Does anyone have experience with "cornerstone content" pages? I ask, because my blog has roughly 400 separate post pages and here is what I was wondering. Should text in the cornerstone page be hyperlinked to post URL's within my bloG?
Or, should I avoid text links in my cornerstone page and create links throughout the blog post pages (throughout the various 400 post pages) that text hyperlink to the URL of my cornerstone page? Any feedback would be great to hear as I haven't published this cornerstone I am planning.
Cornerstone content should be the best, most important articles on your site that you want to rank the highest in the search engines.
They should be very well written, update them often, and aim to get them to rank for your most competitive keywords.
It can be hard to rank for search terms that are very popular, but a cornerstone approach can help you tackle those competitive search terms. If you write a lot of articles on similar subjects, you need to tell Google which of them is the most important.
Ideally, someone should be able to click straight from your homepage to your cornerstone articles. Also, all your other posts about similar topics should link back to their corresponding cornerstone article, so its importance is clear from your site structure. As your site develops, you will write tons of new blog posts approaching that topic from other angles, each one linking back to your cornerstone article. This internal linking structure will increase the chance of your cornerstone content articles ranking in Google searches.
Think of the four or five pages you would like someone to read when they first visit your website. These articles should be the cornerstones of your site. Which articles are most important to you? Which are the most complete and authoritative? Do these target the keywords you most want to rank for?
Cornerstone content is a crucial aspect of your SEO strategy, as it'll help you rank for your most competitive keywords. Your internal linking structure shows the search engines that your cornerstones are the most complete, most important articles on your site, which increases their chances to rank significantly.