually relatively long, informative in form, incorporating insights from various blog posts. And covers everything important about a particular topic.
The focus of cornerstone content is to provide the best and most complete information! About certain topics, rather than just selling products. However, this must reflect your business or communicate your mission perfectly.
How do you apply cornerstone content?
Cornerstone content can be applied in the form of blog posts or pages. However, you must make sure it is very well written, update it frequently, and aims to get ranked for the most competitive keywords.
Why is the article foundation so important for SEO?
Cornerstone content, or cornerstone content, plays an important role in any SEO strategy. And this is part of the On-Page SEO strategy. The whole point of SEO.
It might be difficult for you to rank for a very popular search term, but a foundation content approach, it can help you overcome the most competitive search terms.
If you write a lot of articles on a similar topic, you need to tell Google, which of these articles is the most important.
If not, you will undermine your own chances, to get a good ranking in search results.
In this case, you must build the correct internal link structure strategy between your posts to tell Google, which article is the most important.
So What Should Be Done?
Okay, let’s get started. The first thing to do is to create this type of content. And then build a strategy, so the search engine algorithm knows that it’s the most important content on your site.
The first trick is through the internal link/link structure.
Link Structure For Pillars
The foundation article must have a prominent place on your website. Ideally, one should be able to click directly from the homepage to the grounding article.
Also, all your other posts, on similar topics, must be linked back to the appropriate foundation article. So, the importance is clear from the structure of your site.
As your site grows, you will write a large number of your blog posts. Of course, approaching the topic from various other angles. Each has a link or backlink to your foundation article.
This internal link structure, will increase the possibility of ranking, article your foundation content in Google search.
Cornerstone Content Metaphor
I will share a little picture, of how cornerstone content works. At least, to understand the basic principles.
Imagine, you are looking at a map of a state or country. In small cities and big cities, everything will be interconnected, somehow.
But big cities will have more roads than small cities. These cities are your foundation, receiving the most links. Small towns are your posts on more specific topics. There are several roads (links) to get there, but not as many big cities.
A more concrete example: I wrote many different posts about SEO Techniques, each looking at different aspects of the SEO steps.
The foundation article for this topic, titled;Â What is SEO? And every time I write a new post about SEO, I add a link to that foundation article.
By doing that, I will explain to Google, “What is SEO” is the most important article about SEO on our site. Thus, increasing opportunities for ranking.
Which Article Is The Foundation?
Choose your pillar carefully. Think of the four or five pages that you want someone to read when they first visit your website.
These articles should form the foundation of your site.
Which article is most important to you? Which is the most complete and authoritative? Does it target the keywords you want to rank the most?
The concept of foundation content is very important! This is also the reason for one of the most popular plugins in the world such as Yoast SEO, including the option to indicate whether an article is a foundation content.
If you mark an article as cornerstone content, this plugin will help you write kick-ass articles and build a solid internal link structure.
Cornerstone Content And Yoast SEO
The term cornerstone content is indeed from Yoast SEO. Generally, you can call it pillar content or foundation content.
Well, because of the cornerstone content from Yoast SEO, the mechanism of how it works, and how to implement it, we will discuss it in terms of Yoast SEO.
If you are not a Yoast SEO user, that doesn’t matter. By understanding the basics, functions, and how to build this type of content, then it can be applied even without using this plugin.
Yoast SEO plugin is actually just a tool to make it easy. And cornerstone content practice, you can apply it manually.
In the classic editor, the Yoast meta box has a Cornerstone content toggle. In the block editor, there is one in the sidebar.
Marking the foundation article means that you can make a list in the post overview, so you can easily work to improve it.
And, most importantly, the link suggestion tool in the Yoast SEO premium version will give priority to the articles that you mark as grounding content.
So, you will never forget to provide a link to an article that is specified as cornerstone content, when you create an article whose topic is related.
If your website is very large, you will have more pillars. It might be writing more than one topic, so be sure to choose a foundation article by category.
How To Optimize Pillar Content With Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO offers several functions that help you optimize grounding content, including text link counters, analysis of specific grounding content, and – this is in Premium – even internal link suggestions, where grounding articles take priority over other posts.
Text Link Counter
With Yoast SEO you can filter your foundation articles in the post overview to see how many internal links a post shows. And how many posts are connected?
This text link counter is very useful because you can see at a glance if your grounding content has enough links from other related posts:
Foundation Analysis
If you really want to make your foundation article great, you need content analysis specifically for the pillars. Content that is marked as a foundation, will be rated more stringently than usual for SEO and legibility in the analysis because you want this article to be longer, have excellent content, keep readers’ attention and rank high.
Internal Linking Suggestions
In Yoast SEO Premium there is an internal link feature. As well as the analytical function of using the most prominent words in the text to determine which articles are related – and hence, you must link them.
Platform articles are treated differently in the calculation of internal link suggestions because they are more important and have a higher value.
To give this article more prominence, the Yoast plugin places the grounding article at the top of the list of internal linking suggestions. That makes it easier for you to link to your important articles.
How To Make A Foundation Article
Several steps must be prepared when creating foundation content.
5 Steps To Making Cornerstone Content
Ideally, you should do extensive keyword research, which will help you produce a very good, long, informative, and beautifully written foundation article.
But what if you don’t have much time? And what if you have written many articles? Follow these five steps to create the best foundation content.
Step 1: Think About Your Keywords
You must decide the important keywords that you want to rank. Your article foundation must be optimized for ‘head’ or most competitive keywords, so make sure to do some keyword research.
Step 2: Choose The Best Post
Look for posts that are optimized for keywords that surround the most important keywords. Which post do you think is the best? That will be your foundation from now on!
Step 3: Rewrite
Rewrite your foundation article. Make it extraordinary and SEO-friendly. Because runway articles are usually long, pay extra attention to readability. Make sure you use a lot of headlines. An index at the beginning of a long runway article is also a good idea.
Expand your article and make sure it is really up to date. And don’t forget to rewrite and update the article regularly.
Step 4: Optimize Your Other Posts For The Long Tail Variant
Other blog posts on topics similar to runway articles should be optimized for the long tail variant of the ‘head’ keyword that you attack in your runway article.
Step 5: Connect From Tail To Head
You should tell Google that your new grounding article is the most important article on that topic on your site. Don’t forget to link all long articles to your foundation article!
Achievement!
In real life, maybe you don’t have time to develop such complicated structures. Still, writing articles on a particular topic often inspires me to write articles on similar topics.
You should then try to optimize the second post, for slightly different focus keywords and link this post internally.
Every time you write a post, you should think of a similar post that you have written and link it.
Do you already have an important article about this, though it’s not entirely awesome? If you use Yoast SEO Premium, there will be a kind of notification for internal link suggestions.
Also, make sure you set the correct link structure. This doesn’t take up much of your time and can really help to rank your most important articles.
Look at all the posts about the topic that you have written. And add links to your most important article of all your posts, about that particular topic.
You can use a text link counter like Yoast to regularly check that there are enough internal links to your important articles.
ALSO READ: How To Start A Blog In 2023 For Beginners
