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A tutorial blog post is a great way to educate and inform readers on how to do something. Whether it’s boiling an egg, using Photoshop, or setting up a new piece of software, tutorials provide step by step instructions with images and videos for every stage.

In this guide, we’ll tell you why tutorial blog posts are a good idea, what makes them effective, and how to plan yours.

Why write a tutorial blog post?

There are some real positives to writing a tutorial blog post, for you and for your audience.

A significant benefit for you the blogger is SEO. It’s very easy for a tutorial to be seen as a page of content by Google and other search engines if it’s included on your site. That means that any relevant words or phrases in your tutorial (e.g. “How to bake banana bread”) will be indexed by Google. This is what we want and what SEO experts strive for as it increases the likelihood of driving organic traffic.

These tutorials are also great for backlink opportunities from other bloggers who don’t want to create their own content.

For your audience, the main benefit is that you offer them a simple process to follow or instructions on a complex subject. This saves them time searching around for the info and builds up your credibility as an expert in the field.

Tutorial blog post must-haves

When planning and writing a tutorial-style blog post, you should aim to include:

  • A clear title showing what the tutorial is for and how many steps it takes.
  • Appropriate formatting, including numbers to show the order of each step and bullet points to list materials or ingredients needed.
  • One or two sentences for each step. Keep your explanations clear and concise.
  • For in-depth topics, you may need more than two sentences per step. In this case, also include a short explanation of what each step entails.
  • An image for each step showing clearly how to do that task. Your images should also include captions describing what is being done in the picture (which is good for SEO).
  • A concluding sentence to sum up the tutorial and finish with a call to action.

Keep your standard blog post must-haves

Although a step by step post is formatted differently to other posts, remember you still need to include the basic features of a good blog post. These include:

  • Descriptive titles that spark interest and draw the reader in. Include your keywords within the title to help with ranking.
  • A catchy introduction including a hook or question to grab readers’ attention. If you want people to continue reading, think of what they want from the tutorial and include that.
  • A conclusion that provides a brief summary and final thoughts for the reader.

Formatting your tutorial post

When writing a tutorial, you may want to use a plugin to make sure your post is formatted correctly with the Schema information that Google uses to categorise it.

For example, Create from Mediavine will let you add a card in one of three formats. There is Recipes for food, Lists for roundups or How-Tos for tutorial-style content. You don’t need to be an advertiser with Mediavine to use it.

Create a quality tutorial that is useful to others

Following these steps will help you create a high-quality tutorial that’ll educate your readers while helping them to learn something new, finish a project or make something. If you include the right Google friendly elements for your tutorial post, you will increase your chances of getting organic traffic too.