How to create cornerstone content using Yoast SEO | SEO for beginners

Cornerstone content is a very importantaspect of an SEO strategy.

In this video, I'll explainwhat cornerstone content entails and why it is important.

Then, I'll cover cornerstone contentin relation to site structure.

Finally, I'll discusshow the Yoast SEO plugin helps you with optimizing your cornerstone content.

So, what exactly are cornerstone articles? Cornerstone articles are the most importantarticles on your website.

These articles directly reflectthe mission of your company, and you definitely want to rank for them.

You should chooseyour cornerstones carefully.

Think of four or five pagesyou would like someone to read if they first visit your website.

These articles should bethe cornerstones of your site.

In other words, they should form the basisof the topics you discuss on your site.

For example: at Yoast, we write ultimate guidesfor every important SEO-related topic.

We have ultimate guides for site structure, SEO copywriting, mobile SEO, blogging, keyword research, et cetera.

These are our cornerstone content articles.

You should write cornerstone articles about the keywordsyou definitely want to rank for.

In general, cornerstone articles should belengthy articles which are timeless, and very regularly updated.

Cornerstone articles should definitely beinformative articles, where you explain somethingto your audience.

You want them to understand moreabout a topic or you want them to use the informationby putting theory to practice.

Even on a webshop, cornerstone contentshould be informative, rather than focused on convincing peopleto buy your products.

For example, you could give your readersinformation about the uniqueness of your products, or about the use of the products.

Now that we knowwhat cornerstone content is, let's dive into the importanceof cornerstone content.

Cornerstone content should playa significant role in any SEO strategy.

It can be rather hard to rankfor search terms that are very popular.

A cornerstone approach could help youtackle those competitive search terms.

If you write a lot of articlesabout similar topics, you need to tell Googlewhich one is the most important.

Otherwise, you'll be competingwith your own content for a place in the search results.

If you provide the proper internal linkingstructure between your posts, you can show Googlewhich article is most important.

This article can be a cornerstone article.

So, where should cornerstone content beon your site? We like to think of a site as a pyramid: the homepage is on top, important articles are just below, and regular blog postsmake up the basis of the pyramid.

Cornerstone articles should appearvery high in your site's pyramid.

Ideally, someone would be able to clickfrom your homepage to your cornerstone articles instantly.

You should link all your other posts aboutsimilar topics to that particular article.

Such an internal linking structurewill increase your chances of ranking in Googlewith your cornerstone content article.

So, we've seen that there aretwo important factors for a successful cornerstone contentapproach.

Firstly, cornerstone contentshould be lengthy, well-written and well-optimized.

Secondly, cornerstone content should havea prominent place in your site's structure.

Yoast SEO offers effective tools that help you take careof both of these things.

We offer a text link counter, a specific cornerstone content analysis, and – in Yoast SEO Premium -even internal linking suggestions, in which cornerstone articlesprevail over other posts.

Let's take a look at these tools in detail.

First, the text link counter.

With the text link counter in Yoast SEO, you can filter your cornerstone articlesin the post overview, and see how many internal linksa post receives and how many posts it links to.

With the text link counter, you can see at a glance if your cornerstone content getsenough links from other, related posts.

Second, the cornerstone analysis.

In the Yoast SEO plugin, you can markyour content as cornerstone content.

As a result, both the SEO analysisand the readability analysis will be stricter than usual.

Why? Because your cornerstone contentshould be longer and even better than your other articles.

The demands on your writingshould be higher.

Third, the internal linking suggestions.

In Yoast SEO Premium we offeran internal linking functionality.

This means we analyze the textyou are writing and use the prominent words in that text to determine which of your articlesare of a similar topic.

Because these are the articlesyou should be linking to.

We show these suggested articles in a listnext to the editor, so you can easily add linkswhile you're writing your text.

Cornerstone articles are treated differently in our calculationof internal linking suggestions: they are more importantand will receive a higher value.

To give these articlessome visible weight as well, we place the cornerstone articles at the topof the list of the internal linking suggestions.

That will make it much easier for youto link to your key articles.

Good luck!.