This conversation is about the importance of Cornerstone Content on websites. The host of the Dark Horse Entrepreneur Podcast, Tracy Brinkman, provides seven easy steps to creating these anchor pieces of content. She then explains that she has been in the coaching, course creation and online space since the 90s and is still learning. Tracy then encourages entrepreneurs, coaches and course creators to take action and learn tips from the Dark Horse Entrepreneur Podcast. She believes that driven entrepreneurs should start or restart their businesses with great marketing, personal, or business tips and results.

Cornerstone content is the key to growing a business into the empire it deserves to be. These articles provide the most important, complete information on the topic and should not be written with the goal of selling. They help to raise brand awareness, rank higher in search engine results, and attract prospects that can be nurtured into customers. Writing and publishing this content helps to position oneself as an authority in their industry and builds trust in the brand and its products. Ultimately, the goal is to help other people and build relationships.

Creating Cornerstone Content can be intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. By following seven easy steps, anyone can create content that will attract their ideal customers. Step one is to choose a topic. When deciding on a topic, it is important to consider if it aligns with your business and will attract customers, if it is something that would make your customers life easier, and if it interests you. If you choose a topic that you are passionate about and have a bit of knowledge on, it will be easier to write and optimize the content.

Creating content for your business can be an intimidating task, but with the right preparation and research, it doesn't have to be. The first step to creating great content is to do extra research which will help your prospects and customers. Research what your customers want to know, talk to existing customers, read posts, books, and interviews, and take copious notes to quote as sources. Once you have a plan, start outlining topics and subtopics, and then write the content. Make sure it is clear, concise, and genuinely helpful in solving one or more of your customer's problems. Also, include links from expert sources, build your keywords in naturally, use tools like Grammarly or Hemingway to make it easy to understand, and get a few people to read it in advance. Lastly, optimize your article with your primary keyword in the URL, title tag, and headline.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00:00 "Creating Core Content: 7 Easy Steps to Becoming an Authority in Your Field"

0:02:10 "Unlock the Power of Cornerstone Content to Build Your Business Empire"

0:04:17 "7 Steps to Creating Cornerstone Content for Your Business"

0:06:10 "Tips for Writing Effective Content"

0:12:08 "Optimizing Your Content for Search Engines: Tips for Improving SEO"

0:13:50 "Six Tips for Promoting Your Cornerstone Content"

0:16:39 Creating Cornerstone Content: 7 Tips for Successful SEO and Reader Engagement

HIGHLIGHTS

Contact every expert and website that you quoted inside your article and let them know about it. Some of them heck, many of them will tell others through their social media, right? Sometimes they'll even link to your content from whatever the article or whatever piece of content that you referenced that you used. They'll link them together. Now you're getting some of that Linked use. You might even consider investing a little paid promotion as well. You can reach a highly targeted audience this way and use the new traffic to further build your email list and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Make it simple for visitors to share your content with others by adding social media buttons, share me links, email, all the little tricks.

Use your social media accounts to tell your followers about the article, right? Schedule social media posts several times a day for the first couple of days after you post that Cornerstone Content, and then periodiotically afterwards, re remind them. Use personalization whenever possible. Thank you, guys, all my sales folks. I did this amazing piece of content about handling objections, right? I drew blank there for a second. Whatever it might be, you can even take a snippet of this piece of content and use it as your social media content and say, hey, this is just one piece of this amazing piece of content. Put it out there, click the link down in the Show notes or whatever it is, and check out the full content, right?

So wherever your keyword you're trying to tweak for, you're trying to optimize for. Make sure it's an url in the title tag and in the headline. Ideally, the title should answer an exact question being asked in Google, so it might be part of your research early on. What questions are being asked on this topic? Create subheadings that hold keywords as well as other keywords being populated throughout your text.. This will help your readers and the search engines alike to recognize the relevance of your content. This search engine have gotten really smart over the past couple of decades. And so make sure you don't know we're not talking about keyword stuffing here. We're just talking about make sure it's relevant to the content you're trying to the questions you're trying to answer and the content you're trying to share.

Right? Tip number three plan your content. Now this is where the fun begins. You might be writing something called the Complete Guide to Blank whatever the Topic Is or everything you ever wanted to know about. Blank. Again, whatever your topic is or how to achieve blank whatever your topic is. Once you have a basic plan of what your article will achieve, start outlining your topics and your subtopics.. You might want to use a step by structure from beginning to end, or a list, like we talked about in episode 348, ways to Make Your Listicles Amazing. So you can create a listicle or whatever works best for the topic that you have chosen. Okay. By the way, you might want to go back to listen to episode 348 where we talked about listicles. Listicles are very popular. You see them all the time. Where it's like the top ten ways to X or the top whatever. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I won't beat that one to death.

Please do not be intimidated into thinking that it's beyond the scope of your abilities to create this kind of content. Why? Because I'm about to break it down into seven easy steps. Here we go. Step number one pick your topic. There are three questions that you're going to want to consider when choosing a topic. Does it align with your business and will it attract your ideal customers? Right. Does it align with your business and will it attract your ideal customers? For example, let's say you're in the niche of stock investing. You don't want to create some cornerstone Content about buying a home.