When we searched "blog post template" on October 5, 2026, most of the first results handed you a theme: HTML layouts, a Blogger skin, an Elementor tutorial and a custom WordPress post type.
Those pages decide how a post looks. The question people ask right under them, how to structure a blog post, gets no answer from a color scheme.
This article gives you the other kind of template: eight parts that go inside every post, as a Markdown skeleton you can paste into your editor today.
I write this blog with the same skeleton. My seodraft profile requires at least two internal links and targets 900 to 1,500 words when the topic justifies the length, and each part below carries the check I run before a draft leaves the queue.
You will also see the part most templates skip: the brief that gets saved before the first sentence exists. Start with the full skeleton, then go part by part.
- The full blog post template in one Markdown file
- 1. A brief saved before the first sentence
- 2. A title with the query in its first 60 characters
- 3. An intro that proves you can deliver
- 4. Sections that open with the answer
- 5. One piece of evidence in every section
- 6. Two internal links chosen by topic
- 7. A closing that names the decision
- 8. Metadata written for the snippet
- Which part of the template to fix first
The full blog post template in one Markdown file
The whole blog post template is one Markdown file with eight parts, and you can copy it as it stands.
---
title: "[Query in the first 60 characters]: [what the reader gets]"
slug: four-to-seven-words
description: "[120 to 160 characters, a verb and the post's one promise]"
tldr: "[The full answer in 100 to 400 characters]"
faqs:
- question: "[A real question from the results page]"
answer: "[Answer first, under 500 characters]"
---
<!-- Brief, saved before the body: intent, shape, angle, 3+ pieces of evidence, outline -->
[Intro, 5 to 12 sentences: what the reader gets, proof you can deliver it, a second specific preview]
- [Table of contents linking to each H2]
## [Section heading]
[One definitive sentence that answers the heading.]
[A number, a name or a first-hand detail. 1 to 3 sentences per paragraph.]
## [Closing heading that names the decision]
[The decision, the next step, one internal link.]
The front matter at the top holds the metadata, so your CMS reads it and the reader never sees the brackets. Everything under it is the body, in the order a reader meets it.
1. A brief saved before the first sentence
The first part of the template is a brief, saved before the body, that names the intent, the shape, the angle and the evidence.
The seven fields that brief holds are in the content brief template for AI drafts. The current workflow saves the brief before the body and requires every evidence item in the brief to reach the article. An outline you cannot fill with proof is cheap to change at this stage and expensive after 1,200 words.
Reading the results page first costs very little. When I tested seodraft on a demo account on September 17, 2026, measuring the query and building its brief cost USD 0.02622 in DataForSEO.
For this post, the October 5 results page listed eight cited domains, from HubSpot to Todoist, and most result titles described a theme, a form or a CMS setting. The missing structure became the angle written into the brief. seodraft keeps the brief as its own field in the content brief feature, apart from the body.
2. A title with the query in its first 60 characters
The title carries the exact query inside its first 60 characters, and the whole title stays between 15 and 60.
The formula on this post is the simplest one: the query, a colon and what the reader gets. A number with the topic works too, as long as the number is real.
The slug follows the same idea with four to seven lowercase words and the accents stripped. This one is blog-post-template-eight-parts.
3. An intro that proves you can deliver
The intro runs 5 to 12 sentences and follows one pattern: a preview of what the reader gets, proof you can deliver it, then a second and more specific preview.
The proof is the part people skip. In this post it is the profile I write under, with its two-link minimum and its 900 to 1,500 word range.
When the template asks for a table of contents, it goes inside the intro as a plain list, before the first heading. A heading of its own with only a list under it has no answer to open with. Close the intro with one sentence that pushes the reader into the first section.
4. Sections that open with the answer
Every H2 opens with one definitive sentence that answers its heading, and the qualifications come after it.
AI answers quote self-contained passages, so the first sentence under a heading is the one a model can lift on its own. I write that sentence into the brief's outline next to each heading before drafting, and if I cannot write it, the section has nothing to say yet. Why that sentence decides citations is in generative engine optimization for ChatGPT.
Answer the questions from the results page inside sections you designed, under your own headings. Keep paragraphs to 1 to 3 sentences and vary their length.
5. One piece of evidence in every section
Each main section carries at least one thing a model could not have written for you, such as a number you measured or a named example from your own work.
The test I run section by section is short: could someone who knows nothing about this business have written it? If the answer is yes, I go back to the evidence bank before touching the prose. The full pre-publish list is in the AI content quality checklist.
In seodraft those pieces live in an evidence bank, and only the ones the founder accepted can go into a brief. Screenshots count as evidence too, and the template marks each one as an image slot that you fill after the draft is approved. Why the evidence bank sits at the center of seodraft is in Agent-first: why seodraft killed most of its web UI.
6. Two internal links chosen by topic
The template reserves room for at least two internal links, picked by what the target post covers.
Choose them from the titles and headings of posts you already have, and point each one at a real slug. I pick the targets while the post is still a row in the editorial calendar, so the link is a planning decision, and the editorial calendar template gives it its own column.
A link to a product page helps the reader and still counts for nothing toward the two-post minimum that seodraft's internal linking rules enforce.
7. A closing that names the decision
The last section names the decision the post helps the reader make, then gives the next step and one internal resource.
Headings like Conclusion or Final thoughts give the reader nothing to act on, and my rules reject them. If the post covered eight parts, the closing picks the one to start with, which is what the last heading of this article does.
A call to action, when you use one, sits inside the closing after the next step.
8. Metadata written for the snippet
The metadata is the part a searcher may read before your post, so the description, the tldr and the FAQs each get written on purpose.
The description runs 120 to 160 characters and starts with a verb. The tldr holds the complete answer in 100 to 400 characters, written so someone who reads only that line has what they came for.
FAQs take the questions from the results page that you did not turn into sections. This post's FAQs answer the 80/20 rule question and whether blogs still matter in 2026, both taken from the People Also Ask block.
After publishing you can check whether those passages show up, because Google Search Console provides a dedicated generative AI performance report with impressions and visible pages. To check lengths before you paste, use the free meta description checker and FAQ schema generator.
Which part of the template to fix first
Start with part 4, the answer-first sentence under each heading, because it changes how every section reads.
Open your last published post and read only the first sentence under each H2. Rewrite any that asks a question or says it depends, then paste the skeleton above into your editor for the next post.
If you want the brief, the evidence and these checks kept for you, start with seodraft using your own agent (Claude, Cursor, or ChatGPT on Business, Enterprise or Edu): your agent writes, the rules decide, you approve.
For the voice side of the same draft, read how to make AI write without sounding generic.
