Ideal Outcome: You and everybody in your content team will develop an efficient process that will enable you to create high-quality content that attracts users to your website, regardless of your business niche, until your servers crack and die of over exhaustion.

Prerequisites or requirements:

● It is recommended to have some keyword research knowledge so that you can clearly establish the target keyword for your blog posts. You can check this

SOP ⁠

to learn how to research and select relevant keywords for your website.

Why this is important: The content on your website helps you rank better on search engines, provides users with the information they need, and can convert them into clients. Content creation is time-consuming, but preparing an outline ensures that your time is well spent. An outline is extremely important because is makes your content more effective, high-quality and consistent. In other words it doubles your chances of hitting the bull’s eye with every piece of content you publish.

Where this is done: In your browser, Google Docs, Google Sheets and 3rd party apps.

When this is done: Whenever you need to create a new blog post.

Who does this: Anyone who creates content for your company and doesn’t want to get fired over bad content.

⁠

⁠
⁠

⁠
⁠
❏ Environment setup

Get access to the tools you will need to create the outline (no need to purchase anything, but you may need to register for a free trial):

⁠

Buzzsumo⁠

⁠

Sumo Headline Generator⁠

⁠

Readability Test Tool⁠

⁠

Moz Title Tag⁠

⁠

Sumo Power Words⁠

⁠

CoSchedule Headline Analyzer⁠

⁠

Open this

outline file ⁠

and make a copy. You will be able to use this for every blog post.

Open the

Popular Content Analysis⁠

Worksheet

⁠
⁠

⁠
⁠
❏ Define your objective & your main keyword

Before getting started with any blog post, you need to define your goal, as well as your main keyword and searcher intent.

For the purpose of this SOP, we will explain the process of creating an outline for a blog post about hair loss treatments.

Name your copy of the outline according to your blog post topic. In our case we will use the name “Outline - Hair loss”.

Fill in the “Outline [blog post topic]” heading with the topic of your blog post. Under the second heading “General Blog Post Checklist” you will see a general checklist which you can use for all your blog posts, regardless of the topic.

Write down your objective: what users will get from reading your blog post.

Write down your target keyword. If you don’t have one, check this

SOP⁠

to learn how to research and select relevant keywords for your website.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

⁠
⁠
❏ Most popular content analysis

For the purpose of this exercise we will use “hair loss treatment” as the main keyword.

Open

Buzzsumo⁠

and type in your keyword, as shown in the picture below.

⁠

image.gif failed to upload

⁠

Make sure the sorting is made by the total number of shares. You need to select the first 3 results that are also relevant to your keyword. As you can see in the picture below, no. 2 result is news about a celebrity, while no. 4 refers to hearing loss. This means that our top 3 results will be no. 1, no. 3, and no. 5.

Right-click the top 3 relevant links and open them in new tabs.

⁠

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Open Google in incognito mode (CTRL + SHIFT + N) and type in your selected keyword.

Again, you need to select the first 5 relevant results. Which means that we will cut out the American Hair Loss Association homepage, because it’s not really a blog post and, obviously, we will cut out Wikipedia.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Right-click each result of the 5 ones you have selected and open each of them in a new tab.

Once you have read the 8 articles, open the

Popular Content Analysis⁠

Worksheet and fill it in, as shown in the picture below.

Fill in the titles and the URLs to your selected articles. Analyse how these titles are written. As you can see below, most of them include the keyword, as well as other powerful words or phrases - the promise of a solution (“hair growth”, “strengthen hair”, “fixes”, “remedies”), active verbs (“stop”, “turn off”) and data (“discovery”, “6 fixes”, “12 treatments”). Keep these characteristics in mind for now.

Analyse the text of each article and select an option from the list as shown below:

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

If you want to assess how easy-to-read these articles are, there is a great tool you can use. Open

Readability Test Tool⁠

. Paste the URL of an article there and check its readability score. As you can see in the picture below, the “Baking soda hair treatment” article got a grade level of 6, which means that it can be understood by 11 to 12 year olds. You want to keep the readability score of your articles somewhere between 6 and 8.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Compare these articles with the checklist you can find under the “General Blog Posts Checklist” heading in your file and see how many of the characteristics they have. You don’t have to spend your youth (and possibly afterlife) checking all of them, just do this for 1-2 articles to understand how the checklist works.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

⁠
⁠
❏ Write compelling headlines

After analysing (and criticizing) what your competition is doing, it’s time to think about the headline of your blog post and make it better than the ones you have just read.

In this step you will write between 10 and 20 variations of headlines for your post.

If you need some inspiration, you can use the

Sumo Headline Generator⁠

. For the purpose of this exercise, we will go with “how to” type.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Fill in the boxes. The image below shows you what goes where after that. It is very important to fill in ALL the boxes because the app comes with pre-filled examples. If you don’t pay attention, you may get “How to reverse hair loss like Vin Diesel”, for example. That would be unfortunate.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Remember that this tool offers you inspiration. Don’t take all the headlines as great suggestions, select the ones that make sense. E.g. Would you read an article called “The Ultimate Guide to Hair Loss”?

Repeat this step for other categories of content that may apply to your blog post.

Once you’ve got your 20 headlines, it’s time to check how good they are.

Open

this tool⁠

to check the length of your title. Ideally, your title should be under 65 characters. Otherwise it can get cut off on search results.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Besides the appropriate length, a good headline should have some of the below characteristics, which you can also find in your file, under the “General Blog Post Checklist” heading, section “headline”

■ Numbers, stats or data

■ Written in second person

■ Target keyword present

■ Communicates clearly what the blog post is about

■ Power - words present (check

this⁠

article to get a list of super -useful power words)

■ Active verbs

Take a look at your headlines and compare them with the checklist. For example, the “How To Reverse Hair Loss Without Cosmetic Surgery” has 4 of the 6 characteristics. Do this for all of your headlines and select the best 10 of them.

⁠

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Open

CoSchedule Headline Analyser⁠

and test the 10 headlines you have selected. For example, the “How to reverse hair loss without cosmetic surgery” got a score of 68 out of 100, which is neither bad, nor great.

image.gif failed to upload

⁠

After you have tested all of your headlines, select the top three ones.

Improve them according to the checklist and CoSchedule suggestions and aim to score over 70 with them.

Re-test the improved headlines with CoSchedule tool

Pick the headline with the best score

⁠
⁠
❏ Complete the outline

Now that you’ve got a title, it’s time to complete the outline.

Go back to your outline file and decide which will be the sections of your post. In our example, these sections will be the following, under “Hair Loss Outline” heading:

Lede

Known causes for hair loss

Scientific research (include facts about the active ingredient of the treatment)

Present the treatment

Bonus - food items that help minimize hair loss

Conclusion

Write what the lede of your post will focus on. A good post lede meets the following criteria:

● Is specific - explains exactly what your post is about

● Contains a teaser - E.g. “You are going to find out how the best hair loss treatment works and, as a bonus, what superfoods you need to eat to reverse hair loss. One of them may not taste like cherry pie, but it works.”.

● Short and crisp - 1 - 2 sentences, but no fluff. Right to the point, tangible and interesting/funny/creative.

● Contains the keyword and data/numbers

In this example it will be a lede focused on a new treatment that has shown great results in fighting hair loss + food items that minimize hair loss.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

If you want to make your job easier, plan your content further.

● Write down in your outline the concepts that a user needs to understand in order to understand your post and aim to define them. In this example, it should be “hormones that cause hair loss”, “ how active ingredient X works”

● Follow a basic Q&A structure in your text body. Establish the questions a user might have and aim to answer them in your post.

● Go from broad to specific. Talk about the problem in general, then go deeper and deeper. This way you make sure that the users understand your post.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

Before starting to write your post, take a look over the checklist. Write down what you can add to your post to make it better than anything you have found. In this example, there are a couple of things we can add. The checklist is a great tool that gives you ideas about a blog post.

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

As you can see from the image above, we can add to the blog post outline the following:

● A call-to-action (E.g. To try a free sample of this new product)

● Testimonials (E.g. A client who has tried the product and has experienced the results)

● Giveaway (The food items good against hair loss)

● Video (E.g. How to use the product video)

● High - quality visuals (E.g. Before/After pictures of people who have tried the product)

Before you finish with your outline, decide where every information in the “Concepts”, “Q&A”, “Broad ⇒ Specific”, and “To add” will go based on the “Sections of the post”, as shown in the picture below:

image.gif failed to upload

⁠

⁠
⁠
❏ Review your outline

This is the final step before you start writing your blog post. For this step, all you have to do is go at the bottom of your file, where you have that checklist, and right-click on the bullets to add a checkmark where your blog post outlines meets the requirements of great blog posts.

⁠

image.jpeg failed to upload

⁠

For some of these characteristics you will need to firstly write the text (readability, length). But it’s a good idea to have them in mind before starting to write.

That’s it. Now you have a kickass outline to use every time you need to create a blog post better than any other on the same topic. Use it wisely and may the Force be with you.

Load content from app.asana.com?

Loading external content may reveal information to 3rd parties. Learn more

Allow

Load content from chat.openai.com?

Loading external content may reveal information to 3rd parties. Learn more

Allow

Load content from my.openphone.com?

Loading external content may reveal information to 3rd parties. Learn more

Allow

Load content from www.gohighlevel.com?

Loading external content may reveal information to 3rd parties. Learn more

Allow

Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.

Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (

CtrlP

) instead.

How to Create a Blog Post Outline

⁠⁠

⁠⁠❏ Environment setup

⁠⁠

⁠⁠❏ Define your objective & your main keyword

⁠⁠❏ Most popular content analysis

⁠⁠❏ Write compelling headlines

⁠⁠❏ Complete the outline

⁠⁠❏ Review your outline

⁠
⁠

⁠
⁠
❏ Environment setup

⁠
⁠

⁠
⁠
❏ Define your objective & your main keyword

⁠
⁠
❏ Most popular content analysis

⁠
⁠
❏ Write compelling headlines

⁠
⁠
❏ Complete the outline

⁠
⁠
❏ Review your outline