Cornerstone Content — The Lazy Strategy with Long-Term Benefits
What is the number one piece of advice you give your clients? Does your brain go on autopilot and give a slight variation of the same answer? Yes.
Does that answer change over time? Not really.
That’s it — you now get the gist of cornerstone content. This is one of many examples of ways to create content that supports your brand in the long run. In this article, we’ll learn how to write cornerstone content for SEO, look at some great examples (including this one), and learn some basic content marketing principles that will help you in the future.
Here’s a Rundown in a Minute or Less
Cornerstone content is the flag bearer for your digital presence. It consists of blogs, white papers, videos, social media, or any other piece of content you create to support your business.
It works because it’s always relevant, super informative for your prospects, and very useful for SEO. So you should definitely have it.
The term evergreen is used to describe content that does not go out of date, so cornerstone content definitely falls under that category.
Let’s get to it
What is Cornerstone Content?
The term is used to describe foundational content that defines your expertise and core brand values.
Say you are an Executive Coach: Creating a comprehensive guide explaining your methodology is a great example of cornerstone content because it establishes the fundamental principles that set your business apart and showcases your deep understanding of your field.
Let’s take a look at a few more examples to get the idea:
Post-Pandemic Advice for Resilient Teams ❌
The Essential Guide to Build Team Resilience ✅
Top 10 Current Industry Trends to Watch ❌
The Core Principles Driving Our Industry Forward ✅
Cornerstone content establishes authority in your field, and while trends come and go, your core topics and expertise remain constant. Start by identifying those foundational topics that truly represent your brand and resonate with your audience.
Odds are, you already have a few topics in mind by now. Go ahead and write them down. It’s good practice to keep tabs on those fresh ideas.
What is its purpose?
The obvious answer is to provide long-term value with quality information that will always be relevant. There’s more to it than that so let’s expand on it:
1. Act as an entry point for your prospects
As the most important pieces of content on your website, they will likely be the first touchpoint your prospects experience with your brand. It’s important that you put a bit of extra work in your SEO (especially long-tail keywords), content comprehensiveness, and writing quality. First impressions matter!
These topics will generally cover the essential knowledge behind your work:
Ultimate guides & how-tos
Comparison / decision guides
Educational Series
Video tutorials
…and whatever else you can use to leverage your expertise and define your brand.
One note from me: Listicles do work, don’t get me wrong. As readers, we are drawn to the easy structure and clear expectations of a “10 Ways to Know if Your Uncle Vasile is Actually a Communist Spy” blog article. However! I challenge you to find different (better) ways to attract your people.
Every time you write a listicle, a therapy dog needs therapy.
2. Great evergreen content
Without getting too caught up in semantics, the term evergreen describes content that stays relevant over time, which naturally includes cornerstone content.
Simply put:
All cornerstone content is evergreen, but not all evergreen content is cornerstone.
Anyway, these pieces of content are great for a number of reasons:
They play a key role in educating people about your work and showing off your expertise. As I said before, these will likely be people’s first touchpoint with your brand from organic search, and the right content can help them make the right decision.
Great pieces for SEO. Especially when it comes to blogs, one solid article can link out to multiple, more specific pieces of content on your site. You can look into internal linking for more info on that.
As we’ll see later, this also acts as a content baseline that you can always rely on to bring in a steady stream of readers. If you don’t have time to regularly put out new content, this is a great strategy for you. For the record, you should still do that if you have the time or resources.
Content marketing plays a leading role in the long game.
But when everything is moving so fast, it takes the pressure off from constantly releasing new content to keep up with the almighty algorithm.
Head over to our services page to learn more about What We Do.
3. Good source of SEO, vitamins and minerals
Due to its evergreen nature, it doesn’t just boost your search rankings — it sustains them. Unlike topical articles who experience a peak in traffic and it fades rather quickly, evergreen pieces deliver consistent traffic over time. Between “Fun Christmas Decorations to Make with Your Kids” and “Fun Crafts to Make with Your Kids”, you can guess which one is holding a steady course.
Here’s how it builds authority:
You begin with a quality content piece like a blog, top shelf! The more people discover it and read it, the more your ranking keeps growing and the momentum begins to build.
With a bit of luck, other websites reference and link to your content which will increase the authority of your content. From here, the snowball is rolling:
Higher ranking leads to more visitors
More visits mean more people finding and linking to your content
More links to your content means higher authority
Higher authority leads to better ranking
This cyclical effect is unique to evergreen content because the linking process never stops.
How Do You Decide on Cornerstone Topics?
As I said, you probably have a few good ideas by now. Good thing you wrote them down. (ಠ_ಠ)
Topics like industry fundamentals, the principles behind your work, and some problem-solving content will naturally stand the test of time.
Quick reminder: sharing the basics doesn’t mean you have to be basic. Avoid broad, surface-level content that lacks depth or your unique touch to it. Really lean into your expertise and brand personality to add value to anything you have to say.
Also, don’t hesitate to engage with your community to get a feel for what gaps there are in their knowledge and where their interests are. Use LinkedIn polls, IG stories, email surveys, or whatever medium you have to communicate with your people.
A lot of this work will vary based on your industry, community, and a bunch of other factors. If you need help, there is help. Get in touch!
What Does a Good Strategy Look Like?
Start with the topics that align the most with the core of your business and brand. This is the time to focus on your key audiences and their most pressing questions.
Create content that is both comprehensive and easy to understand. Ultimately, you’re creating a resource; keep it digestible.
Lastly, regularly check in to make sure none of your references have become obsolete over time.
A good example would really solidify this knowledge, so let’s bring back our Executive Coach:
They decide on three pieces of evergreen / cornerstone content to support their brand:
“The Essential Guide to Leadership Development. Skills Every Executive Needs”
A similar article can help executives understand the core skills they need to succeed, regardless of context.“Insights on Building A High-Performance Team”
Again, our Executive Coach can share valuable insights on effective communication, accountability, conflict resolution, and a whole lot more to help build strong teams. None of this knowledge relies on an industry or specific scenario, so this article could be just as relevant 10 years from now.“Balance after Burnout. Self Management for Executives”
Most of today’s pain points for executives applied 20 years ago, and they’ll probably be the same 20 years from now: prioritization, delegation, work-life balance, you get the point.
In fact, this very blog is an evergreen piece of content for con/FORM Marketing. It works because:
It is a fairly comprehensive piece on evergreen content
The knowledge shared fundamental and should not see any major changes in the future
There is a lot of potential to expand on this knowledge with many topical articles (this is the internal linking I’ve been telling you about).
Ideas From Me
Be comprehensive but don’t overwhelm. Cornerstone posts are a great exploration point to more specific topics on your site, so feel free to nerd out more on those.
Make it easy to find. If you write blogs or post videos regularly, don’t let them be buried by new, topical content. Find smart ways to link to them separately, pin them to the top, etc.; you get the point.
Spring cleaning. While evergreen content doesn’t need updating, it’s a good idea to check it once in a while to make sure it’s still keeping up.
Don’t go in on a highly-competitive topic without your unique angle. Without differentiation, your content doesn’t stand a chance against the massive, well-established sources out there.
Make quality a core value. Prioritizing quality so your readers come back is good, but making it the standard of your work is best.
Conclusion / Next Steps
To summarize:
Cornerstone content consists of blogs, white papers, social media content, that is always relevant
It enables a steady stream of new and return readers, is a great way to build authority / SEO, and provides a lot of value to your readers
It should be easily accessible on your website
There are many ways to choose topics so start with the basics and make sure to involve your audience
If you can’t guarantee a consistent level of quality, just outsource.
Ultimately, you should create evergreen content that you want your people to read. Ask yourself Why should they care? If you don’t have a clear answer, keep at it.
If you’re sold on this Lazy Strategy with Long-Term Benefits, you also understand the value of expertise.
We offer a comprehensive Cornerstone Content Package for brands to add value to their online presence and depth to their expertise in front of the people who need it the most.