Blog posts are a great medium to share information all over the world. But writing a good blog post is more challenging than it sounds. First, you must write it in a way that anyone can understand. And to do what, you need a blog post outline.
If you have a good format in your blog post, it will be much easier for readers to memorize. Besides, it will help you write the exact points you want to share with your audience. That’s why an outline is essential to write a blog post.
Alright, let’s get to the point of how you can create a perfect format for your blog post. But before that, you should understand some basics of the outline.
Contents
What is a blog post outline?
The outline is a direct roadmap that helps you navigate and understand the primary elements of any blog post. Besides, with an outline, you can write the main points you want to share with the audience. Simply put, the outline is a blog post’s heading tags (H2, H3, H4).
Why do you need an outline for a blog post?
An outline or format is essential for a blog post. It’s because of the following reasons.
- Outlines make the blog post easy to read and write.
- It helps Google crawlers scan and index blog posts.
- With the outline (headings & subheadings), you can improve the SEO.
- A good blog structure helps readers memorize the content.
- An outline is necessary if you want your blog featured in Google snippets.
6 Steps to writing a blog post outline
There’s nothing like rocket science in writing a good template for your blog post. Just follow the tips below and see the result.
1. Create a searcher intent title
The title is what appears on search result pages. And if your title feels relevant to the searcher’s intent, your blog post will get desired traffic. Hence, while writing the outline for a blog post, make sure you have given enough strength to the title.
Therefore, you must learn to write a good SEO title that can increase your CTR from search results.
Here are some tips you can apply to write a killer blog post headline.
- Research your competitors. Look at the title of top-ranking blogs on Google results.
- Use keyword research tools to find what your audience is searching for.
- Use Headline Analyzer by Co-Schedule to make your title appealing.
Even though visitors come to your blog by clicking through the title, you can write a customized headline in your blog post content. However, since the search result page doesn’t support long titles, you must stick with a precise one.
2. Research the topic properly
Once you have a blog topic, find out what your readers think about it. How can you find them? Use Google search and see the “people ask” ask section.
Go through the top-ranking results and understand their content structure. Always remember that these websites ranked for some reasons. They did their best, as google wants. And if you want your blog post to stand among them, make it better than theirs.
In addition, you can use social media platforms like quora and public reviews to understand what people actually think. Keyword planner and Google Trends are some of the free tools I use to research my topics.
3. Use Google search for keywords
Google search is a great tool for content writing. You can get many useful things here to write a perfect outline for your blog. Let’s see how you can use Google search.
- Auto Suggestions
While typing a search query, Google generates some automatic search suggestions. And these suggestions are actually searched by users. Google saves these searches in its database. That’s why you see those suggestions when you type something similar to them.
- People also ask
This section of Google search results is undeniably a savior to content writers. You can use these keywords in your headings and subheading. Moreover, since these are users’ direct search queries, you’ll get traffic and chances of featured snippets.
- Related Search
At the bottom of the search results, you’ll find related searches. These results are very useful in creating blog structures if you can cover these searches in the blog post headings.
4. Implement key points in headings and subheadings
Once you get the key points from google search or tools like Ahrefs and others, put them in your headings and subheadings. These keywords or keyword phases will help your blog post ranking.
However, if you can utilize them very well, there’s a chance of getting ranked in featured snippets. And people trust these snippets since Google personally selects content for them.
Personal Tip: While inserting the keyword phrase in headings, you don’t have to write the exact same phrase. Google is now mature enough to understand synonyms and the context of the content.
5. Rearrange the headings based on the ‘inverted pyramid’ model
Once done writing the headings and subheadings, it’s time to rearrange them. Because we can’t leave them as drafted the first time. Always follow the inverted pyramid model. That means placing the most important point at the top and then less essential parts one by one.
Most people lose attention when they scroll down half of the content. And since blog posts are often larger to read, you must place important things at the front.
Apart from human nature, Google search crawlers are also the same. They want the most relevant points at the start. Otherwise, you may end up getting improper indexing.
6. Add conclusion and FAQ
A conclusion is a fundamental part of blog post structure. Sometimes, the audience demands a final verdict on the content because it helps them decide.
For instance, you’re writing a listicle article about the best AI writing tools. However, your readers may still be confused after reading the entire blog post. Hence, consider adding a conclusion in the outline.
Apart from the conclusion, frequently asked questions are also essential. It helps your readers find answers to what they are looking for. Besides, it’s also helpful to get featured in People also ask.
Final thought
Unlike other web content writing, blog posts are quite different. While others may or may not require an outline, in blogging, it’s a must thing. However, even though creating a blog post outline is hard, writing content according to it becomes much easier.
Additionally, it helps you and your readers get an accurate idea about the whole blog post.
However, if you want a quick and solid outline for your blog post, you can use AI tools like Surfer SEO, Jesper AI, and others. These tools create instant blog post templates. But you must provide the keywords and make changes if necessary.