What is a Good Blog Structure? (With on-page SEO)

A Good blog structure typically should consist of many elements. But it depends on the type of blog post and the type of website. A good blog page structure should align with business goals, be readable and understandable by search engines. Ultimately, it should be useful & pleasing for readers.

Here we are going to talk about a generic blog structure [head to toe] which should be useful for most businesses. Ultimately, you should rely on competitive research, and your own knowledge and experience to publish content you think is best for the users.

Additionally, since just posting content is not enough for uses to find your blogs, you should also optimize it for search engines. We are also going to include on page SEO best practices along with a generic design that should get you started quickly.

For who?
This post is useful for SEOs, Content writers and Digital marketing people who are starting out. These blog structure guidelines can also serve as a checklist and a SOP for professionals in the industry.
For using the checklist, use a persona of your consumer and try to read the content from their perspective.

Note: This article is relevant for webmasters/SEOs/Content writers/Digital Marketing peeps looking to create blog posts and not specifically for content creation. If you want to know how to write a blog post outline for creating content that ranks, check out our other guide.

What am I going to talk about?

1. Flow of a blog post
2. Best practices for on page elements of the post
3. Tips for structuring your article
4. Additional On-page SEO optimisations for enhanced search engine visibility

We will explain all the elements in detail. This will also contain the ‘why’ and some examples to get you started quickly with your blog post.

This is a general guideline for blogs posts that are long form. If you want to create a blog post that are short, feel free to remove sections as needed.

Flow of the Blog Posts

Here is an ideal flow & blog structure best practices:

Checklist of On-Page Elements in a Good Blog Structure (Best Practices)

Title

Title is what the person sees on the webpage. Title is really important to optimize it as this serves as one of the points where a reader may decide to read further based on relevancy.

When we are talking about the title, we are talking about the H1 html tag and not the title tag. H1 tags appear on the webpages. Title tags when defined separately, appear on the search engines and not the webpage.

Ideally, the title tag and H1 tag is matched by the content management systems such as WordPress/Adobe.

For the sake of simplicity, we are going to talk about the H1 Tag here (=what you see as the title of the page)

Best practices:

• The title should be unique across the website.
• It should actually describe what the content in the blog contains. The title should not be too different from the content. You should deliver in title what you strive to deliver in your body.
• It should include the primary keyword (ideally only once). The primary keyword is the one you want to rank for, in the SERPs.

Short Intro With Primary Hook

This also serves as one of the points where the reader can decide to leave or stay on the page. Remember to write which generates curiosity/piques interest in the reader. Remember on the basis of this, the reader decides to stay or leave, so you should also include what can the reader expect from the article. 

Note that this is different from the Table of contents which we will cover next.

Best Practices:

• Include the catchy sentence that incites interest.
• You can include a very common use case of the product/service.
• You can use this space to address a customer pain point that you will cover in the article.
• You can use stats to implicate a ‘wow’ reaction.

Table of Contents

Including a table of content in a blog website structure is generally a good idea as it has many benefits (for both SEO and user):

• It allows users to quickly glance through the heading and understand if the content is relevant for him.
• The navigable links in TOC allows users to jump to more relevant pieces of the content.
• It augments the user perception about contents & the end of the page.
• For search engines, it allows better indexing of content. It also allows search engines to correctly show pieces of content (headings) based on the keyword and subheading relevancy.

Best Practices:

• Use only relevant headings in the TOC. If your blog post is long form and has a lot of headings, you can exclude the ones that are less relevant. As a general rule of thumb, you should include headings that have your primary/secondary keywords.
• Each heading in TOC should be linked to the actual heading on the page. Ideally, the ‘id’ or identifier html tag to link the headings should also be short and descriptive. Do not use generic identifiers such as 1,2,3. A good id can look like <H2 id=”onpage-seo-elements”>This is what to look for in On Page SEO Elements?</H2>.
• You can also be creative by trying different styling to create a TOC but it should be clearly visible and ideally stand out from the rest of the section of text.
• If you are displaying headings and subheadings both, the hierarchy should be clearly defined and visible as such.

Content

Best practices:

Headings:

• Use headings and subheadings to structure the content.
• Headings should include primary/secondary keywords.
• These should be descriptive like titles. A reader should get an idea of what the text below the heading actually contains.
• The levels of Headings H1, H2, H3 should ideally be sequential. You should not use the levels randomly because of the styling. The styling of the text can be changed with CSS without changing the html Tags. This is necessary as without the proper levels, the page would have accessibility issues (bad for blind peeps and screen readers).
• You can change the color of headings to make the text more readable and attract the attention of the reader.

Paragraphs:

• Break the text intro paragraphs for enhanced readability. 
• Each para should be short but not too short. It should explain each subtopic at a time. Also, the sentences in the paragraphics should be shorter.
• You can use bullet points for better ingestion of sentences.
• Highlight the phrases (bold, italicize, color) but do not over do it.

Images in a Seo blog structure:

• Use imagery judiciously. Add illustrative, infographics, decorative images wherever required.
• Add alt text in every image.
• Image name should describe the image along with an identifier if any. Example: how-to-structure-a-blog-with-seo.webp.
• The size of the image should be small to decrease the page size.
• Use proper attribution in case you do not own the images.
• Add structured data in images to help search engines understand the content.

Key Takeaway

Key Takeaway in a structured blog page can help users quickly understand the summary of what is described in the topic. They also benefit webmasters as having key takeaways should increase the prob of appearing in the google rich results. 

Best Practices:

• It can be used to simplify a concept or provide a summary of long boring text.
• Key Takeaways should be highlighted to differentiate them with the rest of the text.

“Business Writing for Everyone” is a book authored by Arley Cruthers. It has a key takeaway page. This is a good example of how key takeaways should be on a content piece.

Also Read

‘Also read’ can be used in between content text to satisfy the curiosity of the readers. It has several use cases in blog structure for Seo:

• When you already have the content piece as a published blog and do not want to repeat the same text.
• When you do not want to go off topic in your text.
• You want to subtly direct the reader to a more relevant/converting page.
• You are having difficulty for finding anchor text for internal linking.

Best Practices:

• It is a good idea to not mention a completely off topic link. Instead use the context from the surrounding text to mention what the link is about.
• The anchor text should have a keyword and be descriptive of what the internal link is about.

Call to Action

Best Practices:

• Use context to subtly hint your product.
• Use CTA wherever you address a pain point, or describe a use case of the product/service.
• It can have colorful buttons, highlighted text or differentiated sections from the text.

How [Business] Can Help

It is generally a good idea to include how your product/service fits with the overall topic you have chosen for your blog. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Best practices:

• Include long tail keywords in the Faqs and try to answer the faqs in short but descriptive manner.
• Use appropriate schema markup.

Social Sharing Buttons

Add social sharing buttons for enhanced content marketing and easy propagation of your pieces with your visitors and non visitors.

It is a good idea to include social sharing buttons through a script that enables it sitewide on blog articles.

Best Practices:

• Use social networks that are commonly used in the region you are targeting the content in. 

Author Bio

Adding author bio gives credibility to the content that the Author may have written. It adds a human touch to the post. It also helps build authority among users and search engines if the content is written by a subject matter expert.

Some people also use the author bio in the beginning of the post to give some context and credibility to the blog post.

Note: Author bio may only play a small factor among ranking signals in a good blog structure as the quality of the content is the first most thing a proofreader should look for.

Best practices:

• Add social links to the author section.

Related Posts

The related posts help users satisfy their curiosity when they reach the end of the page. It also allows webmasters to incentivize users to stay on the website for longer.

Notes for Good Blog Structure:

• Use correct spacing to differentiate between two separate headings and other sections of the article.
• Do not do keyword stuffing. Keep the keyword density in the article to maximum 1.5.
• Avoid duplication of content in the blog post. Do not copy paste either from another article on your own website or from an external website.
• Add ‘Back to Top” button as an accessibility feature.

Tips for Structuring Your Article

1. Define your audience and use competitive research to find topics that you should add.
2. Use headings, and other elements (CTA, key takeaway, Also read, related posts) to give break to the readers and grab their attention again.
3. Use the top 30 ranking articles on SERPS (basis your primary keyword) to make an outline.
4. Use the 4 important sections of any blog: Title, introduction, body, conclusion to your advantage. Think of the pain points for your audience and use these sections to explain your solution.
5. Separate your opinion on the piece and facts with external links or stats. Use reference quotes to give credibility to your content.
6. In case of long form content, always explain to the readers what the article is about and what they should expect while reading the piece.

Additional on-page SEO Optimizations for Enhanced Visibility on Search Engines

Internal linking

• Use internal links in your content to connect related articles. 
• Use outgoing internal links to an article which covers broad topics to build topical authority.
• Use incoming internal links from narrow topics and similar intent content to pass pagerank from other articles to the one in subject.
• Make sure the anchor text you use are highly relevant to the sentence, paragraph, your current page, your linked page. It can also be a variation of your target keywords.

External Links

• Use external links to base your statement on a source of truth.
• Link to sites which have high authority.
• Whenever you are talking stats, it’s a good idea to link to a source that is credible.
• Again, make sure the anchor text you use are highly relevant.

URL Slug/ Permalink

• Keep it short and include a primary keyword.
• Do not use space or special characters in the URL. Use hyphens to separate words.

Schema

• Use schema wherever applicable. 
• implement the ones that are supported by search engines such as google.

Meta Title

• Include primary keywords in meta title. Keep it less than 600 px (~60 characters).

Meta Description

• Meta description should accurately describe what the post is about.
• You can include CTAs and words to gain attention of the reader.

Wrapping Up

I hope this post was useful for you and present a good blog structure. If this structure does not fit in your differentiated case, let me know on the comments.

If you are looking to optimize your existing content on your website, you can read click on the link to read the post.