Content Type Guide

Content Type Guide

This page is a guide and template to help you categorize and structure blog content based on search intent and content format.

It covers best practices, suggested structures, and real examples for each content type—so writers, editors, and strategists can quickly figure out the right approach based on the keyword. 

The goal is to keep things consistent and aligned with SEO.

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Tutorial 

A tutorial search intent is one where the core question a searcher is asking starts with “how do I…” This type of keyword will often, but not always, contain a verb. “Python logging” or “install SQL driver” or sometimes something literally containing the word “tutorial.”

Tutorials don’t really follow a templated outline, per se. Generally they’re going to be sequential in nature, with lots of explanation and screenshots, with H2s and H3s sprinkled in to keep things organized. 

With tutorials, you generally want to advertise and have plenty of examples for the searcher, particularly if the actual how-to part is relatively short. In other words, if you’re writing a blog post about the vector data structure, you might run out of steam on pure how-to relatively quickly, but you can then give usage examples or have a best practices section or the like.

The general gist is that you want to take the reader from 0 to “doing the thing” and then use any left over space to arm them with additional knowledge to take with them, as situationally appropriate.

Examples:

1. A tutorial from Tricentis about how to create a table in Oracle SQL.

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Comparison

Generally comparison post concepts take one of two primary formats (though they can incorporate both):

• What’s the difference between X and Y?
• What’s the relationship between X and Y?

The former is often commercial in nature and the searcher is also asking, implicitly, which one is better or which one should I choose. Think Coke vs Pepsi.

The latter can be a little more open-ended, and it may or may not view the things as a binary choice or directly comparable. It could also be wondering whether the two are comparable at all, or how they relate to one another. Think of something like “DevOps vs SRE”.

Examples:

1. This Tricentis post comparing load testing and stress testing.

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Multi-Concern Comparison

Whereas straightforward X vs Y comparisons can vary a little in format depending on the nature of the two terms and their relationship, comparisons of more than 2 things tend to all ask the same essential searcher question and require the same essential content format.

X vs Y vs Z (etc…) searches are basically all “which of these options should I choose?”

Because of that, the structure of the article will generally take the form:

• Introduction
• Possible Initial Context
• Comparison Point 1
  
  • A
  • B
  • C
• Comparison Point 2
  
  • A
  • B
  • C
• …
• Comparison Point N
  
  • A
  • B
  • C
• Conclusion of the form How to Choose

Examples:

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Landing Page

A landing page is something with extremely commercial, or even transactional intent. For instance, if searchers are googling “python linter” they’re probably looking for an actual python linter to try out or buy. (More obviously so if they’re adding a verb to it, like “download python linter” or “try python linter”)

When this happens, a blog post isn’t appropriate. If you sell a Python linter and the searcher is looking to buy a Python linter, you don’t want them landing on some blog post called “What is a Python Linter” – you want them to land on the page where they can give you money or sign up.

So we’ll tag searches of this nature’s type of content to rank as “landing page.” If you see this as part of briefing, something odd is happening and you might want to double check that all is well. HS is usually not in the business of writing copy for landing pages, with occasional exceptions.

Examples:

1. This page from Tricentis about their offering. 

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Introductory Guide

An introductory guide is similar to a guide, but with a couple of primary distinguishing features:

1. It tends to assume less knowledge than a regular guide, which is generally aimed at more intermediate folks.
2. It thus includes a more definitional flavor of the term in question.

Like guides, introductory guides tend to involve the general premise of “let’s answer all of your sundry questions about the topic.” So:

• What is it?
• How do you get started?
• What’s it used for?
• Why do it?
• How do you do it?
• What are some best practices?
• Challenges and pitfalls?

Examples:

1. This introductory guide from Tricentis about mobile test automation.

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Commercial Round-Up

A commercial round-up is generally a listicle in structure. The reason for this is that someone googling something like “cicd tools” is basically asking the questions:

• What are some examples of ci/cd tools?
• Which tool or tools should I choose?
• Which tools should I be aware of?

This is a commercial search intent, meaning the person doing this search, and thus asking these questions, is likely to be deciding upon a tool soon, potentially making a purchase or at least participating in one.

A common format for a commercial round-up (e.g. CI/CD Tools) would be:

Introduction

• H2: What Is a CI/CD Tool? (brief if you include this, for context)
• H2: Tools to Know About
  
  • H3: Tool 1
  • H3: Tool 2
  • …
  • H3: Tool N
• H2: How to Choose

Each tool as a header should have a summary describing the tool, and it’s generally a good idea to structure these with bullets, like pros/cons, for instance. Something to make it easy for the reader to compare them.

Alternatively, you could potentially just make the summary and explanation of each tool its own H2, not nested under anything.

Examples:

1. This post from Tricentis with a list of top iPhone emulators.

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Definition

A definition post will generally have a title starting with “what is X?” That’s because it answers a pretty straightforward question that searchers are asking:

• What is X?
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This is fairly common when targeting a keyword that is a noun. 

This doesn’t mean that the entire post is dedicated exclusively to defining the term. Rather, it means that you’re going to talk in detail about the subject, but tending to a definitional, higher-level treatment. This tends to be more of a beginner treatment, as well, since it’s common for people to google a definitional query when they aren’t familiar with the term.

This allows for some variance in the structure of the post. However, I recommend, after an intro, having an H2 along the lines of “What is X? The Short Version” and then giving a 2-3 paragraph explanation. Bonus points for having a great, 1-sentence definition of the term and bolding it, seeing if you can’t capture a featured snippet or AI search mention.

From there, typical fodder for definitional searches might include headers like:

• Why X?
• History of X
• Best Practices with X
• Challenges Pitfalls with X
• Tools for/related-to X
• Future of X
• Use Cases of X
• Case Studies of X

In contrast to something like a guide or introductory guide, and definitely a tutorial, a definition post usually doesn’t veer to heavily into how-to land or the technical.

Examples:

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Explanation

“Explanation” is a catch-all and relatively generic content format, in the sense that it’s fairly open-ended. This is the type of content you can expect to rank when searchers aren’t necessarily looking for a familiar way of having a question answered, like with a tutorial or listicle.

Examples:

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Guide

Guide content is common when searchers for a term seem to be asking a mix of related questions about the term. For instance:

• What is it?
• How does it work?
• How to get started?
• What are some best practices?

 If you’re curious about whether a keyword is “guide-y” or not, you can look at a search for it. Typically the ranking result titles will contain an eclectic mix of concerns, and their titles will often jam in things like this:

Guides tend to differ from definition posts by featuring a lot more applied knowledge. With a guide, it’s entirely appropriate to have a “getting started tutorial” section, and perhaps a lengthy one or multiple sections. Guides differ from intro guides in that guides tend to assume a more experienced group of searchers. It’s more common for people to google things with guide intent when they’re already aware of the concept and know what it means.

Examples:

1. This example from Tricentis about test automation. 

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Informational Round-Up

An informational round-up is a listicle. Generally you can know when a searcher is looking for an informational round-up because the search for something plural, like “best practices” or “tips.”

When this happens, the searcher is essentially asking “what are some {topic} best practices” or “what are some tips for using {topic}?” They’re looking for multiple ideas to process and digest.

As such, these take a relatively formulaic structure.

You’ll have an explanatory intro and then potentially a header, if appropriate, laying down some context. So if we’re talking about application security best practices, you might have a quick primer on application security and then get into the meat of it, before potentially rounding out with a conclusion of some kind.

• What is {topic}? (Briefly)
• {Topic} best practices
  
  • Best Practice 1
  • Best Practice 2
  • …
  • Best Practice N
• Conclusion of some form

You can modify the form here a bit, situationally, but the meat of it should definitely be an enumerated list of {thing}.

Examples:

1. This post showing examples of telemetry data from Sawmills.