I'm going to give you four blog post templates to write better SEO content

the blog post types we'll cover include list posts, step-by-step guides, definition posts, and beginner's guides.

Let's get started with list posts or listicles.
00:20
These are blog posts that contain non-chronological lists such as tips, product recommendations, tools, techniques, myths, mistakes, or whatever.

Introductions in listicles often get overlooked because people come for the list and not the intro. So your goal should be to build trust and excitement in as few words as possible.

The last thing I recommend is to include a table of contents with jump links. This makes it much easier for visitors to navigate throughout your post, especially since listicles need to be skimmable.

your main content will have a series of H2s or heading tags, and content that complements the headings. Now, depending on the type of listicle you're creating, your H2s will vary.

consider creating your own mini-template. For example, a product round-up might have one sentence about the product, a section on what we liked best, what we didn't like, and our overall rating.

briefly summarize a key takeaway and then recommend additional content that's related to your post. And internal links are good to use because they pass link authority and overall, create a better user experience

Step-by-step guides are your typical "how-to" posts where you run through a series of chronological steps to teach how to accomplish something.

for the intro, write a short one using the PSP method, which stands for problem, solution, and proof.

let's say you have a step-by-step guide on how to do YouTube keyword research. Your intro might read: "Looking to grow your YouTube channel and attract more views? The "trick" is to target topics with search demand.

reason why the PSP method is effective is because people who are reading a step-by-step  guide usually come with a problem. They're looking for a solution. And if you have proof of that solution, you'll get their attention.

because step-by-step guides have a logical sequence of instructions, you can use your H2s as the main steps.

As for the conclusion, just keep it short and sweet because step-by-step guides tend to be quite long. Again, I recommend adding internal links to other relevant posts so you don't leave readers who want more at a dead end.

Expanded definition posts are somewhat similar to how-to guides. But rather than being written as a logical sequence of steps, it's meant to give a high-level overview of a topic.

there's a clear format you can follow for the intro, main content, and conclusion. In short, you want people to come for a definition and stay for the details.

for the introduction, you'll want to keep it short and sweet by defining your concept or acronym.

for the main content, I highly recommend spending some time on your outline because you only want to include the most important points that a person searching for "what is [something]" would want to know.

if we created a post targeting, "what are NFTs," you can start by searching for ideas in Google's People also ask box.

Finally, look at the subheadings for top- ranking pages for your target query.

assuming we were creating a post titled "What are NFTs? A Detailed Introduction to "Expensive JPEGs," we might have a main content outline that looks like this, where our intro solves the "what" and the rest of the article will give  a decent introduction to the NFT space.

for the conclusion, you just need to summarize the key learnings. And again, I highly recommend adding internal links to other articles that a beginner would want to learn more about.

A beginner's guide is an educational resource that offers a comprehensive 101 to a topic.

this is kind of like a hybrid between the step-by-step guide and the expanded definition post.

As for the introduction, I can't stress enough how important it is to be mindful of your audience. You want them to know that whatever it is you're teaching isn't super complicated.

You want to use simple language because true beginners probably won't know any industry or technical jargon.

Just like in the expanded definition post, you'll want to research the topic using a combination of the People also ask questions, similarities among the top-ranking pages, and Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer.

you'll want to end off with some final encouragement and like in every other template, internal links to further reading.