3 Great Cornerstone Content Examples And Why They’re Awesome
When it comes to building out your cornerstone content I always ask:
What do you help people with?
The answer to that should be your cornerstone content.
But when it comes to actually structuring and writing your cornerstone content it can be quite intimidating to stare at that blank page, so here are 3 great cornerstone content examples to get those creative juices a-flowing.
Cornerstone content example #1: Hubspot
If there was ever a website to wow and amaze – it’s Hubspot. This is an example of a cornerstone content piece that targets the very competitive keyword “inbound marketing”.
It makes sense for them because inbound marketing is exactly what they want to be known for and they offer various inbound marketing solutions.
| Target Keyword | Volume | Keyword Difficulty |
| “Inbound Marketing” | 121k (Global) | 74% (ummmm, very hard) |
This is the the type of post that only an extremely authoritative site like HubSpot could rank for. When it comes to your own cornerstone content, you’re going to have to be much more conservative in your keyword choice.
What I like about this post is that it’s not a total info-dump: the reader comes away with a great understanding on what inbound marketing is and HubSpot have cleverly linked this definition and inbound marketing strategies to their core product.
Nicely done, HubSpot
Man who is impressed saying “Nicely done.”
Cornerstone Content Example #2: God Save the SERP
Being the ego maniac that I am and seeing this article as a great internal linking opportunity, I bring you my very own piece of cornerstone content: How to Become an SEO Copywriter.
This actually turned out to be my cornerstone content by accident.
You see, I have an SEO copywriting course designed to help copywriters fill the gaps in their SEO knowledge and I wrote this post thinking it would just be a helpful post to help them understand the skillset they need to truly succeed in SEO copywriting.
Before I knew it it was ranking well in the SERP, bringing in targeted traffic for my email list and course waitlist, and I realized it was actually the perfect piece of content for my own cornerstone piece.
You’ll notice that it doesn’t target a very competitive keyword, but your cornerstone content doesn’t HAVE to if it doesn’t make sense for your business.
I mean, if I have a course about SEO copywriting for copywriters, what more relevant keyword could I use as my cornerstone content?
So don’t get caught up thinking your cornerstone content needs to target some very competitive keyword. If anything, it’s an advantage if you can find a longer tail keyword that perfectly sums up how you mainly help people.
| Target Keyword | Volume | Keyword Difficulty |
| “How to Become an SEO Copywriter” | 90 (Global) | 38% (possible) |
Cornerstone Content Example #3: Spirit Dogs Training
If you’ve known me for five minutes, you’ll soon realize that I am *that* crazy dog lady.
My German Shepherd suffers from reactivity, which means she freaks out when she sees a certain trigger, usually another big dog, so I started scouring the internet for ways to help her.
On my travels I found an amazing example of cornerstone content from Steffi at Spirit Dogs titled “Reactive Dog Training: Tips to Help Your Dog Get Better.”
| Target Keyword | Volume | Keyword Difficulty |
| Reactive Dog Training | 5.2k (Global) | 41% (possible) |
Not only is this post extremely helpful, it’s also a great opportunity for Steffi to promote her reactive dog training course (yes I bought it). I imagine she also uses retargeting to advertise the course via Facebook and Instagram for people who have visited that page, helping to improve her targeting.
It’s a looooooong post, much longer than our other examples, but I feel that Steffi has done a great job at breaking up the information to make it scannable and the images and infographics are also a big aid here.
If you decide to write a longer post, make sure to follow her lead and make your content VERY scannable and use visual aids to help your reader (and to benefit from image SEO).
What Can we Learn From These Examples?
- If you’re targeting a competitive keyword, you better have an authoritative site and have a solid backlink strategy for that piece of content
- You don’t have to target a very competitive keyword – target the most relevant keyword for your business and find long tail variations on more competitive keywords if your site isn’t very authoritative
- Always make your content scannable by breaking up information with bullets, subheads, and visual aids to help make it less overwhelming for the reader
- Always use your cornerstone content to promote something like get people on your email list with a relevant lead magnet or link directly to your product
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