How to Write a Blog Post Outline the Right Way

Writing a blog post without an outline is hard. You’re just jotting down your thoughts as they come to you, without having guidance for the structure of your information. You’ll likely end up with disorganized writing that doesn’t succeed in communicating what you want to your target audience, which hurts your brand.

Instead, have a blog post outline in place to ensure your messaging to your audience is on point.

How to Write a Blog Post Outline

In just a few steps, you can create a standard operating procedure (SOP) for each blog post that you’ll write, boosting your content marketing campaigns with ease. Research shows that being less organized correlates to being less efficient, and this applies to blogging, too. The more organized you are with an outline, the better quality blog post you’ll write.

Here’s how to write an outline for a blog post.

Step 1. Write Down a Brain Dump of General Ideas

It's important to begin with a brain dump of general ideas. This stream-of-consciousness approach allows you to capture all your initial thoughts and potential angles for your article. Simply grab a pen and paper or open a blank document and start jotting down every idea that comes to mind related to your topic.

An illustration graphic of a brain thinking about how to write a blog post outline.

Take some time to read through your ideas and organize them into sections or categories. This will help you create a solid outline for your blog post. Look for common themes or subtopics within your ideas and group them together. Consider the different angles you can explore within your broader topic and organize your ideas accordingly.

By creating a detailed outline from your brain dump, you'll have a comprehensive plan for your blog post. Your outline should include overarching sections that cover the main points you want to address, as well as specific bullet point summaries for each section.

For example, let’s say we want to write an outline for How to Start a Blog. We’d be exploring these ideas:

How to pick a name and niche for your blog
Getting your blog online
Designing your blog
Writing a new blog post and then publishing it
Marketing your blog
Monetizing your blog

2. Flesh out Each Idea Into More Specific Sections

To flesh out each idea into more specific sections, start by brainstorming takeaways for each main point you want to cover in your blog post. These takeaways can be basic summaries or key ideas that you want to expand upon. Don't be afraid to jot down additional ideas during this brainstorming process.

Once you have your main takeaways, begin grouping them into larger sections or overarching themes. This helps create a logical flow for your blog post and ensures that your ideas are organized in a way that makes sense to your readers.

An artist's hand holding a digital pen drawing an outline on a tablet.

From there, you can start filling in the details for each section. Consider common questions your readers might have about the topic and address them in your outline. Break down complex topics into simple, digestible points and include relevant examples or case studies to reinforce your ideas.

Our “How to Start a Blog” example will now look like this, taking more shape:

How to pick a name and niche for your blog
o How to brainstorm names
o Where to find name availability
Getting your blog online
o What blogging platform to use
o How to find hosting
Designing your blog
o What content management system (CMS) to use
Writing a new blog post and then publishing it
o   What goes into writing a new blog post
o   How to format a new blog post
o   How to research your topics
o   Need for an editorial calendar
Marketing your blog
o Tactics for marketing your blog
Monetizing your blog
o How to make money from your blog
o The options available to bloggers to monetize

3: Analyze Top Articles on the 1st SERP of Your Keyword

One of the most crucial steps is analyzing top articles on the first search engine results page (SERP) for your chosen keyword. This helps you understand your competition, lets you figure out what Google’s algorithm considers authority content for your keywords, and guides you to craft a more effective blog post outline. All this boosts your SEO.

Start by conducting a search using your target keyword. Look at the top-ranking articles and identify their key sections and subtopics. Take note of the common questions or concerns they address and the unique angles they take.

A screenshot of the 1st SERP for "how to write" keyword phrase.

Make a note of the different sections and common themes found in these articles. Incorporate and absorb these main ideas into your own blog post outline. This brainstorming process will help you organize your thoughts and optimize your existing outline structure with this extra input.

Applying this process to our outline-in-the-works above, it would now look something like this after consulting the 1st SERP for our target keyword:

How to pick a name and niche for your blog
o How to brainstorm names
o Where to find name availability
Getting your blog online
o   What blogging platform to use
o   How to find hosting
o   Get started with your account
o   Pricing
Designing your blog
o What content management system (CMS) to use
o Formatting your blog in your CMS
Writing a new blog post and then publishing it
o   What goes into writing a new blog post
o   How to format a new blog post
o   How to research your topics
o   Keyword and topic research
o   Understand the different types of blog posts
o   Need for an editorial calendar
Marketing your blog
o Tactics for marketing your blog
- § Guest blogging
- § Social media
- § Online forums
- § Podcasting
Monetizing your blog
o How to make money from your blog
o The options available to bloggers to monetize
- § Sponsorships
- § Consulting
- § Freelancing
- § Affiliate marketing

4. Edit Your Outline for Better Organization

Now’s the part you’ve all been waiting for: editing your outline to refine it! Editing is a core part of how to write a blog post outline. You’ve gone from brain-dumping to adding more specific takeaways into each section, based on actual data from the live SERPs. Here, in the editing phase, we’re going to add an intro and conclusion, flesh out each section, its bullets, and its sub-bullets, so we have a functioning, final blog post outline that we can rely on.

A pair of hands typing on a laptop's keyboard.

Our outline will now look like this:

Intro
o Starting a blog is work-intensive to monetize, but launching your blog takes only a few steps
How to pick a name and niche for your blog
o How to brainstorm names
o Where do you find name availability?
Get your blog online
o   What blogging platform you should use
o   How do you find hosting?
o   Get started with your account
o   Pricing: What are your options?
Design your blog
o What content management system (CMS) should you use?
o Format your blog in your CMS
Write a new blog post and publish it
o   What goes into writing a new blog post
o   How to format a new blog post
o   How to research your topics
o   Perform keyword and topic research
o   Understand the different types of blog posts
o   The need for an editorial calendar
Market your blog
o Tactics for marketing your blog
- § Guest blogging
- § Social media
- § Online forums
- § Podcasting
Monetize your blog
o How to make money from your blog
o The options available to bloggers to monetize
- § Sponsorships
- § Consulting
- § Freelancing
- § Affiliate marketing
Conclusion
o Starting a blog is rewarding because you can make a living off of it

Putting in these more focused headings and bullets tightens up your whole blog post outline, making it easier for you to follow along and write.

5. Add Research, Examples, and Data

Adding research, examples, and data can take your content to the next level. Including these elements not only strengthens the credibility of your post, but also provides valuable insights to your readers that they won’t find anywhere else.

Conducting comprehensive research allows you to gather essential facts, statistics, and expert opinions that support your main ideas. By including well-researched information, you demonstrate your expertise and build trust with your audience, kind of like the E-E-A-T signals that benefit SEO on your blog.

Incorporating relevant examples makes your blog post more relatable. Whether it's a personal anecdote or a case study, real-life examples illustrate your points and provide practical applications for your readers. This not only enhances the overall reading experience, but also helps your audience better understand the content.

Backing up your assertions with data adds a layer of authenticity and persuasiveness to your blog post. Statistics, surveys, and studies give your ideas a solid foundation, making your arguments more persuasive. It also allows your readers to see the bigger picture and make more informed decisions.

6. Perfect Your Title

The title is what grabs the attention of your readers and entices them to click and read your post, especially if they’re searching for your keywords on the SERPS through organic search. When they read a catchy and powerful SEO title, they’ll be likelier to click through to your blog post. To create a perfect title, you need to make it clear, captivating, and relevant to your target audience.

Start by brainstorming different title ideas based on your blog post's main topic. Jot down potential titles that reflect the content of your post. Think about what questions or problems your readers may have and use your title to offer a solution or answer. You should also incorporate your main keyword into your blog post title to help with search engine optimization.

A screenshot of the Monster Insights Headline Analyzer. — Credit: Monster Insights

Once you have a list of potential titles, evaluate each one and choose the one that best represents your blog post's main focus. Make sure it is attention-grabbing and can pique the curiosity of your audience.

You can even use headline analyzer tools like Monster Insights to generate a headline score that rates your headline’s performance and readability.

In our case, the title for this blog post gets a stunning 87 score, so we think we’ll keep it the way it is.

Why You Need a Detailed Blog Post Outline

Think of your blog post outline as a roadmap that streamlines your content creation. It’s a way for you to get from point A to point B in the writing process without losing your focus and ensuring that your vital ideas and main points stay intact throughout.

Without an outline, your writing process would be disorderly, with you losing your train of thought and want points you want to get across. Imagine starting out on a tangent and then, midway through, forgetting what you wanted to conclude with. It would be chaotic and dysfunctional.

Benefits of a Blog Post Outline

There are tangible benefits to your writing process when you begin from an outline. As your conceptualization takes shape in Word or Google Docs, you begin to see how easily you can transform your outline into a final draft. Here are numerous benefits of using an outline.

Outlines Jumpstart Your Ideation

Sometimes, you’re just staring at your computer screen, waiting for the ideas to flow out of your brain. Unfortunately, sometimes you also get writer’s block, and those ideas aren’t that free-flowing at all. In such cases, having an outline is a godsend.

Outlining kicks off your ideation process. As soon as you put your first brain dump onto the screen, you begin to see how your ideas can connect into a full-fledged piece.

Outlines Ensure You and Stakeholders Are on the Same Page

If you’re blogging for your own website, then you don’t have to be accountable to anyone else. If you’re working with a client or bigger corporations—whose product teams have different people weighing in on the content of a blog post—then it’s absolutely necessary that everyone is on the same page. Failure to be on the same page means more work if an outline has to be redone midway through the conception process.

Marketers sitting in a circle, planning how to write a blog post outline.

Getting approval for the outline before you begin drafting ensures everyone is on the same page and that everyone expects the same content when you share the draft.

Outlines Give You a Framework for Good Order

Being organized is essential for productivity, and outlining is no different. Think of an outline as a framework for the thesis and points you want to convey in your writing. It is the skeleton around which you add the supporting content of your explanation, how-to, or whatever shape your final article takes.

Outlining gives you the opportunity to “templatize” your blog post creation. It empowers you to apply the same process to all your articles, speeding up your writing process more productively.

Put the Outline Before the Final Draft

Now you understand how integral outlining is to your blog posts. We hope you enjoyed learning how to write a blog post outline and that you apply this framework to all the articles you write for your website and your clients’ websites going forward.

To streamline and maximize your blog content production, partner with us at The Glorious Company. Our content marketing agency professionalizes the blogging process, taking your content from outline to draft to finished product on the web in a smooth, efficient process. Contact us today to grow your blog fast!

Have any questions? Keep the conversation going by leaving a comment below.

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