7 Steps to Creating Evergreen Cornerstone Articles that Google Loves
When writing one of these pieces, your goal should be to present the most accurate and comprehensive information about your subject. Your goal isn't to sell right away, at least not right now. You want to position yourself and your website as THE authority in your field, the go-to source for reliable information and advice.
With the correct cornerstone content, you may increase brand awareness and even reach high SERP ranks, resulting in free traffic. You create natural linkages from other pages on your site, social media networks, and outside sources. You establish yourself as an authority in your industry and increase trust in your brand and products. Furthermore, you attract prospects who can be nurtured into new clients.
And, while these cornerstone content articles are typically long and extremely comprehensive, and combine ideas from other blog posts and sources, don't be intimidated into believing that creating this type of content is beyond your ability. You can do it if you follow these steps:
1: Select a Topic
Here are three questions to ask yourself before deciding on a topic:
Is it in line with your company's goals and will it attract your ideal customers? For example, if your focus is stock investment, you will not publish a cornerstone post about home buying.
What would make your customer's life simpler if someone could explain it to them in detail? Your ideal customers should be actively seeking and desiring the knowledge you're about to provide.
Does it pique your interest? You'll be dedicating a large amount of effort to researching, producing, and optimizing this material. If the issue bores you, you can still write about it, but it will be significantly more difficult than if it is something you are passionate about.
2: Conduct Research
Hopefully, you are well-versed in your customer's needs. You know what they're interested in, what keeps them awake at night, and what might make their lives better. You're about to become an expert on this subject.
Talk to current customers to figure out what they want to know about your topic. What are their annoyances?
Read related posts, books, interviews, and so on.
Take detailed notes and make a point of quoting experts and sources whenever possible.
When feasible, use your own examples, statistics, anecdotes, and experiences, blending what you know with what you learn from other sources.
3: Create a Content Strategy
You might be writing, "The Complete Guide to ___," "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About ____," or "How to Achieve ____".
Begin outlining your topics and subtopics once you have a general idea of what your post will accomplish. You might use a step-by-step format from start to finish, a list, or whatever works best for your topic.
4: It's Now Time to Write
Without a doubt, this is the step that will make some people cringe. You can always outsource the work if you prefer. Keep in mind that your information must be clear and succinct, without rambling or deviating from the topic at hand.
It should be truly beneficial in resolving one or more of your clients' issues. When people finish reading it, they should think, "Wow, this is the best thing I've read on this issue." "I'm curious what else this guy has to offer me."
When I read fantastic cornerstone content, I instantly join that person's email list so I don't miss out on anything more they have to offer.
Accuracy is critical since your reputation is at stake. Include connections to other authoritative sources.
Without keyword stuffing, incorporate your keywords naturally into your article. To ensure that your writing is clear and easy to understand, you can utilize tools such as Grammarly or Hemingway. You might also have a few people read your piece and look for any unclear or confusing language.
Make certain that your piece fulfills the promise of the headline as well.
Break up the content with eye-catching images and graphics to make it look aesthetically appealing. Also, keep your paragraphs short, as this article does.
5: Improve Your Article
The difficult part is over, and it's now time to modify and optimize.
Your core keyword must appear in both the URL and the title tag, which also serves as your headline. Ideally, the title should answer a specific Google query.
Create subheadings with keywords, then include your keywords throughout your article. This will assist both readers and search engines in determining the relevance of your content.
Use alt language in your visual material, relevant keywords in image file names, and make your page and images load as fast as possible.
Remember that you are not charging for this information, so don't put it behind a paywall or protected area.
Include a lot of internal links to your main content on other pages of your website. Because Google prefers a strong internal linking structure, this can also help with rankings.
6: Promotion
You've finished your masterpiece, and now it's time to tell the rest of the world about it. The goal is to reach the as many people as possible.
Inform your existing email list about your new cornerstone content. Send another email to everyone on your list who did not open the first one or click the link. If necessary, provide an incentive to read it. You want to begin transmitting traffic as soon as possible.
Use your social media accounts to spread the word about the article. Schedule media posts many times per day for the first few days, and then on a regular basis after that. Personalization should be used whenever possible.
Please notify every expert and website that you cited in your piece. Many of them will spread the word via social media.
Consider paying for advertising as well. This allows you to reach a highly focused audience while also growing your email list.
Add social network buttons to make it easy for visitors to share your content with others. Highlight particularly good quotes from your content and make it simple for others to tweet them with a single click.
7: Ongoing Updates
Google values fresh and highly relevant content, which is why you should update all of your cornerstone articles on a frequent basis.
Include fresh trends, new resources, news, and the most recent statistics. Check that everything, including any connections, is still functional and relevant.
Update your typefaces and layout, as well as photos, charts, and so on, if they appear dated. Check to see if the page is loading swiftly and correctly.
Simply follow these 7 steps, and you'll be able to generate cornerstone content that both search engines and readers will appreciate.
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