So, you want to write better blog posts? This ultimate guide to blog post formats will show you how to do just that! It’ll take you (the mommy blogger, the marketer, the business owner) to new heights. You’ll learn how to format your articles and power-pack them with value for both your readers and Google. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!

By the time you finish this ultimate guide to blog post formats, you’ll understand how to organize your blogs, use links and images. Also, how to write intros that pull your readers in and take them for the ride. How to write conclusions that are so bittersweet your readers are yearning for more, how to add that overly compelling call to action, and much much more!

Why the Blog Post Format Matters

This post wouldn’t be the ultimate guide to blog post formats if we didn’t show you all the fantastic benefits of structuring your articles. When you organize your articles using the method we’ll show you later on; you’ll set yourself up to win featured snippets. Below illustrates what featured snippets can look like:

Learn blog post format and how writing blogs the right way helps you land a SERP feature.

Featured snippets happen when combining the right keywords, structure, outreach campaigns, and more come into play. Feel free to pat yourself on the back if you’ve already earned some featured snippets. It’s not easy to accomplish, as you can only do your best, and Google will take it from there.

According to Moz, being in the first position on a Google SERP can earn your post, on average, a 32% click-through rate. That goes a long way for your authorship, discoverability, and of course, organic traffic, which you can do A LOT of things with when you’re ready to start retargeting site visitors.

The organizational structure we’ll review here next will become your foundation for crafting blog posts that stand a chance of being read. You can also use the downloadable blog post format template we created for you to use as a reference moving forward.

Heading tags

The first part of adequately formatting your blog posts is your heading tags. These send strong signals to Google and play an essential role in dividing your content into relevant sections - making it easier for your readers to follow along.

Blog posts typically use the H1 and H2 tags, but there are reasons to use H3 tags and beyond in some cases. In this section, we’ll walk you through each of the heading tags and show you how to use them in a way that works both for Google and your audience.

H1

Your H1 tag is usually the title of your article. Not only does your title have to be engaging, but it also has to contain relevant keywords for your article. It would help if you also made sure that there is only one H1 tag on the page. If you have more than one H1 tag, your blog post looks poorly formatted in the eyes of Google. With more than a single H1 tag, you’re sending out different signals to Google’s crawlers. Therefore, Google will not recognize which H1 tag to follow. So your first step for a better blog post format is to make sure that your blog post pages have only a single H1 tag.

H2

H2 tags are different from H1 tags as you can have more than one in a single blog post. Still, there is a particular way in which you should use H2 tags. Think of it as a chapter book. Your H1 tag is your main title, and then each chapter title is your H2 tag. For example, we have an herbal apothecary client who recently created a blog post called “10 Irish Sea Moss Benefits You Should Know”

The blog post title was placed within the H1 tags. Then they needed to outline and explain each of the 10 benefits of sea moss. For each of the 10 benefits, they provided a subheading (or chapter), and the subheadings were placed within the H2 tags.

H3 and beyond

H3 tags and beyond heading tag structure for writing blogs and blog post format

If you’re looking to use other heading tags like H3, H4, H5, or H6, you need to follow a strict and consistent blog post format. These tags act as subheadings contained within your H2 tags and then held within each other.

It’s not often that blogging sites or news sites need to use these header tags. However, if you have an article that requires a super in-depth explanation and digs down into the sub-topics within sub-topics, these are the heading tags you will be using.

Wrapping up your heading tags

Wrapping up this section on heading tags for your blog post format, we’ll do a quick review. We know that your H1 tags feature your page or blog title and that you should only have one H1 tag on a page.

Your H2 tags are the different chapters in your blog post, and you can have multiple H2 tags on a page.

Lastly, your H3 tags and beyond are nested within your H2 tags and then nested within each other. These are rarely used; however, it would depend on the complexity of your topic and industry. Don’t be surprised if you never use an H4 tag.

When choosing the name of your article, be sure to be engaging. After all, ranking on Google isn’t the only factor for getting organic traffic. You are still competing with the other articles on the SERP. So, craft something intriguing enough to win the click!

As for your subheadings, unless you win the featured snippet, it isn’t likely to appear on the Google SERP. Still, your site visitors can see them any time they visit your article. Your goal is to explain your topic in the best way possible. Therefore, you should structure your headings and subheading coherently to allow readers to understand and follow along with ease.

How to write an Intro

You're going to be writing a lot of blog introductions, hopefully. So, you'll need to know how to write them. Your intros should be engaging and relevant to your targeted audience. Most importantly, they should explain your article's scope and the problems your article aims to solve. Over the last few years, I have come across three introduction styles; background, scope, and the combo introduction.

The background method aims to introduce the author rather than the article. With this method, the author provides a brief overview of his/her experience in the field, accomplishments, etc. This intro style aims to convince the reader that the author is fit to discuss the topic.

By doing this, the author creates the perspective that they are an authority figure in the space. I understand some of us may feel that this can seem like you’re “tooting your own horn,” but it goes a step further than that. By using this method, you create a level of transparency with your readers. This allows your reader to trust that they are getting quality information from a great source. If you’ve ever watched any TedX talks, you’ll notice this method is used when presenting to an audience in person.

Although the background introduction method isn’t as popular in blog articles as it is with in-person presentations, it’s still a great way to start building your brand, credibility, and influence within your industry.

The Scope Intro

The scope introduction summarizes the article and mentions KTP's (Key Talking Points), which is your chance to briefly explain all of the critical elements covered in your article. If you're going to stick with the scope introduction, then be sure to mention all of the attractive KTP's.

An excellent reference I like to use when using the scope introduction style is Udemy! I purchase A LOT of online courses month over month. It's my guilty pleasure. Anyway, when I'm looking to buy a course, I look at the lesson objectives and the individual videos' titles within a course.

Even when looking at a book, I like to see the table of contents. By looking at these things, I can see if the answers I seek are within the content. If they are, I'm more likely to buy them. Like the scope intro, your reader will be waiting to see if you will discuss something they want to know. This is why you shouldn't go too broad on any single piece of content.

Wait, there’s more

Wait, there's more, is the seller's tactic! You've seen this method often on infomercials with some greats like Billy Mays, Vince Shlomi, and Anthony Sullivan. Their pitches go in-depth about all the product's features and demonstrate how those features translate into benefits. You might be wondering, but wait, we're not selling anything. You might be pushing out valuable content for your readers to learn from. Meanwhile, infomercials are asking for money in return for great products.

The truth is, you're asking for the most valuable thing anyone can offer. You're offering useful information in return for someone's time. Now you see it, I hope. Like one of the great pitchmen out there, you need to pitch your article to your readers.

You wait, there's more; sections should be short and punchy while tackling some of the major issues your readers face and inform them they can find the solutions here. For example, If I were looking for a way to baby proof my apartment (which I am not - at the time of writing this), I would have no idea where to start!

If I came across your article titled baby proofing the dos and don'ts, I would potentially give this a try. However, If your intro style doesn't mention that I would learn about what needs to be baby-proofed, I wouldn't read your article fully.

Why this topic is essential, lists the problems that it aims to address, or the benefits. The scope Intro is similar to direct to consumer copywriting. Your intro aims to sell the rest of the article to your reader when you use this method.

You can build out your target persona using tools like Hubspot's Persona Creator. By mapping out your targeted audience, you can directly speak to them within your intro.

How to write the body

Crafting the body is one of the more manageable parts, in my opinion when it comes to creating an A+ blog post. You’ll notice there are many ways to do this wrong, but also many ways to do this right. While creating the meat of your content piece, you will need to prepare for it first and keep some other things in mind. Let’s break it down.

Decide the topic or the main idea of your content piece. Another way to look at this is to decide the message you want to convey to your readership.

Once you’ve decided what you want your readers to gain from your article - outline all the things you will need to share with them in a bullet list. Each of these bullets will act as the subtopics your readers will need to get a full 360 understanding of your main topic.

In some cases, a subtopic may require a significant amount of information and can essentially be a topic of its own. In that case, you want to provide a birds-eye-view of the topic and share a link that takes them to additional information on that subtopic.

Now that your plan is complete, let’s move on to the actual body. This part is important as you’ll notice a lot of filler in some articles. Not only will you come across a lot of filler, but some articles are written in such a choppy way. By choppy, I mean there is may one sentence, and then a new paragraph starts. I do not enjoy this kind of format. If your readers care about what you have to say, they will read it in full or cherry-pick the information they are looking for based on the header tags, as discussed above.

Still, this doesn’t mean you should create long-winded bulky paragraphs. It just means that you need to find the sweet spot in-between choppy and overwhelming.

How to write the conclusion

Always include a conclusion in your blog posts. Of course, you knew this, but you'd be surprised how many articles out there leave out an ending. Let's face it; blogs aren't read the same way they used to be. So, the chances of someone coming to see your conclusion are getting slimmer. However, it's still possible for highly engaged readers to read through your conclusion.

Hopefully, you read this article in full, so you know how to keep your customers engaged throughout your entire article. Your conclusion is a place where you can refresh your blog post's content by quickly summarizing the key takeaways for your readers. By doing this, you're reminding them of all the valuable information they just received in the few minutes it took them to read your post. You can then ask them to share your blog post with anyone else who can benefit from reading it.

At this point, you can even include links to other articles on your site or even to other sites. I know, I know. Why would you send people to other blog articles? It's because your goal is to be the most helpful, valuable, and most informative person out there. When you write an article, blog post, or guide, your purpose is to truly give your readers the best information that you can provide. Sure, you might send traffic elsewhere.

But your readers will come to learn about all these other resources through you. So, you will ultimately become the starting point for their research. Because they know they can get something from you, by what you've written, and more from what you recommend.

Adding images

You may not have expected a section on images on the Ultimate Blog Post Formats, but it’s essential. So, we’re going to go over it quickly. Usually, in almost any piece of written content online, there is at least one image. That image tends to be the hero banner of the article. Now, the hero banner on written pieces can be tricky.

Here’s why: When posting your article to social media platforms, these will be the thumbnail images that your potential readers will see. When using this thumbnail as an Ad on Facebook, you can’t place too much text on the image. Due to a weird function that Facebook has against promoting Facebook Ad Posts with too much text.

So, your hero needs to have minimal text or be designed in such a way that it attempts to convey what your post is about while being aesthetically pleasing. If you want examples of people who have nailed this, you need to check out Brian Dean. He’s an inspiration of mine. Not only is he a big deal in the field of written content, but if you’ve ever seen his thumbnail images for his work, you will say WOW. Here’s one below.

Using Images for blog formats by Brian Dean

Moving on, if you’re going to use images throughout your blog post, you need to make sure that they are providing additional information to your readership and that they aren’t just there taking up space. For example, above, I made you wonder how great Brian Dene’s images are. So, Instead of making you go search for them online, I chose to place one here, in the article, so you can get the additional information that I was alluding to.

So, wrapping up with images, here is a rule of thumb. Before you paste an image anywhere in your article, ask yourself the following. Does this image add additional value? If the answer is no, then you’re better off not using the image. If you can’t find an image that will add additional value, then you’re better off not using any images at all. We all know how those royalty-free images look like, especially in this field.

Your readers are here for great content, not for filler images!

Adding Links

There are two different types of links you can add to your content piece. Those are internal links and external links. Before I take you through each of these links, I want to explain what they do and how you should use them.

Think of these links as an easy clickable solution to provide additional information on something that you mentioned in your article. For example, if I had mentioned keyword research in this article, I would add a link to the phrase keyword research.

Since this ultimate guide to blog post formats isn’t about SEO, keyword research is beyond the scope. However, I still included a link if you wanted to learn more about SEO and keyword research. Simply put, adding links to your blog posts is a way to grant easy access to additional information to your readers in the assumption that they may want to know more about it.

Let’s jump into Internal links now. Internal links are hyperlinks that link to another article from your domain. Using the example, I provided above with keyword research. I used an Internal link. This is because I have written an article on keyword research in the past. And most importantly, because you may want to learn more about keyword research after hearing about it here.

Next is external links. External links are similar in behavior to internal links as they will be seen as a hyperlink to additional information for your readers. However, the site that an external link will take you to a different site from where your content piece is hosted. For example, I could easily link to title tags, and you will notice it takes you to a blog post from MOZ.

Author section

Call to action

Finally, we made it to your call to action. There are a few different ways to do this, which I have been noticing more lately. Initially, I would recommend that you add your relevant call-to-action to the bottom of your article. But there are many other ways to go about this.

POP-UP - you can add a pop-up to your content piece that offers something valuable to your readers intending to get their email address. Usually, this is done by providing a discount code or even a free eBook.

Next, you can try adding a short paragraph at the end of your content piece with a link to a product, trial, landing page, etc. Readers who click this link are likely engaged since they read through your content to the very end.

Lastly, you can include a banner image. Yes, I've seen it done first by a social media examiner. It was genius. They have a well-designed banner image within their article on their site, acting as a banner ad. This banner image took you to a landing page where you could learn more about the offering. I haven't had the chance to try this method, but it may be worth a try.

That wraps it up for 2021’s Ultimate Guide to Blog Post Formats. If you think I left anything out, please drop it below in the comments or shoot me an email by visiting our content page.

If it makes sense to add, I will probably do so in the future. I will also continue to update this blog post format guide in the future. So, you can always return here to see what’s changing around how you should be formatting your content.

The Ultimate Guide to Blog Post Formats