An outline is a budget, not a list
Give it the topic, the search intent and the length, and it returns five headlines, five to seven sections with the points each one covers, a word budget for every section, the questions readers still ask and the internal links that belong in the text. Copy it as Markdown and start writing.
The AI Blog Outline Generator builds a blog outline with headings and the points under each one, shaped by the search intent, the length and the reader you name. It gives the structure only, so you keep the writing and the judgement.
How it works
Describe the article
Say what the page should answer and the keyword it targets.
Pick the shape
Choose the search intent, the size and the tone.
Copy the outline
Take the headings and the word budget into your draft.
Ranking is answering, in the right order
Every search is a question with an expected shape. Someone typing "how to clean a coffee grinder" wants numbered steps and a warning about water; someone typing "best grinder for espresso under 200" wants a short list, a table and a verdict; someone typing "burr vs blade grinder" wants the difference in one paragraph and then the trade-off. The words overlap almost completely. The shape does not, and the shape is what the reader is judging in the first three seconds.
An outline is where the shape gets decided, before any prose exists. Write the headings first and you discover whether you actually have something to say in section four, or whether it exists because articles like this usually have four sections. Deciding that on a blank page takes ten minutes; deciding it after 1,200 words takes an afternoon.
The tool also attaches a word count to each section, which is the part most outlines leave out and the part that decides whether the article reads as thin. A 1,500-word article with six sections is 250 words each - enough for a point, not enough for an argument. The budget forces the shape to be honest: if the middle needs 400 words, something else gets 150.
Where the words go in 1,500
Six blocks, and the two shortest ones are at the ends on purpose. The opening has one job - confirm that the reader is in the right place and answer the question in three sentences - and a long introduction is the most common way to lose a reader who was already convinced.
Six blocks, 1,500 words, and a budget for each one: the outline is a word count before it is a list of headings.
The intent decides the skeleton
| Intent | What the reader wants | Shape | Where the words go |
|---|---|---|---|
| Informational | to understand the thing | definition, then why it matters, then the parts | 300 on the definition, 600 on the parts |
| How-to | to finish the task | numbered steps, one section per phase | 900 on the steps, 300 on what goes wrong |
| Commercial | to choose without regret | criteria, then options against those criteria | 400 on criteria, 800 on the options |
| Comparison | to pick one of two | the difference in one paragraph, then a table | 500 on the difference, 600 on when each wins |
The same topic can be written in all four shapes, and the shape that ranks is the one that matches the searcher's stage. A comparison query answered with a tutorial gets read for ten seconds and left; a tutorial query answered with a comparison gets a bounce and no link. The intent selector is the most important control in the tool, which is why it sits first.
Three habits that separate a plan from a list
A question heading does two things at once: it matches the way people phrase searches, and it makes a promise the section has to keep. "How long does a burr grinder last?" is a heading that a reader can decide to skip; "Section 3: maintenance" is a heading nobody decides anything about.
The exception is the how-to shape, where numbered steps belong in the headings because the reader is following along with their hands busy. The tool switches between the two based on the intent you choose.
Read the top five results for your keyword and write down the question all of them answer and the one all of them avoid. The avoided question is your section, and usually it is the one that requires an opinion or a number - which is exactly why it is worth writing and why it is the part readers remember.
It is also the section that earns links. People link to the page that said the uncomfortable thing, not to the page that repeated the consensus in better formatting.
An internal link is not a courtesy to another page; it is a sentence that continues the reader's journey. Two or three per article, placed where the reader is about to need the next step: the tutorial links to the tool, the comparison links to the buying guide, the guide links to the calculator.
Anchor text should describe the destination. "Click here" wastes the only free piece of context the link has, and a paragraph of five links tells the reader that none of them is important.
How to turn the outline into an article people finish
Write the second section first
The opening is the hardest paragraph in any article and the easiest to postpone. Write the section that carries the actual answer first, while the thinking is fresh, then write the opening knowing exactly what it has to promise. Most drafts that stall at paragraph one are drafts whose author has not decided what the article says.
When the opening is written last, it is also shorter. You know which sentence the reader needs to see first because you have already written the sentence they need to see second.
One idea per heading, one heading per idea
If a section needs two paragraphs of setup before it can make its point, it is two sections or it is not a section. Splitting is cheap in an outline and expensive in a draft, which is the practical argument for planning at all. The corollary matters too: a heading that covers three ideas will be skimmed, because the reader cannot tell which one the paragraph is about.
Length is a by-product, not a target
The word budget is there to stop a section from becoming three sentences, not to make you pad. If a section says everything it has to say in 220 words instead of 350, the article is better for it - and the budget moves to the section that needed more room. Articles get long because the argument is long, and readers can feel the difference immediately.
What the FAQ block is really for
The four questions at the end of the outline are the questions the article did not answer, written as a reader would ask them. Answered in two sentences each, they do three things: they capture the long-tail searches nobody writes a page for, they give the reader a reason to stay thirty seconds longer, and they become the FAQ schema that shows up under the result. Keep the answers short - an FAQ that turns into three more sections is a sign the article was misfiled.
Publishing checklist
Before the draft becomes a page: the title contains the keyword near the start and fits 62 characters; the first paragraph answers the question without requiring the rest of the article; every heading could stand alone as a table of contents entry; at least one image has real alt text rather than a file name; two or three internal links point at pages that genuinely help; and the meta description is written by hand, because it is the only sentence most searchers will ever read.
None of that needs a plugin. It needs a plan written before the prose, which is what the outline is: a contract with your future self about what the article is allowed to be.
Working with the tool's output
Copy the Markdown into your editor and treat the headings as a to-do list. Delete any section you cannot fill with something you know or can verify - an empty heading is worse than a missing one, and the reader can tell when a section exists only to match a template. Then reorder: the tool writes a defensible order, not necessarily your best order, and the best order is the one where each section makes the next one obvious.
Each run costs a real API call, so the five daily runs are best spent on the articles that will earn their keep: the ones with a keyword, a search volume and a reason for you specifically to write them.
Practical questions
Is the outline unique to my topic?expand_more
Which length should I choose?expand_more
Can it write the article as well?expand_more
Does the keyword have to be in every heading?expand_more
What is the word budget based on?expand_more
Plan the article before you write it
Topic, intent, length - and take a structure with a word budget for every section.
fact_checkQuick facts
- An outline is a promise about order: a how-to follows the task, a comparison follows the decision, and an explainer follows the question.
- Search intent decides the shape before the keywords do — an informational query and a transactional one cannot share an outline.
- Google builds a title link and a snippet from the page itself, and it may use a heading or a sentence from the body instead of the meta description.menu_bookGoogle Search Central
- FAQPage and HowTo structured data are only eligible for a rich result when the questions and steps are visible on the page itself.menu_bookGoogle Search Central
- A language model reads text in tokens, and one token is roughly four characters of English, so a 300-word answer is about 400 tokens.menu_bookOpenAI Cookbook
helpQuestions people ask
How do I outline a blog post?expand_more
How many headings should a blog post have?expand_more
Should the outline include FAQs?expand_more
hubWhat this page is about
- Answer engine optimisationopen_in_new
Writing a page so that a search engine or an AI assistant can lift one clear, sourced answer out of it instead of guessing.
- Large language modelopen_in_new
A model that predicts the next token of a text; the site sends the prompt to a hosted model and returns its answer.
library_booksOfficial sources cited on this page
- How Google generates titles and snippetsGoogle Search Central
- FAQPage structured dataGoogle Search Central
- HowTo structured dataGoogle Search Central
- How to count tokens with tiktokenOpenAI Cookbook
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Switched-off tools are not listed here: only what works right now.