SEO Archives - Digital Storyteller

What Is Cornerstone Content and Why Does Your Website Need It?

If you’ve ever Googled “how do I show up on the first page of Google,” you’ve probably come across the term cornerstone content. It sounds technical, but the concept is actually pretty straightforward — and once you understand it, it changes the way you think about everything you publish on your website.

What Is Cornerstone Content?

Cornerstone content is the most important content on your website. These are the pages or blog posts that best represent what your business does, what you want to be known for, and what you most want to rank for in search engines.

Think of it as the foundation your entire website is built on. Everything else — your supporting blogs, your social content, your videos — points back to it.

Cornerstone content typically shares a few characteristics. It is longer and more in-depth than a standard blog post. It is evergreen, meaning it stays relevant over time and gets updated regularly. And it is the content you are most proud of, the pieces that most clearly and thoroughly explain your expertise.

Most websites have somewhere between four and ten cornerstone pieces. Any fewer and you are not covering enough ground. Any more and you risk spreading yourself too thin and competing against yourself in search results.

Why Does Cornerstone Content Matter for SEO?

Here is the key thing to understand about SEO: search engines do not rank websites. They rank individual pages.

That means if you want to show up when someone searches for a specific topic, you need a specific page built around that topic. Cornerstone content gives Google a clear signal about which pages on your site are the most authoritative and important for a given subject.

When you build supporting content — blogs, articles, videos — and link them back to your cornerstone pages, you are essentially telling Google: “This page is the hub. This is where the best, most complete information on this topic lives.” Over time, that internal linking structure builds topical authority, which is one of the most powerful drivers of organic search rankings.

Without cornerstone content, your website is a collection of disconnected pages. With it, your site becomes a structured, intentional resource that Google knows how to read and reward.

How to Identify Your Cornerstone Content

Start by asking yourself: what are the two to five topics my business absolutely needs to rank for?

These should be the topics most directly tied to your core services, the ones your ideal clients are actively searching for, and the ones where you have the most expertise to offer. Each of those topics deserves a cornerstone page built around it.

From there, every blog post you publish, every video you create, and every social caption you write becomes an opportunity to support one of those cornerstones and send more authority back to the pages that matter most.

Cornerstone Content Takes Time, But It Works

Ranking on the first page of Google does not happen overnight. But cornerstone content is one of the most reliable, proven ways to get there. When you commit to building a strong foundation and consistently creating content that supports it, the results compound over time.

The businesses that show up at the top of search results are not there by accident. They have a content strategy built around the right topics, structured in a way that search engines understand and reward.

If you want to build that kind of strategy for your business, our team can help. Learn more about our SEO and content marketing services and let’s build something that actually ranks.

Frequently Asked Questions About Cornerstone Content

How is cornerstone content different from a regular blog post? A typical blog post is focused and timely, covering one specific angle on a topic. Cornerstone content is broader and deeper. It’s the definitive resource on a subject, updated regularly, and designed to serve as the central hub that other posts link back to.

How many cornerstone pages does my site need? Most websites do well with four to ten cornerstone pieces. Fewer than that and you’re not covering enough ground; more than that and you risk competing against yourself in search results.

Does my cornerstone content need to be a blog post? Not necessarily. It can be a dedicated page on your website, a comprehensive guide, or a long-form article; whatever format best showcases your expertise on that topic. What matters is that it’s thorough, evergreen, and positioned as the go-to resource for that subject.

How long does it take for cornerstone content to rank? There’s no fixed timeline, but SEO in general is a long game. Cornerstone content is a foundational strategy; results build over months as you publish supporting content that links back to it and reinforces your topical authority.

What makes a good cornerstone topic? A strong cornerstone topic is closely tied to your core services, actively searched for by your ideal clients, and something you can speak to with genuine depth and expertise. If you can’t write 1,500+ words on it without padding, it may not be the right choice.

What happens if I already have a blog post on a topic I want to make a cornerstone page? You can expand and elevate it. Update the content to be more comprehensive, optimize it around your focus keyphrase, and start building supporting posts that link back to it. Existing content can absolutely become cornerstone content with the right investment.

August 12, 2026/by Digital Storyteller Team

Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, News, Outsourced Marketing, SEO

Your Guide to Marketing KPIs

SEO, CTA, KPI … The list of terms you need to know for your marketing strategy seems to go on and on. We’re here to help break it down and make it easy for you to understand. Keep reading for our full guide to marketing key performance indicators (KPIs).

What is a KPI?

KPI stands for key performance indicator. They are a way to measure performance over time. Following certain metrics over time can help your business reach milestones, gauge processes, and provide insight to make better business decisions.

What Marketing KPIs Should You Track?

Tracking the right key performance indicators can provide a holistic view of how your business is performing.

We, like Semrush, believe that these are some of the best KPIs you should be tracking:

Conversions: How many of your site visitors are qualified leads? How many of them convert to closed sales?
ROI: Return on investment is a metric that tells you how profitable an investment is/was, in this case, likely how profitable your marketing investment was.
Organic Visibility: How are people finding your site? Are you showing up through organic search?
Organic Sessions: How many users are finding your site through an organic search?
Bounce Rate: How quickly are users leaving your site after visiting? If your site is not user-friendly, loads slowly, or doesn’t provide the information your users are looking for, they might exit the site after viewing only a single page.
Average Time on Page: How long are your users spending on your site pages? Pages with more content, such as blogs or videos, typically tend to drive longer time on-page.
Organic CTR (click-through rate): Does your site have clear calls to action (CTAs)? How often are users clicking buttons or links on your site? Which buttons/links are you driving them to click?
Backlinks: Sites with higher authority are more likely to see increased backlinks. If your site provides valuable, authoritative information that users find helpful, and useful, they may be more likely to link to it from their own sites. This helps drive referral traffic to your site and continues to support authority improvements.
Keyword rankings: Keyword rankings are the primary driver of organic search traffic. Targeting specific keywords relevant to what your business does is critical to increasing organic search traffic. It’s important to track keywords in two ways: total ranking keywords, and keyword ranking positions.
Branded vs. Non-Branded Traffic: Branded keywords are directly related to your unique business. For our brand, this would include keywords such as “Digital Storyteller,” “Digital Storyteller marketing agency,” “Andrew Marr,” etc. Non-branded keywords are those that your site ranks for that are not specific to you, such as “digital marketing,” “social media management,” and “search engine optimization.”
Page Speed: Page speed is a huge determinant of how your site performs. According to backlinko, the average page loading speed is 10.3 seconds on desktop and 27.3 seconds on mobile. If your site takes longer than this to load, chances are your user won’t wait and will instead visit a competitor’s site instead. Safe to say we’ve become a pretty impatient society …
Coverage Issues: Performing site audits can ensure that your site is functioning properly and that Google is indexing and reading your site as it should be. Google Search Console is a critical tool in identifying coverage issues and can help you solve any issues that you find.

How to Develop your Marketing KPI Strategy

Your business’ marketing KPI strategy should be unique to your business needs. Sure, you can glean ideas from other similar business models, but tailor yours to help guide you where you want to go.

Here are a few tips on how to develop your marketing KPI strategy.

Define your KPIs- Which specific KPIs will your business track? How will you collect the data and how often will you track shifts?
Use the SMART Method- KPIs should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound. For example, “Onboard 7 new clients in the next 12 months.”
Keep your KPIs clear- Your team should understand your KPIs and how to act on them to make decisions that ultimately lead to reaching your goals.
Revisit your plan- Sometimes plans need to change. Revisit your KPI strategy to make sure the strategy is still working for you. Maybe you need to adjust a few action items based to keep propelling forward in the right direction.
Don’t overdo it with KPIs- Try to avoid doing too much, too quickly. With access to a plethora of data, it can be easy to try to measure every little thing. We recommend using the information to stay on track with your most important targets- however you define them. This will help you avoid KPI overload.

See an example below of how we at Digital Storyteller keep track of the important KPIs to our business strategy.

August 14, 2022/by Digital Storyteller Team