How to Write Cornerstone Content that is Guaranteed to Dominate in Any Niche

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2 years ago

If you’re a niche marketer trying to compete for organic traffic that you can turn into subscribers and, ultimately, sales, you need to use every tool available to you to dominate in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

As the years have passed, Google and other search engines have published guidelines for how they want bloggers and site owners to operate if they want to achieve high rankings.

Whenever a loophole is identified, such as high quantity, low value posting, or keyword stuffing, they alter their algorithm to weed out the offenders and elevate the true niche leaders to the top of the SERPs. in other words, they reward the authority niche leaders who play by their rules. Google and other search engines do not punish website owners ( contrary to popular opinion), but they do definitely reward some types of toeing the line.

It is a game for spammers and scammers to beat the system. Sadly this has resulted in tighter rules for everyone as Google constantly attempts to stamp out these parasites.

Getting indexed is the easy part – but getting ranked well is a highly competitive endeavor that you need to be prepared for. One way you can boost your rankings is by focusing on the creation and use of pillar blog posts.

If you don't understand the difference between getting indexed and ranked, you may find this helpful -

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/thecatherine/blog/whats-the-...

What is a Corner Stone Article?

These are comprehensive content pieces that give visitors a well-rounded and in-depth understanding of your niche topic. Because of the size and value required for pillar posts, it’s helpful if you have a formula to follow whenever you’re creating them.

Back in the day, when I first started to work online(1996) an average webpage was 300 words, there were no keywords. There wasn't enough content on the web to have the need to stand out. ( sighing heavily and nostalgically).

Don't be a wimp, Catherine, we are where we are; get on with your article and stop wandering. You haven't got dementia yet.(Please don't answer to the contrary in comments, spare my feelings)

Below, you’ll find a 15-step process for leveraging pillar posts to your advantage when it comes to niche marketing. You’ll be able to earn favor with search engines that result in more traffic, more subscribers, and higher earnings for you.

1. Cornerstone Articles Rank Well

The first step is to familiarize yourself with pillar posts and why search engines prefer them. Search engines are looking for rich content, not necessarily keyword-rich content. While they definitely want keywords to help guide them on what your blog post content is about, many marketers in the past paid no attention to the value they were providing and instead simply stuffed a short piece of content with as many keywords as possible.

Google is looking for blog posts that are authentic and that hold worth for the reader. It is no longer possible to rank well by simply creating dozens or hundreds of short, thin content pieces and expecting search bots to index you above the competition. If you offer value, you will sound more authentic and will have taken the first steps to become an authority and stand out.

If you have been advised by other leaders to scrape content from other bloggers or to do the bare minimum in order to post as frequently as possible, you have been misled about what will help you rank well in the SERPs. Fortunately, the training here does not mislead you in any way, but there are still sales pages out there that encourage this.

Google is now rewarding pillar blog posts. From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense. Imagine you’re a user on the Internet looking for information. If you go to Google and every result they provide is useless, you’ll go elsewhere – start using Bing or DuckDuckGo, for example.

Google wants to be the primary search engine for people, so they are constantly tweaking their algorithm to spot and reward sites with information that delivers a wonderful experience for their users. This, of course, increases Google's profit which is what this is really all about.

This includes not only typical SEO measures such as fast loading pages and mobile-friendly sites, but also comprehensive information that leaves readers fully satisfied whenever they eventually exit your site.

2. Find the First 10 Topics You Want Your Blog to Rank for

Once you understand the value of pillar posts and why Google and other search engines prefer them, it’ll be time to begin mapping out plans for your own high-ranking pillar blog posts.

Initially, brainstorm ten topics that you want to have your blog ranking well for. These are the primary ten ideas that come to mind whenever you think of your niche. For example, if you’re in the Internet marketing niche, you can easily think of 10 common topics.

Those might be topics like list building, email marketing, blogging, SEO, social networking, info product creation, affiliate marketing, video marketing, private label rights, and low content printables.

If you’re in the weight loss niche, you might choose things like calorie deficit, obesity health problems, low carb dieting, exercise, mindset, mindful eating, and more. Just pick the first topics that easily come to mind.

Giving yourself a starting point helps you keep up momentum later, whenever you finish one pillar post so that you can quickly and easily move on to the next – but also keep an eye out for the information you want to bookmark or make note of to go in future posts.

You might want to start a mind map using a tool like Mind Meister so you can visually see the topics, how they connect, and the hierarchy of what should logically be published first.

If you can’t come up with ten topics, do a little research. You can use keyword tools to help you. For weight loss, you might add on things like motivation, intermittent fasting, meal plans and more.

You can even go to a site like Amazon and look in the table of contents for books on the topic to see what all is included. For example, when you take a peek at the Weight Loss Kit for Dummies book there, you might get ideas for fat burning supplements, cooking options that reduce calories (like baking over frying), etc.

3. Follow the Prince and read every single thing he has written on Keywords

Start with the basics first.

Whether you’re talking about a health issue, relationships, success or something else, the outer layer that is presented to your audience first should be an introduction and summary of what is about to unfold deeper in the content.

The fundamental information can touch on the basics people need and want to know. These are things you’ll be able to think of off the top of your head. For example, you can talk about how overwhelming it is for people to have to try to pick yet another weight loss plan after failing to shed pounds so many times before.

You can highlight the sheer volume of choices they have to choose from, the hybrid approach of nutrition, exercise, and mindset that goes into it, and give them an idea of how you plan to present the solution they need.

For example, your slant might be to talk about how things need to go in a logical order. In the Internet marketing niche, you’d typically teach someone how to pick a niche before you would teach them how to create their own info product.

Or, you might let them know that your pillar post is going to cover the five best ways to lose weight without going to extremes. Whenever many ghostwriters. or PLR writers create content for their clients; they answer the six primary questions people want to know.

First, who is the content best for? If you’re targeting people who have continued failing, people who are over 50, men or women, people who have diabetes, etc. – tell them! You want people to weed themselves out.

Second, answer the basic question of what it is that you’re going to teach them. You can present the basic solution before digging in deep to back up your recommendation or discuss the strategy more.

Sometimes, there’s a matter of when something can take place, and this is the third basic question people will have. For example, it might be a matter of when you can plant a garden, which will follow the question of what type of garden I should plant.

Another question people like to know is where something will take place. Sometimes, you might be pointing them elsewhere, such as to a resource where they can buy what they need or you’ll be discussing how big their garden needs to be. If they want a herb garden, they will need less space than if they want a cherry orchard. Where they will garden may be the next question. Following on the heels of where would be the question of what equipment they will need. For instance, if they are following the no-dig method of gardening, don't write a review of spades.

The question of why is another important one to cover in the fundamentals of your pillar posts. Don’t just discuss the fact that people should lose weight or start an at-home business – tell them why.

For example, they need to lose weight to prevent health problems like a heart attack or diabetes – or so they feel good and look good for themselves. They need to start a business so that they’ll have financial freedom and be able to set their own schedule. Or they can learn how to write pillar posts ( Congratulations, you are following this thus far, for instructions on how to slap Catherine's wrist, see the end of the article!)

And lastly, answer the question of how something is achieved. Don't assume that your reader will automatically know. You’re initially giving a broad indication, such as, “choose one of the following five diet plans and pair it with an exercise program of your choice.”Or "Is exercise important to weight loss?

Remember, these are all the surface-level basics you’re providing that many others will have on their blog. The only difference is that’s where they’ll stop, and it’s where you’re just getting started.

6. Add Some Curated Information to Bolster Your Talking Points

One of the things Google is saying is beneficial to your content is if you have more than one resource on your page. This is where curation can come in handy and help you present a more well-rounded pillar blog post to your target audience.

Curation is the act of gathering information from multiple sources in small bits and pieces, presenting it to your audience, and expanding on it with a discussion of your own. If you don't know what curated content is, then read this post - this is an example of curated content

Many people liken this to what a museum curator does. For example, if they are wanting to host an exhibit about the Titanic or King Tut, they will go to multiple sources and try to acquire pieces for the exhibit that they can borrow for their visitors.

When the exhibit takes place, similar to when you publish your content, the people who show up will not only see the items that were borrowed to complete the exhibit, but they will also hear an additional discussion by the museum personnel who are hosting the event about each piece and how it is all connected.

Curation can benefit you in many different ways when you are creating pillar blog posts. First and foremost, it helps beef up your content so that you have more of what the audience is looking for.

Even if you are an expert or authority figure in your niche, it never hurts to get additional insight from your competitors or other experts who can provide good information for your audience.

For example, if you are creating a pillar blog post about social networking and you want to acquire a quote from another source to include in your post and then expand on the idea, you might quote Seth Godin who said, “You can use social media to turn strangers into friends, friends into customers, and customers into salespeople.”

You can include this quote as text or create a social quote poster image for it that will help break up the text in your long pillar blog post. Make sure you save the file name as something relevant to the topic and also use alt tags to describe it.

Then, you can discuss the concept with your readers. You are using the curated quote as a springboard for a bigger discussion. In this case, you will talk more about how social media helps your followers get to know you better and form a loyal bond with you as a brand or business owner.

Then you can discuss how this type of relationship can lead to increased trust and brand loyalty where they feel comfortable spending money with you. You can also talk about how these loyal customers will ultimately increase your sales by using word of mouth and social sharing strategies.

Whenever you curate information to add to your pillar blog post, make sure you are including a link back to the person who originally created that information. You will want the link to open in another tab, but whenever a visitor clicks on it they can get back to your article.

This is another way in which curation can benefit you. Many site owners pay attention to links pointing to their site. If they follow the link and see that you’ve quoted them or used their insight as a talking point, they might then share the link to your post with their audience because it makes them look good.

7. Research for New Trends and Breaking News You Can Include

Part of being a good leader to your people includes being the person on the frontlines who stays aware of new information and then informs the masses about it. Not everyone has time to tune in to the news, read magazines or watch the Internet for updated information.

If you can position your blog as a go-to site that always has a finger on the pulse of the niche topic, they’ll be able to bookmark your blog and return to it with confidence that if anything new and relevant has emerged, you’re going to tell them about it.

How do you research? There are different ways, but after you’ve developed your basic content and curated some additional expertise, you can begin looking for new or different information you can include as the next step in your pillar blog post creation process.

First, look at news sites. They do more than parrot the political talking points. They have sections for health, science, and industries, as well as a variety of lifestyle topics being unveiled.

For example, FoxNews.com has an article about secret spending by spouses that can strengthen relationships. This would be good for a new twist for either a relationship or a financial (debt/credit) blog.

Over on CNN.com, they have an article about how to talk about how to talk to your kids about weight – a good concept to add in a pillar post on a parenting site or a weight loss site.

You can be on the lookout for consumer and trade magazines who have topics you want to include in your pillar post. Type into Google: weight loss women magazine and go to images and you’ll see cover after cover with tons of hints about trends and new information.

For example, the covers of Woman’s World magazine and First for Women have several articles about how gut microbes affect weight. That might be something you hadn’t considered adding yet, so you can then go conduct some further research by Googling the topic to learn more.

You can use other media formats to learn, too. Look on YouTube for information about your niche and filter it by the newest content. Do the same on TikTok, where doctors, lawyers, and other professionals have set up accounts to share new information and data about trends with their followers.

Look on iTunes and Spotify for podcasts on the topic of your niche so you can listen to what your competitors are saying. And always, always be absorbing information from books, too.

You, as a niche leader, should be on a quest to continue lifelong learning and constantly boost your knowledge about a topic. Look on Google for things like weight loss studies or search for studies that show women who lost weight. One way to do this is to install Google alerts.

When you type in weight loss study, you see results like this that talk about a new experimental drug that is breaking records for weight loss. That might be something you add to your pillar post – and discuss safety, long-term success, and more.

When you type in studies, showing that women who lost weight, you might see this article that talks about the primary reasons why women wanted to lose weight – health, appearances, etc.

It’s beneficial for you to quote studies and trials and data that can boost your talking points within a pillar blog post. Does extra research take time? Yes! Pillar blog posts are not something where you sit down, and 10 minutes later, you’re publishing authority content that is quality.

You might spend days or even a week researching information for your pillar posts. This is why it’s helpful to have several ideas mapped out beforehand – because if you happen to stumble upon some good information that’s relevant to your niche but not quite right for that particular post, you can place it in one of the other pillar posts you plan on creating. I use Evernote a free tool to collect ideas for cornerstone posts.

8. Answer Important Questions Consumers Have About Your Topic

Sometimes, using keyword tools is a great way to see what questions people have about your niche topic. After you’ve created the basic post, and added additional expertise and research, you’ll want to zero in on what the people are asking for to make sure you’re delivering a full account for them.

Start with your keyword tool. Whether it’s free or paid, you can get good ideas about what people want to know. For example, if you’re in the Internet marketing niche and your pillar post is about affiliate marketing, you can go to Google and type in how do affiliate marketers, and you’ll see results like this:

* How do affiliate marketers make money

* How do affiliate marketers get paid

* How do affiliate marketers promote products

* How do affiliate marketers pay taxes

* How do affiliate marketers use Instagram

* How do affiliate marketers get started for beginners

All of those are items you can include in your pillar post. And you can use different starters like do affiliate marketers and you’ll see new ideas like:

* Do affiliate marketers need a website

* Do affiliate marketers need a license

* Do affiliate marketers make good money

There are other tools you can use, too. Besides just spying on the consumers when you lurk in forums and read comments on competitors’ blogs and on social media, you can use sites like AnswerThePublic.com and Quora.

On AnswerThePublic, if you type in affiliate marketing, you get results like this:

* Is affiliate marketing legit/safe/profitable

* Can affiliate marketing make you rich

* How is affiliate marketing different from network marketing

* Which affiliate marketing program pays the best

And if you search on Quora for affiliate marketing, you’ll see that people want to know:

* How can you learn affiliate marketing

* How difficult is affiliate marketing

* How can you start affiliate marketing for free

* What are some profitable niches for affiliate marketing

These question and answer sites help you round out the information you’re providing and often deliver ideas you hadn’t even thought of, which is common when you’re an expert or leader and teaching an audience because you forget what it’s like to be new or uninformed.

9. Add Multimedia Components to Cater to Your Readers' Preferences

The next thing you want to do to create pillar blog posts that rank well is go in and add some multimedia components to your content piece. Not everyone likes to read information.

You want to have images, videos, and even audio files whenever applicable. For your images, you can include things like social quote posters, stock photos, infographics and more. You can create these on sites like Canva if you need a template to work from – or purchase private label rights packages that have images in them or are full image packs.

I will always add an audio file, reading the article for all my cornerstone content. Although to be fair, I offer audio for all my posts.

You can also include screenshots if you’re teaching a concept and want to show over-the-shoulder things or data that you’ve compiled and want them to see proof of. Screenshots are a great way to back up your lessons with additional information.

If you want to use video, you can create your own or embed someone else’s videos into your content. This is something you can do when curating content – and then add to whatever is discussed.

10. Include Your Monetization and Abide By Google SEO Recommendations

You might be so focused on creating thorough, stellar content that in the end, you publish it without remembering to monetize what you’ve created. Of course, monetization isn’t always the goal of your content.

Sometimes, it’s simply to provide value so that you pull in visitors and have the opportunity to get them on your list as a subscriber, which is also a good idea. But if there is a full or partial goal of earning from your content, you want to take time before publishing to add that in.

Google has some guidelines for monetization. For example, if you’re writing an affiliate product review, they don’t want you to just re-state what’s on the seller’s product listing page.

Instead, they want you to add value to the product review. This might include discussions of how a product can help someone or tips and hacks on how to make the most out of your purchase.

If you’ve created a site built for affiliate earnings, you also want some content that is not being monetized so that Google and human visitors can see the value in your domain as an authority website.

Google has many SEO tips they provide to the public. You need to learn what’s currently working according to their guidelines so that you can not only begin doing the things they want but stop doing the things they don't. If you don't want to toe the Google line, then use paid traffic.

Google states, “Ask yourself why a user would want to visit your site first rather than visiting the original merchant directly.” The answer is to find more information rather than a copy of what’s on the merchant’s page.

If all you do is state the features and specifications that come from the merchant, Google will bury your pages. Instead, create pillar posts about a topic where the insertion of recommendations is a minor part of the content and unfolds naturally, rather than the push to buy a product being the main aspect of your content.

They also want you to make more than one link for where people can purchase a product, if applicable. If you’re linking out to one of your own info products and that’s the only place to buy it, that’s okay.

But if you’re recommending something like survival food buckets, you’ll want to link to more than just Amazon. You can link to Walmart or other direct survival supply companies that sell this type of product so that consumers have options.

Make sure you polish up your content so that spelling and grammar are correct. Your content needs to be organized in a logical manner and laid out in a way that readers can skim or fully consume it in one sitting.

Make sure you use keywords, but don’t overdo it because they don’t want you to annoy readers with the overuse of targeted words. They also don’t want misinformation in your content, so fact-check your content before you upload it.

If you have links on your page that point elsewhere, make them easy to identify like a blue, underlined hyperlink. Google doesn’t like its users being tricked into clicking on things.

Because you’ll be using multimedia elements, make sure you are optimizing your images with alt tags that clearly provide information to Google bots about what the picture is, and ideally, make sure the keyword is in your filename, too.

Your site should display your content in a mobile-friendly manner. Choose a responsive design that can clearly showcase your new pillar posts to people on a PC, iPad, laptop or smartphone.

Take advantage of Google’s Search Console where they will show you how your URL is performing and whether or not they’re running into any problems. This can help you make sure your pillar posts are performing to the best of their ability and not being held back by a technical error on your part.

11. Watch for Signs That People Need More Information from Your Pillar Posts

One way you can make sure you’re getting everything in your pillar posts that need to be there is to watch your site statistics and data. You can use a variety of online tools or even access the traffic information in your cPanel to see how your site is being found.

You might discover that you got a traffic hit for a topic you barely mentioned. This might be a keyword phrase that makes you realize you need to expand a bit more on it. For example, if you have a post about affiliate marketing and you see that someone landed on your site looking for high ticket affiliate program tips, but you only mentioned that topic in passing, you can then go back and add more.

You also might begin getting interaction from your readers in the comment section (or sent directly to you via your content form or on social media) where people are asking for more detail about something you mentioned.

Don’t just answer in the comments. Many people don’t go to the comments to see if you added any information. Instead, you can reply to the person but also add your expanded information to the main pillar post so that whenever someone new lands there, they’ll be able to see the update included in the content.

12. Repeat the Process of Pillar Post Creation for Each Sub-Topic

The process of creating pillar blog posts is one that takes time and effort. But once you get your primary pillar posts created, you’ll begin seeing results as search bots crawl and index your content.

You initially brainstormed 10 topics you wanted your site to rank well for. For each of those ten topics, you created an outline of sub-topics. Now is the time you want to go and create a pillar post for each sub-topic until you feel it’s adequately covered.

For example, in the main survival topic, you probably had food listed as a sub-topic. So you’ll want to go and create a Food Survival Preparedness pillar post. Do the same process all over again – outline it with sub-topics, research it, curate for it, add monetization and SEO elements, include multimedia and so on.

Your sub-topics for survival food preparedness might include things like buying readymade survival food, growing your own survival garden, canning and dehydrating your food, etc.

Then later, you’ll repeat the entire process for those topics – like growing a survival garden, etc. Do you want an entire pillar post for growing potatoes? Maybe! It all depends on how much you find, what kind of interest you uncover, and how much you feel it deserves a spotlight of its own.

13. Interlink Your Content for Maximum Stickiness and Improved SEO

What you’re doing when you branch out like this is you’re building a tree with a strong trunk and roots. You need to connect the branches of topics back to the main tree – the primary post.

Google likes it when you interlink content on your site. It keeps people on your domain and shows them that there is expanded information that is relevant to their needs. So you’ll not only want to connect the main 10 topics you brainstormed but go further.

Connect your sub-topics to one another and to the main one, too. For example, you have your survival preparedness pillar post with sub-topics of water, food, shelter, self-defense, and more.

You’ll want to link water, shelter, food, and self-defense back to the main survival preparedness post (and have that main one linking to each of them as well). Then link them to each other.

When you’re talking on your water pillar post about how most people mistakenly believe survival food is most important, go ahead and link to the food post. And, of course, link back from the food post to the water post, too.

You don’t want to overdo the interlinking process. Only connect the dots when it’s relevant and helps provide the visitor with more of what they were looking for. Don’t force a connection between two sub-topics if it’s just not there.

14. Share Your Pillar Posts on Social Media

When your pillar posts are created, after each time you hit the publish button for a new one, you want to go on a journey of sharing the content where it will begin to gain traction with your target audience.

Of course, that means you’ll email your list of subscribers. Don’t expect that just because they’re on your list, they’ll automatically know to revisit your blog. Instead, shoot them an email to let them know about it.

Then you can begin sharing the post on all of your social media accounts. Have a system in place for where you’ll share it, how and at what time (if it matters, as it does on some sites).

For example, if you’re sharing on Facebook, you can write up a little one or two sentence blurb and include the link. But if you’re sharing on Instagram or Pinterest, you’ll need to make an image you can include.

For YouTube and TikTok, video is the media format you’ll need. Because some sites don’t allow you to include a link on every post, you might have to add it to your Linktree account and point them to the link in your bio instead.

15. Make a Schedule to Update your Cornerstone Content

Pillar blog post creation isn’t just about setting a one and done schedule. Just because you hit publish doesn’t mean it’s over! In fact, Google wants to see that you’ve freshened up your content.

Set a schedule where you will do a rotational analysis of your content. At first, you might be able to go through each pillar post more frequently because you don’t have as much content.

As your site grows, it might be less often. For example, with only 5-10 posts, you might be able to give it a quick read through and add new information once a month. But when you have 300 pillar posts, you’ll need to put your updating on a schedule.

Start a spreadsheet and include the title (topic) and the date it was published. Have a column for the date it was last updated, too. This will be helpful for you to make sure your content is revisited and also if you stumble on information and need to know where to add it.

For example, you might suddenly see something in the news about hormones and weight loss, and you can refer back to your spreadsheet, quickly find the post (and link) and go add the new information, freshening up the content and putting it back into the rotation for a future update.

Use a variety of methods to freshen your content. Whenever a pillar post is due for an update, go through the process to see what needs to be added. You can do it more quickly and not spend as much time on it.

But start with a quick keyword search, look at your site data, look in the news and on magazines, forums, etc. Turn to social media for a quick search. See if there’s something new you can curate – even if it’s a pack of private label rights that has been released on your topic that you want to add or use as a quote.

16. Continue Developing New Pillar Content for Your Niche Blog

You always want to be outperforming your competitors in the SERPs. You can use many tools, such as Ubersuggest.com to see what your competitors are ranking for, what topics they’re covering, how many people are linking back to them, as well as what keywords they’re using.

Then you can plan your upcoming content to compete with theirs if you want to. For example, if you’re in the Internet marketing niche and you type that phrase into Google, you might see a site called searchenginejournal.com in the first page results.

Enter that domain on Ubersuggest and you can see how well the site is doing in the search engines. They get almost 3 million organic visitors per month and rank for 1.4 million keywords.

This particular tool will show you the top SEO pages they have (which they link to) and you can click on ach one to see where their backlinks are coming from and what keywords and phrases they’re ranking for and using in their content.

For example, a blog post titled “20 Great Search Engines You Can Use Instead of Google” gets over 209,000 visits per month and when you click on View All under Estimated Visits, you can see the keywords, the volume and what position they rank for.

If you want to go head to head with them, you can analyze their blog post to see how much they’ve written, what all they’ve covered, what multimedia elements they included and more.

You never want to copy the other person (that defeats the purpose of trying to set yourself apart and do better than they are). You just want to see what it took to get them to that position so that you can one-up them and deliver an even better experience to the people who visit your site.

It’s better to work on methodically outperforming the competition with fewer (but better) pillar blog posts than it is to post numerous unremarkable posts that won’t have the momentum you need to unseat your opponents from the top of the SERPs.

It may take more work initially to put together a comprehensive post, but when you see the power they have in helping you build an enormous amount of organic traffic for your site, you’ll understand the benefit of bypassing the shortcut content strategy for this improved marketing method favored by Google and other search engines.

17. Repurposing Content

You have written this amazing content. It will have taken you maybe four or five hours to research and a fair time to write. The actual time will vary as to how well you know your subject. If you have PowerPoint, make a PowerPoint presentation and then make a video. You can also do this inside Canva.

As usual if you have any specific questions, write them below in the comment section, or post a question on my profile

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/thecatherine

If you found this useful, you might want to read yesterday's post on how to start an email list, with all the steps in the right order.

https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/thecatherine/blog/build-your...