How to Structure a Blog Post for SEO
Not a checklist. This is the order a post is actually built in, from deciding which question it answers through to pressing publish, with the judgement that belongs at each stage. Most weak posts are weak because somebody started typing.
Structure Is Decided Before You Write
The commonest reason a post is weak is that the writer opened a blank page and began. The shape should be settled first. Settling it takes minutes rather than the hour that rewriting costs.
What settling it means. Three decisions.
Which single question the post answers, what the answer actually is, then what somebody needs to understand before that answer makes sense. Everything else follows from those.
Why writing without them produces a mess. The post finds its subject as it goes.
A piece that starts without a settled question wanders towards one, which means the beginning was written before anybody knew what the piece was about. Readers arrive at exactly that part.
What this is not. A template.
Nothing on this page is a form to complete. A structure that could be filled in mechanically produces posts that read as though they were, which is the failure this whole section argues against.
What the sequence below is. The order things get decided.
Nine stages, from the question to publication. Block eleven puts them back together as a sequence rather than a list.
Answer The Question Early
Somebody arrived with a question. Give them the answer near the top, then explain, qualify and expand beneath it. This is the opposite of how most business posts are written.
Why most posts do the reverse. Essay habits.
People write the way they were taught to write essays, building towards a conclusion. That works for a reader who has committed to the whole piece and fails completely for one who is scanning to see whether they are in the right place.
What withholding costs. The reader.
Somebody scrolling past four paragraphs of background without seeing anything resembling their answer concludes the page does not have it. They leave. The answer three screens down was never read.
Why it does not shorten the post. The detail still matters.
Answering early means leading with the conclusion rather than omitting the reasoning. Somebody who needs the qualifications reads on. Somebody who needed only the answer has been served.
The commercial worry it raises. Usually unfounded.
Businesses fear that answering immediately removes any reason to continue. In practice a clear answer is what establishes competence. A reader who got what they came for thinks better of you rather than worse.
Where this connects. Two places.
It is also what makes a page eligible for the answer boxes covered in what is a featured snippet, so the good writing and the search benefit point the same way.
Introductions
An opening has to confirm the reader is in the right place and give them a reason to continue. That is all of it. It can usually be done in two or three sentences.
Confirming they are in the right place. Restate the question.
Somebody arriving from a result needs to see, immediately, that this page is about the thing they searched for. Using their words rather than your trade's words is most of that job.
Giving a reason to continue. Signal what is coming.
A sentence indicating what the piece will settle. Not a summary of every section, just enough that continuing feels worthwhile rather than speculative.
The anecdote opening. Does neither.
Beginning with a story about a customer, the weather, else something that happened last week. It delays the confirmation the reader needs and gives no reason to continue that the story itself does not.
The dictionary definition opening. Also neither.
Opening by defining the term in the title. Somebody who searched the term already has a rough idea what it means. The definition tells them nothing about whether this page will help.
The test. Delete it and see.
Remove the introduction and read from the second section. If nothing is lost, the introduction was doing neither job and the post is better without it.
Headlines
A title has to work for a person deciding whether to click and for a search engine deciding what the page is about. Those pull in slightly different directions and the tension is manageable.
What the search side needs. The question, recognisably.
The words somebody would actually use, in something close to the order they would use them. A title that obscures the subject to sound interesting is invisible to the people looking for it.
What the human side needs. A reason to choose you.
Among several results answering the same question, yours has to look like the one worth opening. Specificity does this better than cleverness, because it signals a real answer rather than a general piece.
Where the tension sits. Accuracy against appeal.
An accurate title can be dull and an appealing one can overpromise. The resolution is nearly always to be more specific rather than more dramatic, since specificity serves both sides.
Why misleading titles cost more than they gain. The click is the cheap part.
A title promising more than the page delivers earns a visit and loses the reader immediately. You have paid for attention with credibility, which is a poor exchange and a visible one.
The practical check. Read it as a result.
Imagine your title among five others answering the same question. Would somebody choose it, then would they feel misled afterwards. Both have to be right.
Headings
Headings give a document its shape and let somebody scanning find the part they need. They should describe what a section contains rather than decorate it.
How people actually read a post. They do not.
Most readers scan headings first, decide whether the piece covers their situation, then read one or two sections properly. Headings are therefore the most-read text on the page after the title.
The test worth applying. Read the headings alone.
Somebody reading only your headings, in order, should be able to follow the argument. If they read as a list of disconnected labels, the post has no structure and the headings revealed it.
What decorative headings look like. Clever rather than clear.
Puns, teases and phrases that only make sense after reading the section. Each costs a scanner the ability to navigate, which is the one thing headings exist to provide.
Nesting. Shallow is better.
Sections and subsections are enough for almost any post. Deeper nesting usually means the piece is covering more than one question and should be two posts.
Where the mechanics sit. Separately.
The technical conventions for heading levels are covered in our on-page material rather than here, since this page is about what the headings should say.
Internal Links
Linking is how a post connects to the things it should lead to. It is entirely within your control, costs nothing and is the most neglected part of most posts.
Where links belong. Where a reader would want one.
At the point in the text where somebody would naturally have a follow-on question. Not gathered at the bottom, where they are read by nobody who has already left.
What the link should say. The destination.
Words describing what the reader will find. Vague phrases like this page or read more tell nobody anything and waste the one signal a link carries.
What to link to. Two things.
Other posts covering the follow-on question, plus the service page for somebody who has decided. A post with no route to either is a dead end.
How many. As many as are useful.
There is no number. A link that helps a reader is worth including and a link inserted to reach a quota is noise, which readers detect quickly.
Why it gets neglected. It happens after the writing.
Linking is the last thing and the first thing dropped when a post is finished and somebody is tired. Doing it at the outline stage instead removes that problem.
Where the mechanism sits. Elsewhere.
The technical considerations belong in our on-page material rather than here.
Images
An image should show something words cannot. Anything else is decoration. Decoration slows the page while serving nobody.
What images genuinely do. Three things.
Show a thing being described, demonstrate a difference between two states, else make a sequence of steps followable. Where none of those applies, the image is filling space.
What the decorative version costs. Loading time.
Every image is a file somebody's connection has to fetch. A stock photograph adding nothing has made the page slower for a reader who gained nothing in exchange.
Naming files. Describe the content.
A filename saying what the image shows is more useful than a camera reference or a serial number. It costs nothing at the point of saving and cannot be retrofitted easily.
Alternative text. Written for somebody who cannot see it.
A plain description of what the image shows and why it is there. That is its actual purpose. Treating it as a place to repeat search terms produces text that fails the people who rely on it.
Size. Only as large as displayed.
An image far larger than the space it occupies makes everybody wait for detail nobody sees.
Why this page has none. Consistency.
Nothing below the hero on this site is an image, because none would meet the test above. That is the same rule applied to ourselves.
Meta Descriptions
The short summary shown beneath a result. It affects whether somebody clicks rather than where the page appears, which is worth being clear about before writing one.
What it does not do. Change your position.
Writing a better description will not move a page up the results. It may increase the proportion of people who choose it, which is a different and still worthwhile effect.
What is actually shown. Not always what you wrote.
Search engines frequently substitute text drawn from the page where they judge it more relevant to the query. Your description is a proposal rather than a guarantee.
How to write one. Plain and descriptive.
Say what the page covers, in ordinary language, so somebody can tell whether it answers their question. That is the pattern used on every page in this section and you can verify it by looking.
What to avoid. Hooks and figures.
Teasing phrases, statistics and urgency. These read as marketing among results that are answering the question, which makes yours look like the one selling something.
Length. Long enough to be useful.
Descriptions get truncated when they run long, so the useful information belongs early. No target figure appears here because none is stable enough to publish.
Calls To Action
Most posts should ask for very little. A reader early in their thinking is not ready to buy. Pushing them is what makes business blogs unreadable.
Where the reader actually is. Not near a decision.
Somebody who searched a question is gathering understanding. They may be weeks from wanting anybody. Treating them as a prospect misreads the moment entirely.
What pushing produces. Departure.
An answer interrupted by an invitation to get in touch reads as a page that was never really answering. The reader concludes they are being sold to, which they are.
What a post should offer instead. The next useful thing.
A link to the question they will have next, else to the page that goes deeper. That serves somebody who is not ready and is available to somebody who is.
Where a direct request is fair. At the end, once.
Having answered the question fully, a single plain sentence about what you do is reasonable. It has been earned by that point rather than demanded before it.
The exception. Posts near the purchase.
A piece about choosing between options or what something costs reaches somebody much closer to deciding. There a clearer invitation fits the moment.
Editing
The most useful edit is removing what does not earn its place. Everything else people do at this stage matters considerably less.
What to remove first. The throat-clearing.
Sentences restating the question, paragraphs explaining what you are about to explain, plus background nobody needed. These accumulate because writing towards an answer produces them naturally.
The test for any paragraph. What is lost.
Delete it and reread. If the piece is unchanged, it was not earning its place. Applying that once through a draft removes a surprising amount.
What to check rather than cut. The answer's position.
Read it as somebody scanning. Is the answer visible early. If the drafting pushed it downwards, moving it up is usually the single largest improvement available.
What not to do at this stage. Add.
Editing that expands a piece is usually anxiety rather than improvement. If something genuinely essential is missing, that is a structural problem from block one rather than an editing one.
Reading it aloud. Still the best check.
Sentences that cannot be read aloud comfortably are sentences a reader will stumble on. It takes minutes and catches more than any tool.
What is not on this list. Anything mechanical.
Verification items are covered in our on-page material. This stage is judgement about whether the piece is worth reading.
The Order It Actually Happens In
Everything above is a sequence rather than a list of considerations. In order, this is how a post gets built.
First, the question and the answer. Before any writing.
Which question this post answers, what the answer is, then what somebody needs to know for it to make sense. Choosing the topic comes before even this.
Second, the headings. The shape.
Write the section headings before the sections. Read them in order and check the argument follows, which is far cheaper than discovering it does not after writing everything.
Third, the answer near the top. Then the detail.
Lead with the conclusion, then explain and qualify beneath it. The structure is now doing the work rather than the prose.
Fourth, the links. While the shape is fresh.
Mark where a reader will have a follow-on question, at outline stage rather than afterwards.
Fifth, the title and description. Once the piece exists.
Both are easier to write when you know what the post actually became, which is rarely exactly what was planned.
Last, the edit. Removing rather than adding.
One pass deleting what does not earn its place, then read it aloud. The full series is on the content and blogging guide.
Write the headings
before the
sections.
Reading them in order shows whether the argument follows, which is far cheaper than discovering it does not after writing everything. We settle the question, the answer and the shape before anybody starts typing, because that is where most weak posts go wrong.
How we approach content:
The knowledge sits in your business and the writing skill usually does not. That is the part we supply.
Every guide.
One practice.
What a blog is for, how to choose subjects worth writing about, how to structure a post, how to promote it, how to measure it and how to keep it current.
