# How to structure a long guide so people finish it

The outline is not an act of writing, it is an act of reading: the sub-questions on the results page are your sections, in the order a reader meets them. Get that right and the guide writes itself. Here is the structure, section by section, with the lengths that hold attention.

Updated 2026-09-15 · Source: https://porteur.ai/guides/how-to-structure-a-guide

## The outline comes from the results page, not from you

Before writing a line, search the query you are targeting and read what is already there. The sections of the pages that rank, and the People also ask questions under them, are the sub-questions your reader has. That list is your outline.

1. **Collect the headings** Open the top five results and copy their h2s into a document. Twenty minutes. You now know what the search expects a page on this subject to cover.
2. **Collect the questions** Add the People also ask questions, expanding one to get more. These are phrased the way people think, which is how your headings should be phrased.
3. **Cut the duplicates and the filler** Five pages saying "what is X" means one section. "Why X matters in today's world" means nothing and goes.
4. **Add what only you have** The section nobody else can write: your method, your numbers, the mistake you made. This is the reason the page exists.
5. **Order them as a reader meets them** Definition, then the decision, then the doing, then the checking. Not the order the top results happen to use.

> If the outline has nothing in it that only you could write, stop. The page will be the eleventh version of something already answered, which is exactly what Google's guidance on helpful content describes.

## The first screen decides everything

The reader arrived from a search with a question. Answer it in the first two sentences. Not a preamble, not a definition of the industry, not why the subject matters.

| Element | Its job | Its length |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Title | The promise the search result made. | About sixty characters. |
| First sentence | The answer, or the shortest true version of it. | One line. |
| Second and third sentence | What the page holds and what the reader will be able to do. | Two lines. |
| Contents | The map, so a reader can jump to their part. | Every h2, nothing deeper. |

That opening is also what an assistant quotes when it answers the same question, which is a second reason to put the answer where it can be lifted.

## Make every heading a question your reader would ask

A heading is a navigation aid for a person skimming and a signal for a machine reading. Both work better when the heading is phrased the way the question is asked.

- "Benefits" becomes "What you get from doing this, in order of size".
- "Implementation" becomes "How to set it up on a site you already have".
- "Considerations" becomes "When this is the wrong choice".
- "Conclusion" becomes "What to do this week", or disappears.

Keep the outline shallow. Two levels are almost always enough: h2 for sections, h3 inside a section that has genuine parts. A guide with four heading levels is two guides.

## What a section holds, and how long it runs

A section of eight paragraphs is a wall. A section that is only a list is a note. Mix them, and give each section one thing that is not prose.

- Two to five paragraphs, most under four sentences.
- One block that is not a paragraph: a list, a table, numbered steps, a code sample, a warning.
- One worked example with a real shape: a named page like /pricing, a query in quotes, a before and an after.
- A last line that ends in a decision, so the reader knows what they now believe.

Length per section: two hundred to four hundred words. If a section passes six hundred, it is a page of its own and the guide should link to it instead.

> The scroll test: open the draft on a phone. If two consecutive screens are unbroken prose, something on one of them should be a list, a table or a step.

## The worked example that carries the guide

One example, running through the whole guide, beats five unrelated ones. Pick a fictional site and keep it: yourproduct.com, its /pricing page, its guide at /guides/getting-started.

1. **Name it once, early** "Take yourproduct.com, a fictional invoicing tool with forty pages." Now every later example has a context.
2. **Show the before** The title as it is, the figure as it stands, the mistake as it appears in the report.
3. **Show the change** Exactly what you would type or click, not "optimise the page".
4. **Show how you would know** The report, the figure and the period where the change shows up. A guide that never says how to tell teaches nothing.

## How to end a guide

Not with a summary of what the reader just read. They were there. End with the next action and the next page.

- The one thing to do this week, in a sentence.
- The questions people ask afterwards, answered in two to four sentences each.
- Three to six pages to read next, chosen because they are the genuine next step, not because they need links.
- One call to action, in the reader's terms, placed where the answer ends rather than in a banner that interrupts.

The FAQ at the end is not a keyword exercise. Use the questions your support inbox actually gets and the ones the results page showed you, answered plainly. They are also the part assistants quote most often.

## How long the whole thing should be

Google has said repeatedly that there is no word count that ranks and that pages should be as long as they need to be. In practice your page competes with what is already there, so the length of the top results is the brief, not a target.

| Shape | Sections | Typical length |
| --- | --- | --- |
| A definition | Three to five | Four hundred to seven hundred words |
| A task with steps | Five to seven | Eight hundred to fifteen hundred words |
| A subject guide | Six to nine | Twelve hundred to two thousand words |
| A comparison | Six to eight | Twelve hundred to eighteen hundred words |

Cut anything that would survive being deleted. A guide that is shorter than the ones it beats is the strongest possible signal that you knew which parts mattered.

## Questions

### How many headings should a guide have?

Six to nine sections for a subject guide, each a question a reader would ask. Two levels of heading is almost always enough. If you need a fourth level, the section under it is a separate page.

### Does a table of contents help SEO?

It helps readers jump, which is reason enough on a long page. Google sometimes shows jump links to sections in results, and a clear outline with anchors makes that possible, but it is not a ranking feature you can switch on.

### Where should the call to action go in a guide?

Where the reader has just got the answer, not at the top and not in a modal. One call to action, phrased as the next step in the reader's terms. Google's page experience guidance counts intrusive interstitials against a page.

### Should I write the introduction first or last?

Last, usually. The opening has to promise exactly what the finished page delivers, and you rarely know that until the draft exists. Write a placeholder, finish the sections, then write the real one.

### How do I know if my structure is working?

Read the page on a phone and see where you would stop. Then watch the Performance report: a page with impressions and no clicks has a title problem, not a structure problem, while a page people land on and leave immediately usually answered a different question than the one they searched.

## Read next

- [Writing titles that get the click, without a tease](https://porteur.ai/guides/writing-titles-that-get-clicked): The title is a promise, not a tease. The words people search near the front, sixty characters, and ten before-and-after examples that show the difference.
- [People also ask: turning Google’s questions into sections](https://porteur.ai/guides/people-also-ask): See what People also ask is, where questions come from, how to collect them, write two-sentence answers, add FAQ markup, and track results.
- [Search intent: what the results page tells you to build](https://porteur.ai/guides/search-intent): Learn the four intents, read intent from the results page, and fix pages that will never rank by changing their kind, not just the words.
- [Content brief](https://porteur.ai/glossary/content-brief): A content brief defined, what to include, how to write one in minutes, how to measure it in Search Console, and common traps to avoid.
- [Topic clusters: the hub, the spokes, and the links that make them one thing](https://porteur.ai/guides/topic-clusters): What a topic cluster is, what makes a hub worth reading rather than a list of links, and the link pattern that holds the whole thing together.
- [How to refresh a page that lost its traffic](https://porteur.ai/guides/content-refresh): Find why a page lost clicks, refresh what searchers want now, and measure the result. Keep the same URL, update facts, sections, links and date.
- [Title tag length: what fits, what Google rewrites, and how to write one](https://porteur.ai/guides/title-tag-length): About 60 characters is a safe line. Learn pixels versus characters, why Google rewrites titles, and how to write titles that earn clicks.
- [How long should a page be? The honest answer](https://porteur.ai/guides/how-long-should-a-page-be): There is no word count that ranks. Use the pages that already rank as the brief, stop when the question is answered, and know the two failures.

Paste your URL and the free check reads your site and the searches around it in about thirty seconds, then names the pages whose structure is costing them the click. Free check: https://porteur.ai/