8 Ways On How To Create An Amazing Content Outline

“Hi Na’im, I am short of 500 words from the 2000 words my client asked me to write. Can you please help?” This line is one of the numerous complaints I received from new writers. I have also been inundated with requests on how to stay focused on a topic and craft content that addresses the initial intent. Let’s face it; you can’t write about types of weddings when the client asks for special delicacies in a marriage. Therefore, it is pertinent to know how to create a content outline. 

What is a content outline?

Just as the bones in our body give us the structure and blood and flesh making us human, a content outline is the skeleton of any content – blog, articles, novel, or any content we write. This framework is where we put supporting ideas for the particular topic – flesh and blood of content. A content outline helps us organize our thought, media, and facts about a topic. The content becomes more structured, conversational, engaging, easy to read, and informative when an outline is given.

Many find creating a content outline tedious and time-consuming, but its importance overrides dissatisfaction. Apart from helping you as the writer to complete a content task, an outline helps your readers’ imagination and thoughts with depth into what you write. Additionally, it helps you stick to a template without deviating from the intended message of the content. Lastly, creating a content outline is medicine for writer’s block. You won’t find creating content difficult when you create an outline.

The goal of a content outline

As mentioned earlier, a content outline helps you identify what you should discuss and better ways to craft it. As a writer, it is pertinent to determine what content your readers need to prepare an outline that will discuss and meet their yearnings. Additionally, as a business owner busy with other assignments with no time to craft content, drafting a content outline for your writers to write helps communicate your idea.

A good content outline helps you rank and have a place on the search engine results page (SERP). This is because the content outline informs Google what your article is about and what Google should pick to rank it on the first page.

How to create a content outline that ranks

The steps below will guide you on how to create a content outline. Wave a bye to writer’s block or reduced word counts.

Find a topic to optimize

Before writing anything, you should choose a topic that befits your audience and the goals of your website. In that case, conduct keyword research. Keyword research aims to find search terms that are relevant to your website and have high search volumes. Keyword research will also help you to understand the targeted audience and gain insights into what they are looking for – intent mapping.

Google’s keyword planner, Frase, Ahref, and Ubbersuggest are some of the software for keyword research. The first thing is to get what people are searching for and then analyze the SERP for that topic. You can do this quickly by using SE Ranking SERP Analyzer to check the top organic results of the search term to provide you with a to-do list. 

Gathering a list of related keywords somewhere in your content outline will give you what to search for or how to approach the topic when gathering information. After conducting the keyword research, you will have a broad understanding of what excites your readers about this topic.

Create an emotionally driven and search-engine-optimized title

Headlines are the signposts of articles. Get about five topics and add them to the outline. The title may not be perfect, but it should be good enough to intrigue, benefit, and incorporate the keyword.

• Intrigue: Your title should capture the reader’s attention and be mouthwatering for them to read on. Making a bold promise and using figures and facts are ways to make this work.
• Benefit: your title should highlight the benefit of the article and should tell the audience what is in for them. Your most important take-home message should be here for readers to read on.
• Target keyword: Your keyword should be in the title and preferably at the beginning of your title for ranking. However, it is not compulsory for the keyword to appear at the beginning of the topic.

Gather initial information

After the intent mapping and keyword research, it is time to gather the necessary information to write. The first step is deciding on the information you want to provide your readers. Note that different form of content gets different results. For instance, only 26% of blogs include video content in their articles, and 41% of blogs get their most substantial results when they have video in their content. Therefore, before you start writing, determine the other forms of content to include.  

After the step above, check on competitors’ articles to get more insight into the topic, including statistics and infographics. Focus your attention on the articles ranking for the keywords because they are getting things right to be on the front page. Now that you know what they are doing, your goal is to be better than them. While digging this, arrange your findings in a bullet point on your outline.

Create headlines – the subheadings

After gathering the necessary information, the next is to format the content outlines into subheadings. Each heading should be a primary search intent that complements the main keyword. Some subheadings can come from the ‘people also ask section on Google.’

Your main headline is automatically the H1, followed by the introduction. After the space for the introduction, all other subheading is H2. Any header under H2 is H3, and H4 will be under H3 if required. H5 and H6 are the other subheadings, but you may not need them. For simplicity, you can use Frase and SurferSEO to build an outline – you can use them to view the headlines of your competitor and modify them to suit your taste. After this stage, it is time to organize your information under each outline structure.

Do a deep research

The research you did earlier is to understand what works for your competitors, now is to research what information you should present to your readers. With every piece of information gathered at this stage, you will insert them in different segments of the outlines you have created. The two steps involved include

Find facts and figure to back your claims: as you write your articles, you may make some assumptions or misconstrue a concept. Putting them in your articles will be misleading to your audience. In that case, find quotes, stats, videos, or other materials to back up your claim. Statistics make your article believable – no one will argue with numbers.

Go deeper into your initial research: the initial search we mentioned up there is not adequate; get the information provided by the websites on the first few pages of the search engine result page, the potential questions of your readers, and the word length. You can use Dashwood for this process

Find anecdotal evidence: these are stories, testimonials, and people’s experiences about the product and service you are writing about. Use this real-life evidence to support your claims. However, ensure the anecdotal evidence is not time-bound.

Write your introduction and conclusion

Before rewriting the information you gathered in your unique ways, it is essential you write the introduction and the conclusion first. The reason is simple: while collecting the information for the article and mapping out the outline, statistics, questions, or quotes may come to your mind that will intrigue the readers. Draft that story in your introduction.

However, if after you create the content outline and you seem not to have an idea how to make your introduction, the best is to leave it till you complete the article. Oftentimes, how best to craft the introduction will occur to you while you write. Furthermore, ensure your introduction and conclusion are not more than 150 words on average. Overdoing both may bore your readers but no harm in lesser word counts – just make them intriguing.

Start writing

After creating a beautiful outline, your work is simple. At this point, you can write the article or hire a freelancer to complete this process. You will not have the issue of writer’s block or a lesser word count than required as you can focus on each header and complete the task underneath. When you use Surfer SEO, ensure your score is above 90 to ensure the chance of ranking that article. Your score will go up once you include the keywords Surfer suggested in your article. 

Link your content together

Insert external and internal links in your articles; they are part of a good content outline. A well-written piece is linked to other pieces on your website. Additionally, link to external articles related to your writing – this helps to build authority on the topic. Your article should also have a CTA and valuable resources linked to other websites; this builds credibility in readers’ minds.

Example of a content outline

• [H1] 5 best foods for diabetes patients in 2023
• [H2] Does food improve diabetes complications?
• [H2] The best foods for diabetes patients
• [H3] 1. Food 1
• [H3] 2. Food 2
• [H3] 3. Food 3
• [H3] 4. Food 4
• [H3] 5. Food 5
• [H2] Which food is best for diabetes patients?
• [H2] Where to buy the foods for diabetes patients?

Conclusion

This blog post explains how to create a content outline, making it easy for you and your readers. It is also an antidote for writer’s block and word count issues. What did you learn from the content?