How to Write A Blog Outline In 5 Easy Steps
Why do you need an outline for your blog?
A good blog outline gives your site structure and helps you organize your content in a logical way. This makes it easier for your user to navigate. This provides good user experience.
Not only that but search engines love it. That’s because a well structured help search engines better understand what your website is about.
So creating a blog outline is your next step now that you are ready to start building your amateur blog.
Let’s look at five simple steps to to help you create an good outline for your blog.
Brainstorm Ideas
Write down your main keyword. Then start jotting down related ideas based on your blog audience .
For example, if you have a travel blog your goal may be to tempt your audience to visit locations you’ve been to.
Write down what comes to mind related to your experience.
Expand on those ideas. Ask yourself, what you liked and what you didn’t like. How would your audience enjoy visiting the location?
Don’t worry about organizing your ideas at this point. That happens next.
Organize Outline Ideas
Now it’s time to structure your ideas based on hierachy-their rank. First you may group them into locations.
For example, Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. Then you can break them down into individual countries.
This is what the blog outline for your pages would look like:
- The Caribbean
- Jamaica
- Trinidad and Tobaggo
- Bermuda
- Barbados
- St Lucia
You may want to create individual posts for related topics. These topics can be about airfare, accommodation, and attractions in those countries.
So now your entire blog content can focus on recommending locations to your audience. Your blog pages would be an overview of each country.
While the individual posts would provide information they need to plan their trip.
From here on each page or post you create can link to others. Thus providing a solid internal link building structure for your blog.
The Home Page
Your Home Page is usually the gateway to your website. It provides a peek into what your blog is about. But it also links to other important pages on your website.
The Home Page is made up of a Headline, a Featured Image and a call to action at the top.
The sections below are blurbs about what you do. about you or your team, and what service you provide.
Then there is a call to action that encourages users to take an action. That action can be clicking a link, making a purchase or signing up for your newsletter.
The Footer is a sitewide section. It may contain your logo, a sign up form or a link to your Contact Page. It may have links to the Privacy and Terms pages as well.
Add Pages
Content you create on your blog is either static or dynamic content. They are either pages or posts.
Pages are referred to as static because their content rarely changes.
There are a few static pages that are standard on the majority of websites, regardless of niche.
A blog page structure depends on the importance of that page. Think of a parent child relationship.
Five examples of these static pages on a blog include the Home, About, Contact, Privacy and Terms pages.
Both internal and external links as well as calls to actions are basic elements on a static blog page.
Basic Static Blog Outline
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Head Section | Logo, Navigation |
| Blog Headline | Main Title |
| Hero Image | Largest Image |
| Body | Blog Overview |
| Footer | Navigation. Copyright Info. |
Assign Post Page
The Blogroll or Post Page is a dynamic page. The Post page can be designated the main entrypoint to your blog.
The post page usually has a grid layout with images and links to assigned posts.
However, because your Post page is dynamic, when you add a new piece of the content the Post Page changes.
Outline Your Blog Posts
The majority of Blog Posts are made up of four basic elements
Featured Image: This is the main image in the post. The featured image is usually above or below the Title
Body: It contains what the post is about. The body is broken up into sections using headings and subheadings.
Depending on the length of a post you may want to use a table of content that allows the reader to jump to specific sections.
You can use Bullets, charts, tables and graphics in the body of the blog. This makes it easier to read.
Summary: A summary gives a brief recap of a blog post. It should contain important points you want your audience to remember.
Call to Action: These can be placed anywhere in the post. However you want to give your reader some direction at the end. This can be a link to a related post, or a request to share the blog post with friends.
Blog Outline Must Have Elements
Be sure to incorporate these little things in your blog outline. The help your users have a better experience.
Allow easy navigation. You want users to easily go from one section of your site to another. This contributes to longer dwell time which is a search engine ranking factor.
Tell People what you do. This immediately weeds out those who are not looking for what you have to offer.
Multiple contact options. Ensure that your visitors have at least two different ways of contacting you if they want to.
Permit user feedback and reviews. Let prospects know what other users say about their experience on your website.
Give your website legitimacy. A Privacy Policy, Terms of use and appropriate Disclaimer are some of the must have legal pages on your website.
Summary
So why is a blog outline important?
A Blog needs structure. A Blog outline allows you to structure your blog content in a logical way. This makes it easy for users to consume your content and provide feedback.
A website outline helps search engines to understand what your blog is about and makes it easier for them to crawl the site’s content.
There are a number of blog outline tool and blog outline apps that will show you how to outline a blog post.