Today, I’m sharing a major blogging secret — and my favorite strategy for creating website content that goes… boop boop boop… right to the top of the search engine results pages, or the SERPs, as people in the industry call them.
(By the way, SERP is pronounced just like slurp, but without the letter “L.”)
So, what’s the secret? It’s cornerstone content! Cornerstone content is the key to attracting more readers, building your reputation as an expert, and giving your SEO a lasting boost.
Think of pieces of cornerstone content as your blog's MVPs. Cornerstone content pieces are:
In-depth and comprehensive — Cornerstone blog posts cover a core topic within your niche in a truly definitive way.
Exceptional quality — Cornerstone content contains your best, most valuable insights; it’s content that aims to be THE go-to resource on the subject.
Foundational — Cornerstone pieces link to other related content on your blog, creating a web of interconnected knowledge, which
shows Google that a piece is important.
Evergreen — Outside of typical content updates, cornerstone pieces will be relevant for years; they’re not tied to fleeting trends.
Here’s how I teach people to work with cornerstone content.
1. Identify your cornerstone posts; I call them
“mother” posts.
Identify the top five keywords or phrases you want your blog to rank for. Use the tools I mentioned in my previous emails (including KWHero, if the promotion is still running on AppSumo). You’ll write cornerstone content of at least 2,000 (preferably 3,000+) words for each of those five keywords. These cornerstone pieces — I call them mother posts
— will be definitive guides to whatever the topic at hand is.
2. Identify “child” posts for each “mother.” For each cornerstone keyword you identify, identify another related set of five keywords you also want to rank for. For each related keyword, you’ll write blog posts of at least 1,200 words — I call them child posts. Each child post will link back to its mother.
3. Write the child
posts first, then the mother posts. I find that it’s a lot easier to write child posts first. Then, when you write the related mother post, you can simply include in it a summary of what’s already in the child post and link back to it. Make sure you create links between mother posts and their child posts. Doing so lets the search engines know which pages relate and which are most important. It also gives readers a great experience by allowing them to dive in and out of details to
explore what interests them most.
Here’s a mind map I created a few years back while teaching this topic in my Blog Your Brilliance program. The white ovals — those with Keywords 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 — represent the cornerstone topics and mother posts. The colored ovals off to the side represent the child posts.
Now, it’s your turn. Look at the keywords you decided on. Think about your ideal
reader's biggest use cases, pain points, triggers, and frequently asked questions. Those are great places to start.
For example, if your audience struggles with social media, a cornerstone piece might be "The Social Media Strategy Playbook: From Goals to Growth." Child posts that spin-off from the mother post might be:
Batch Creation for Social Media: Saving Time, Maximizing Consistency
Social Media Analytics:
Understanding the Numbers that Matter
The Art of the Engaging Caption: Writing that Hooks Your Audience
It takes effort to create cornerstone content, but the payoff for your blog's growth is absolutely worth it!
