How to Create Amazing Long Form Cornerstone Content
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You’ve heard this countless times – Google loves long form content. Content that is over 2000 words in length and goes into every detail of a topic.
But how do you create it? And if you are posting every week, does every post need to be this long? How do people even find the time (and energy) to write content that long every single time? The truth is while Google does love long form content, not every post needs to be a 3000 word whopper. In some niches, it simply doesn’t make sense – a 2000 word recipe post would just irritate your readers and have them bounce away!
The key is to understand something called cornerstone content, how it fits into your blog posting calendar and how to create amazing long form cornerstone content that helps your audience – and ticks the box for search engines!
Table of Contents
What is cornerstone content?
Let’s start with a reminder of what cornerstone content is. I’ve talked a bit about it when I talked about topic clusters – the idea that your content categories are like the spokes of a bike wheel. There’s one big piece of content in the middle and spikes out from it to smaller, more specific pieces of content.
That central hub is called the cornerstone content or a pillar post. Both terms are basically interchangeable to my reading. They are longer pieces of content that can contain links to all other relevant pieces and cover an entire topic. The smaller pieces then go into the topic in more detail or offer different viewpoints.
Here’s an example:
How to structure a cornerstone post
What this example shows is that there should be one big topic in the centre for the cornerstone post. Then you can have as many smaller ones from it as you want. You just need to remember to go back to the cornerstone piece and add links where appropriate.
You can make a cornerstone content piece either a post or page in WordPress. Personally, I’ve made them posts so they show up in the category but there’s no reason you can’t make it a page if you want. If you have the know-how, you could even make it your category page so when someone selects the category from the menu, this is the page they arrive on.
When it comes to structuring the post, sub-headings are your friend. Remember, this is a big post and you don’t want to overwhelm your readers. Plus those H2, H3 and even H4 headings help with on-page SEO for search engines to better understand all of the content.
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How to create quality long form blog posts
Once you have defined what your cornerstone content should contain, you then reach the point of actually writing it.
Don’t worry, those 2000-3000 words don’t need to be done all in one sitting. And there are lots of ways to make the whole process easier!
Preparation
When you are writing long form content, whether it is a cornerstone post or not, the key is to prepare before you start. Believe me, it is much easier to write a longer article when you have an outline, keywords and references in place than sitting in front of a blank Word doc, wondering where to start.
Start with keyword research and look for LSI keywords
There are some good tools out there to help you with keyword research. No doubt you already have a basic keyword in mind but the more secondary keywords you can naturally add, the better the content will rank.
LSI Graph is a tool that takes your keyword and suggests related ones. It works on the same idea that Google does, latent semantic indexing. In other words, how words and phrases are related to each other.
Ubersuggest is another free tool that can provide ideas to help you plan your long form blog post and is also free. Just add that keyword and it will give you related terms that are long tail – as well as ideas about how many searches there actually are.
Don’t forget Google itself and also Pinterest when doing keyword research. Add that core keyword term and see what comes up. Google often provides questions that you can answer in the post. And Pinterest will provide those coloured boxes to create longer tail keywords to use in the post and Pinterest description.
Check what your competition has covered on the topic
As part of your preparation, it is a good idea to spy on your competition a bit. I don’t really see others in my niche as competition as such but let’s just use the phrase for ease.
To start with, install the MOZ bar. This is a free extension from MOZ that tells you the DA of any website. Armed with the knowledge of your own domain authority, you can run your keyword phrase through Google search, and it will show the top results – and MOZ will add the DA of the site under it.
This helps you get a feel for your chances of ranking for this keyword. If you see lots of big sites with high DA’s then it might be worth trying to adjust the keyword a little. Of course, if it is a cornerstone piece, then ranking might not be the main concern – that’s up to you.
But whether you are considering the topic for ranking purposes or to provide full coverage of a topic for your reader, seeing what others have covered on the topic never hurts. You can get ideas for what to write yourself, how to put your own spin on things and often spot gaps that the competition hasn’t completely covered.
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Cover the on-page SEO basics
While you should always write for a human being, there is backend stuff to do to make sure you tick the boxes for search engine bots. These are the basics of on-page SEO (search engine optimisation).
There are plugins that can help you check the basics such as Yoast. But it doesn’t hurt to have a checklist as you are writing as some of them can be added as you go then others on the page. Some examples of key on-page SEO elements include:
- Using one H1 heading for your title
- Having H2 and H3 headings throughout the article that use long tail keywords where appropriate (don’t go mad and stuff them in, keep it natural)
- Having a URL that features the main keyword phrase and isn’t too long
- Add relevant images and ensures the ALT text includes the keyword and a description of what the image is
- Have your main keyword in the first 100 words
- Use it naturally in the post a couple of times more along with related LSI keywords
Use authority sites as outbound links
As you write your content, you will likely be using other articles as reference. These will usually be higher DA sites than yours, bigger or having been around longer. Then another key part of your on-page SEO and a quality long for content piece is to link to them.
You can see some in this article including from Yoast and Neil Patel. I used these to help with the content, to add stats (always link directly if there’s a study) and to get information to help me write this. And quality outbound links is a help with SEO as well.
Include those important internal links to topic cluster articles
The whole point of cornerstone content is to link to relevant articles. So as you write, link to posts you have already published that are relevant.
Don’t forget to add to your job list going forward to go back to the post and link as you write new articles for the topic cluster too! You can do this every time you write a new post or maybe once a quarter. This helps to build that cluster and make the cornerstone content really useful for readers – they can follow a trail to other posts as they want.
Have an SEO friendly meta description
I usually write my meta description as I’ve finished writing the post, the same point I write the Pinterest description too. By then, you will know all of what the piece contains and can write a snappy, attention-grabbing meta description.
It can be from 135-160 characters to show in search engine results – any more and it will be cut off. Think of it as a mini-sales pitch – why would someone want to read the post? What problem does it solve for them?
Other website tips
Writing the content and checking off those on-page SEO elements are the big parts of creating amazing cornerstone content. But there are a couple of things to remember to consider making sure you have the best chance of your content showing in search.
Ensure it is mobile friendly
The emphasis on mobile isn’t going away any time soon. Stats show there’s a good chance that you or the next person reading this is on a mobile. And your readers will be the same. So ensuring your content is mobile friendly is important.
There are lots of ways to do this. Top of the list is ensuring your website is responsive – that means it automatically adapts to whatever device your reader is using. It shows them everything as it should be and scales to their screen.
Also, think about how the article will look. It’s a big one, remember, and that’s why those sub-headings are important to break it up. Adding images, keeping paragraph sizes down and font sizes up all help to make mobile-friendly content.
Check your site speed
Site speed is both important and really complicated to master. There are different tools to check your site speed and they often give different results! But it is a ranking factor and of growing importance – plus people bounce away if content takes too long to load and that affects SEO.
There are lots of tips on how to check and reduce your load time so that your cornerstone content appears to readers quickly, even if it is a super long form blog post. One example includes these 10 methods to check out.
Have social sharing buttons
So you have this brilliant bit of content that covers the entire topic for your reader. It is responsive, well written and gives them tons of value – they love it and want to share it with their friends. But there are no social sharing buttons!
Simple to add and free in lots of cases, sharing buttons might seem a little irritating but they are important. You want people to share your stuff, that social proof is very important – so let’s make it easy for them to do it! I’m using Sumo at the moment on their free plan to add the top banner, social share buttons and the little pop up that appears as you leave.
Have a Pinterest image
I’m always sad when I read a great article and go to share it on Pinterest but there’s no Pinterest optimised image. So I can’t share it. Adding an optimised image and ensuring it has its own optimised description doesn’t need to be complicated and makes it much easier for people to share your stuff.
Update that post!
Once you have written your amazing long form cornerstone content, that isn’t the end of the job. I’ve mentioned already about periodically going back in to edit the links as you create new content. The other job to add to your list is to ensure that you periodically update that post.
Some topics won’t need so much attention. Using that cocktail recipes example, there’s not a massive amount of change in the basics of the topic. But there might be some new types of alcohol to mention or a new gadget you found to help make cocktails. Once every 6 months or so, just check the post over and see if there are any additions or updates to make.
Conquer that content
It’s easier than you think to get started with creating those long form cornerstone content pieces that your website needs. By planning the topic, studying what works for the competition and how you can make the subject uniquely yours, you can easily build an outline.
Then by checking your optimisation basics and ensuring you cover your SEO bases; you can create amazing content that your readers will enjoy and search engines will love.
What’s stopping you from trying this out? Tell me in the comments below!
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