We’ve all seen that checkbox in our SEO tool inviting us to mark a blog post as cornerstone content. But what does that mean? What actually happens when you check that box?
[00:00:38] This week's episode is inspired by a listener question. This listener said, I would love a refresher about cornerstone content. I see it as a toggle switch within the Yoast plugin and a category when I view my posts in WordPress, but I'm not sure if I'm making the most of this feature when it comes to helping Google understand what my website is all about.
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[00:01:27] But let's just take a quick refresher from Wikipedia. A cornerstone is the first stone set in a masonry foundation. All other stones are set into the foundation in relation to that cornerstone. So now let's take that over to the blogging world, and a piece of cornerstone content on a website is a blog post that all other blog posts in that same topic are going to reference back to.
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[00:02:24] my post about holiday units would also link back to that ultimate guide, you get the idea. But there's one thing I don't love about referring to these blog posts as cornerstone content. If you've ever looked at a masonry building, you can easily locate the cornerstone because it usually has some sort of engraving for the date it was installed. And there's often a ceremony for the setting of a cornerstone,
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[00:03:16] Then all of the other posts related to that piece of cornerstone content are the spokes of the wheel, but then you also have the outer ring of the wheel that connects to the spokes on the other end, and this kind of helps you visualize how these posts can also connect to each other. You can link between these related posts, but ultimately all of the spokes must be connected to the hub of the wheel in order for it to turn properly.
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[00:04:16] We've talked on the podcast before about just how important it's to use internal links to make connections between your pieces of content. Because this can keep people on your website longer, and it sends signals to Google about the importance of each piece of content. In the eyes of Google, posts with more links pointing to them are more important than others.
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[00:05:03] And the way you show that this piece of content is important is by linking to it from each of your posts on this topic, and this increases the authority of the post, which then in turn boosts your authority because you are the one that wrote this really important piece of content on this topic. And so this can have a really positive impact on all of the content that you've written on this topic because you are now developing your authority.
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[00:05:58] And then towards the bottom of the Yoast options, you're going to see a menu for cornerstone content. If you expand that menu, you'll see the checkbox where you can mark the post as cornerstone content. If you use Rank Math, you'll find the checkbox under the space where you can add your focus keyword for the post, and that's where you can mark the post as pillar content,
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[00:06:46] It won't directly impact your SEO in any way. Because some of the boxes that we check and the fields that we fill in, those do get added to the HTML of our page, like to the code that then is crawlable, but that's not the case with the cornerstone content checkbox. Instead, marking that box as cornerstone content, it just helps you keep better track of it.
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[00:07:44] I also believe that marking your posts as cornerstone content can come into play if you pay for a premium version of the Yoast plugin. I don't use premium plugins, so I can't really speak to that, but I do believe once it's marked as Cornerstone, when they do internal linking suggestions, they'll make different suggestions for your cornerstone content,
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[00:08:33] The important thing is that you know which of your posts are going to be the different hubs for your wheels of content, and that way you can make sure that you link to them from every related post you write. Over time, this will have a very positive impact on your SEO. I hope that this episode has served as a helpful refresher on cornerstone content and the impact it can have on your blogging strategy.
