Cornerstone Content: Overview And Step By Step Guide 

Cornerstone Content: Overview And Step By Step Guide 

Reader Comments (134)

  1. Hey Brian,

    What a great post to kick off the year.

    Question for you though — in WordPress, can you have dynamic “titles” … I haven’t found a plugin for that yet. Every post on every page has the same one for me.

    Cheers
    Tony Hung
    DeepJiveInterests.com

    PS … hey, first comment! Whohooo!

  2. Hey Tony. Not sure what you mean by dynamic titles, but every time you create a post or page in WordPress, you’re creating a title tag with the words in your post title.

    The only thing I might suggest is making a php tweak so that the title of the post or page comes before the name of your blog in the title.

    Anyone out there have the code to do that handy for Tony?

  3. You know what? You’re absolutely right. Nevermind!

    MAN, I have got to get some more sleep these days! 🙂

    Cheers
    Tony.

  4. This is the first or second post i am reading on this topic. You make things look quite simple. I am feeling like ‘i understood what you are talking about’ Thanks, that’s good feeling! It encourages me to read you more.

  5. Hey Brian – you keep hitting it out of the park again and again. One weekend I’m gonna get myself a bottle of scotch and settle in and read every post you’ve written and jot down notes.

    For Tony, here’s the code that makes the title of a post appear first (hopefully it displays right):

    This code goes in the header file.

  6. That’s smashing stuff.
    I will try to follow those two goals to get the desired output.
    The post is a very good guide for the young bloggers to improve their content and attract the masses.
    Cheers!!!

  7. Hi Brian

    thanks for a great post as usual. A couple of thoughts…

    To the question from Tony, have you set up your blog to show titles in full – until recently my blog had the default number of post setting. Also if you have a long title, you can use the post slug to shorten it and make it key word rich.

    Secondly I am constantly suprised how much Google loves key words. I’m running a strategy this year of turning some of my blog posts to articles for article submission.

    I’m kind of a purist and want to write valuable content but realise that this won’t bring me more clients through natural search.

    I experimented last week and one post I took and adapted it for an online article directory.

    The post was short but very valuable content and within 48 hours not only did I see the article posted on other peoples blogs (I track my name and my blog name with Google Alerts) but also in my Google Alerts for that key word.

    Getting found in Google is key – my biggest challenge at the moment is how to get sign ups to my newsletter and weekly teleseminars – perhaps you could cover strategies for traffic conversion in your next series please!

    Thanks

    Krishna

  8. Hmm… I’m not sure I’m really getting it! I’m a newbie to blogging, but have had successful websites in the past. I’ve got 6 blogs now. Just starting 3 weeks ago. Cornerstone content is a new idea to me and I’m not sure I get it. I’m not sure WHAT the questions are that are being queried on when people come to my site because my google stats are weak at the moment and I get a small clue what people are using to reach me. Mostly it’s referrals from others sites right now. Is “cornerstone content” a large sitemap of sorts that tries to explain in words everything that my site offers and why I made a site to begin with? I’ll re-read this 6 times until I figure it out – but, if someone could explain for a newbie – I’d really appreciate it!

  9. Vern,
    Cornerstone content can be a single page, blog post, or article as well as a series of posts or articles. It is supposed to be content that focuses very specifically on a topic that visitors to your site need to know about.

    For example, a web designer’s site might have its Cornerstone be a series of tutorials on CSS. A dog breeder might have an article about the importance of a pedigree.

    The key is to make the Cornerstone a central focus that can be useful for a long time. Readers have to not only enjoy and find the article useful, they must love it so much that they refer other people to it. Or even better, link to it on their site.

  10. ahhhh. OK I got it. It’s nothing more than creating great articles around a keyword or phrase. The article covers all questions about the keyword others use to reach your site – and anything they could want to know is either answered or referenced and pointing them to another spot on my site. Make it likeable and complete so it is somewhat viral and passed around as an authority on the subject. I think I got it – that explains a LOT. Thanks Aaron for taking the time to answer me!

  11. That’s what I’m trying to do on my blog now.. any chance you could visit my blog for a while.. pin point what can I improve.. and what i have done right and wrong?

  12. this guy knows what he is talking about, absolutely correct, GOOGLE LOVES CONTENT, i typed in google GOOGLE LOVES CONTENT and this blog appeared number 1 ranking, awesome

  13. Tony & the others: I have really good experience with “All in One Seo Pack” plugin for WordPress. With this plugin you have total control over how does the title look like and you can change keywords in meta tag (I know, they are probably obsolete to this day).

  14. Kalmir, the meta keyword tag is pretty much obsolete. However, it’s certainly worth your time to put a relevant and focused meta description on each page as Google displays this in the results.

  15. Brian,
    This is good stuff. I have been reading and reading and coppyblogger has officially become my go to place to remind myself on how to develop the right content and keep the basics in mind.

    Thanks!

  16. The hardest thing I do in keeping my blog going is finding new material to write about. i see that I am forgetting about SEO and the reader. This is a great reminder of what I need to do to make it readable and hopefully build a good following of readers.

  17. Fantastic article, I really need to look at the copy on my page and decide if it is doing the job and conveying to the potential customer in right way.

    I think maybe I need to go back to the drawing board with writing with conviction and really focusing on the intention of the copy.

    Great tips and thanks for writing such interesting blogs.

  18. I know i am so late to read this post.. but after reading this post i feel very proud because at least i know how to optimize my site without help of any seo consultant… So thanks for sharing wonderful post.

  19. Some people underestimate the power of blogging and posting great content. Only recently has it opened my eyes, as I have been finding some killer articles that were drafted over 2 years ago, and they were exactly what I was searching for. Get the content out, be passionate about your niche, and see the magic work.

    Thanks!
    Ron

  20. Building the foundational content to set the pillar for your blog is crucial. I like to think of these as breakthroughs, that will make people remember your site and who you are rather than somebody to skim over.

  21. Yes, landing pages! I preach landing pages all the time – especially for the more competitive keywords – that way, even if your site doesn’t focus on a specific keyword or phrase but at least part of the pages on your site pertain to that subject you can have the keywords included in a relatively main (linkable) url.

    Great post.

  22. Now more than ever, content has to be solid – built around factual information that’s relevant and unique. I’d been writing for years, before I’d ever been introduced to “scraped and spun” content… and wow, how anyone would ever put there name on this is beyond me. I’m amazed it’s taken this long for search to start sorting through the mess that’s become “The Internet.” Panda bear sure has them on the run, now 🙂

    I’m impressed with the talent coming from NZ (I’ve become a recent reader of Mark Ling, too). And, I see you’ve already started planting your flag on as many quality properties as you can… though, I think they’re all lucky to have you, imho. I recently purchased Premise and I must say, the quality of products associated with and co-produced by Copyblogger Media is impressive. It’s not hard to imagine myself returning again and again.

    Signed up and bookmarked!

  23. Brian,
    This article is such a breath of fresh air. One of my pet peeves
    is people cramming their opportunity, tool or last gadget down prospects throat
    and they forget people want to be valued, not sold

    Thank you for your contribution,
    Jeff Faldalen

  24. Never heard of this concept until now. Still not sure if you’re talking about one killer article, or a page of several articles-separate from your main post?

  25. Hi Brian,
    Great article. I totally agree with every word

    I think to many people get caught up with traffic
    instead of what kind of traffic they’re site is attracting

    Not that I have ever done this 🙂

    It always seems to come down to the famous word of
    Focus

    Thank you for your contribution,
    Jeff Faldalen

  26. Quick question, in your opinion what would be the minimum amount of words you’d suggest a post should contain?

    And thank you very much for the post, very informative.

    Thanks,

    Jesse Fogarty

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