Publishing a good article always begins with writing an organized blog post outline. Writing blog post outlines prevents indecision and defines clearly where the article will go.
Blog post outlines ensure the article flows coherently from one point to the next. A poor article flow creates a bad reader experience. If there are improper connections of ideas or concepts that jump around to much, readers will be confused.
Your freelance writers may have different styles, but giving them an outline to create their blog posts will keep everyone on the same page.
The question now is, how do you create a great blog post outline?
Let’s dive in.
Benefits of Writing an Outline
You surely don’t want to publish poorly written posts, right? You can’t just “wing it.” Your blog post outline is your lifesaver in case you experience writer’s block, wherein a writer’s mind is unable to think productively and their creativity is temporarily slowed down at that moment.
This writing process is a holy grail for writers, especially those who create articles daily. It saves a lot of time and effort in a manner that you already have listed your well-thought points and will only need to create the content out of that flow. It also provides you with a clear direction for what idea you may want to convey to the readers. After all, serving clear information is your primary goal when writing this content, so you don’t want to confuse people.
Article flow allows you to stay on your train of thoughts from the introduction down to the body up to your paper’s conclusion. Your conclusion should answer the introduction, and the body must provide backup facts to expand the idea in the intro and outro.
The outline can help you eliminate what is unnecessary and include the essential concepts that matter. This will add substance to your paper and can make your readers more engaged with the post.
Upon finishing your article, you can also utilize this draft when editing. You can enhance the structuring of the piece and reorganize the arrangements of paragraphs from the heaviest portion up to the lightest section of the post. You may also add more thoughts on top-heavy portions to highlight them more than those of the light topics. These portions are sometimes embedded content which you can add images, hyperlinks, figures, or tables that may improve your piece.
Define Your Keyword
To start writing the outline, define your keyword.
Keywords are important elements when it comes to blog posts. They define what the whole content is all about in a few words. They are what are most commonly used as search queries. This is what your article should focus more on given the competition on the world wide web. From here, you can create the draft which you can use for the content and title.
Define the Key Post Takeaways
You will want to leave a mark on your readers as they read your post. Hence, you should decide before writing what you want your readers to remember upon finishing the article. It’s all summed up as they reach the part of the conclusion. Defining the main point ahead of time will give your article a logical structure and a purpose.
Come Up with a Working Title
Working titles refer to the literal name of the article. It should be easy to remember because this is what comes up first as they look for it in the internet and as your audience reads through your post, the working title will generate an initial idea of what the article is all about. As much as possible, include your target keyword in the title. Your title can be a game-changer as to whether or not the reader will click on the blog or not.
Research the Competition
You’re not the only writer who thought of the same topic on the internet. The competition, therefore, can be heavy because you’re sharing similar ideas and attracting the same audiences. Engagements and clicks are what matter here. Upon outlining, you can research the keyword rankings, top-rated content and discover backlinks that you can use for your blog post.
Write the Main Headers
Although they share similar concepts, headers and titles are different from one another. Titles cover the entire piece, while main headings are titles of each section that represent its whole idea. Main headers should be written early on as this will organize the whole content of the blog.
Add Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions are most commonly found in the latter part of the blog. This will help the audience or readers answer some of their questions quickly. It also informs and give guidance to them but is not as elaborate as what you have in your content.
Optimize with Blog Post Outline Tools
What more can technology help writers with? You can now do an outline easily with blog post outline tools. Aside from saving time, it also adds more value and a more structured piece. In using tools, you can easily modify the content, organize a checklist that you can use upon writing, and structure any information that might be useful for your article. Here are some of the outline tools you can use in your blog post.
Frase
Frase is one of the tools for article optimization. It provides the ability to create Search Engine Optimization (SEO) focused content and generate answers that are in demand by your target audience. It offers different features such as research, content that are AI-generated and are optimized, an answer engine, customer support, and a tutorial for beginners. It has fair advantages, however, its downside also includes no mobile app availability, lower accuracy, and not being guaranteed to have the best AI assistant.
SEO Surfer Free Outline Tool
The SEO Surfer Free Outline Tool is another tool that’s free for the use of bloggers when it comes to outlining. It generates content flow from introduction to conclusion, saving you time, effort, energy, and improving the piece. It’s different because it’s powered to source out 500 ranking factors for content comparison all over the Google Search Engine Result Pages.
AI Tools like Jasper
Jasper AI is already amazing as it is. It works for how you want it to create a unique outline for you based on you and your audiences’ wants and needs. However, there are limitations to their offer. You still need to pay for a bigger plan to access other features of the tools. The good thing is that there are other alternatives to Japer AI like Writesonic which support up to 18 languages, CopySmith suited for eCommerce contents, and Shortly AI which can write over 500 billion words.
Blog Post Outline Example
Here is an example of a good blog post outline:
Keyword: post outlines
Title: How to Write Blog Post Outlines
H2s:
Benefits of Writing an Outline
Define Your Keyword
Define the Key Post Takeaways
Come up with a Working Title
Research the Competition
Write the Main Headers
Add Frequently Asked Questions
Optimize with Blog Post Outline Tools
H3s:
Frase
SEO Surfer Free Outline Tool
Ai tools
Blog Post Outline Template
Here is a template you can use to create your own blog post outlines!
Keyword:
Title:
H2s:
H3s: