How to write a blog post outline before you start drafting

By Thomas Lovas Lokoy · Published 16 October 2026 · 7 min read

A woman working at a filing cabinet of index cards — Photo: Card index system United Producers by libraryofcongress · CC0

Most blog posts that ramble were never planned; they were discovered while being typed. A blog post outline fixes that before it costs you a rewrite. It is a short job, it tells you whether you have enough to say, and it turns the draft from an act of invention into an act of filling in. This guide walks through how to build one, in the order that saves the most time, and how to check it before you write a word of the body.

What a blog post outline is for

An outline is a map of how your ideas relate to one another. The Purdue Online Writing Lab puts it in terms of showing ideas in hierarchy or logical sequence, and that is the useful framing for a blog post: you are deciding what comes first, what sits under what, and what does not belong at all.

It is not a table of contents you write once and ignore. A good outline answers three questions you would otherwise answer halfway through the draft, when changing your mind is expensive:

Who is this for, and what do they need to walk away able to do?
What are the main points, and in what order does the reader need them?
What evidence, example or source supports each point?

If you cannot answer the third question for a section, you have found a research gap while it is still cheap to fill.

Step one: write the reader and the job in one sentence

Purdue's guidance is to decide the purpose and audience, and develop your thesis, before you start outlining. For a blog post, compress that into a single sentence at the top of the document. The GOV.UK user-need format is a good template because it forces you to name a person and a reason:

As a… (who is the reader?)
I need to… (what are they trying to do?)
So that… (why does it matter to them?)

"As a café owner opening a second site, I need to know which licences transfer, so that I do not open without the right paperwork" is an outline brief. "Licensing for cafés" is a topic. The first tells you what to leave out; the second does not.

If you are working with a primary keyword, note it here too, along with the search intent behind it. The keyword research guide covers choosing the term without relying on volume figures. Decide too whether the reader is learning, comparing or ready to act, because that changes what the post should contain.

Step two: brainstorm without sorting

Purdue's four outlining steps start with brainstorming: list every idea you might include. Do this as a flat, unsorted list. Points, questions the reader might ask, examples, objections, sources you already know, a statistic you half remember and need to find. Do not judge yet. Aim for more fragments than you will use; the cutting comes later.

Two sources of ideas are worth checking at this stage:

The questions behind the question. If the reader needs to transfer a licence, they also need to know how long it takes and what happens if it lapses. Write those down.
What the pages already ranking do not say. Read a few, note what they cover, and note what you could add from your own experience. Google's guidance on helpful content asks whether a page provides "original information, reporting, research, or analysis". An outline is where you decide what yours is.

Step three: group and order

The next two Purdue steps are to organise and order. "Group related ideas together", then "arrange material in subsections from general to specific or from abstract to concrete."

In practice:

Cluster the fragments. Drag related items next to each other. Each cluster is a candidate section. If you have a dozen clusters, you may have two posts.
Kill the orphans. A fragment that fits no cluster is either a new section, a sentence somewhere else, or something that belongs in another post. It is usually the last.
Order the clusters by what the reader needs first. GOV.UK's structure guidance is blunt: "Put the most important information first", then move to the detail. For a how-to post, that often means the answer or the overview up front and the edge cases at the end. For a process, it means chronological order.
Order within each cluster from the general point to the specific example.

A useful test for the order: could a reader stop after any section and still have something they can use? If the useful part only arrives at the end, move it up.

Step four: turn clusters into headings

Purdue's final step is to label: create main headings and subheadings. This is where an outline becomes the skeleton of the published post, because your section labels will become your H2s.

Write headings that describe what the section says, not what topic it is near. GOV.UK recommends headings that are descriptive and frontloaded, with the most important words first. "Licences that transfer with the business" is better than "Some things to consider". Google's own self-assessment asks whether a page's main heading gives "a descriptive, helpful summary of the content", and the same standard is sensible for every heading beneath it.

Google's SEO starter guide recommends breaking long content into sections with headings "to help users navigate your pages". It also notes that, as far as Google is concerned, heading order does not matter. Your readers will still notice a jumbled hierarchy, so keep H2s for main sections and H3s only for genuine subsections.

Include your primary keyword, or a natural variant, in at least one heading where it fits the meaning. Do not force it into every one.

Choose a format that matches the post

Purdue describes three common outline formats:

Alphanumeric, which it calls the most common, using Roman numerals, capital letters, Arabic numerals and lower-case letters for successive levels.
Full sentence, the same structure but with a complete sentence at every level.
Decimal, which uses numbering such as 1.1 and 1.2 to show how each level relates to the whole.

For blog posts, a hybrid works well: headings as labels, and a full sentence under each that states the point the section makes. The sentence matters more than the heading. If you cannot write it, you do not yet know what the section is for.

Step five: attach evidence to every point

Under each section's point, list what will support it: a source you have opened, an example from your own work, a screenshot, a step-by-step process. Mark anything you have not yet verified. This is the step most outlines skip and the one that saves the most time later, because it surfaces weak sections before you have written 300 words of them.

If a claim depends on a number, write down where the number comes from now. If you cannot find it, plan to make the point without one. The fact-checking routine applies the same rule at the end of the process; doing it at the outline stage means less to cut. When you know which sources you are using, the companion guide on how to cite sources in a blog post covers how to credit them.

Check the outline before you write

Read the outline as a reader would, top to bottom, and ask:

Does the first section deliver something useful? If the opening is all background, cut or compress it.
Does every section serve the one-sentence brief? Anything that does not goes, however interesting.
Is any section only there to add length? Merge it or delete it.
Are two sections making the same point? Merge them.
Is there a clear ending? A post should close with what the reader should do next, not a summary of what they just read.

It also helps to estimate length per section. If one section needs 600 words and the rest need 150, it may be two posts, or a sign that the others are thin.

Outlining with a writing tool

If you draft with an AI writing tool, the outline does even more work, because it becomes the brief. A model given a topic will produce a plausible structure; a model given your reader, your sections, your points and your sources will produce your structure. The briefing guide covers what to include. Either way, the outline is the part of the job that stays yours.

Keep it short

An outline for a 1,500-word post rarely needs to be longer than a page. If yours is longer, you are drafting in the outline, which is fine, but recognise it and move on to the draft. The point is to make the decisions early, not to write the post twice.