How to Create How-to Guides That Actually Get Read (and Rank)

How-to-guides are make or break. They showcase expertise and prowess on topics related to your niche (or the niche of your clients).

Offer shoddy or outdated advice, and, well, it just doesn’t look good, does it?

Get it right, though, and you’ve just earned yourself a loyal reader and a future customer.

Time to turn your guides from “meh” to “damn, these guys really know their s#*t!”

Quick Definition: What is a How-To Guide?

Let’s make sure we’re both on the same page here—a how-to guide is a step-by-step playbook. A Yoda to your readers’ Luke Skywalker. A “Hold my beer, I’ll walk you through this thing” blog post.

Think IKEA instructions without the missing screws and Swedish product names.

At their best, they break down the complex into easy-to-digest, bite-sized chunks of information that readers can easily follow along with.

Kind of like this guide, right here. 😉

What Makes a Top-Shelf How-To Guide Tick? (And Why You Should Care)

How-to-guides answer those burning questions that a target audience is Googling like crazy.

Nail it, and it’s not just the target audience that benefits. Your business (or your client’s business) does, too.

Yup, they aren’t just simple manuals that readers can follow. Oh, no, they act as lead capture, drawing ideal customers who are actively searching for solutions. Solve their problems in a way that’s actually helpful, and (you know where this is going) you’ve earned yourself a loyal fan.

Ride or die, homie.

And if you’re not in the business of selling physical goods or services—if ad display is how you earn your bread and butter—how-to guides that rank drive traffic, bringing in a steady stream of organic visitors. Plus, if you’re smart about it, you can even use guides to build out an email list.

It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Big picture time: consistently publishing high-quality how-to guides establishes a brand as a go-to expert. The guru with the traffic-boosting voodoo? Nah. The metrics that accrue? Nope.

The how-to hotshot, ready to make customers’ eyes pop? Nailed it!

Crafting a Killer How-To Guide: Seven Steps to Success

This is why you’re here, so I’d better get it right, right? Practice what you preach and all that.

A how-to guide on how-to guides…

Step 1: Know Your Audience Inside and Out

Who are you writing for? If it’s your own business, this is probably (hopefully) obvious. If you’re creating content for someone else’s site, then do your due diligence and understand who you’re talking to. Seriously, get specific.

It’s not enough to rattle off the usual ambiguousness like “marketing professionals” and “DIY enthusiasts.” That isn’t likely to land.

Go deeper into demographics. Learn their interests, pain points, and preferred learning styles intimately. What are their loves? What are their hates? What keeps them up at night? What content resonates?

Once you understand the audience like the back of your hand, then (and only then) are you ready to take the next step. However, drop the ball here, and you’ll be screaming into the void ‘cause content that doesn’t land doesn’t rank.

Step 2: Become Obsessed With Research

Although the first page of Google is where you want your how-to-guide to end up, your research should go beyond a simple search. You need to go deeper.

Scour industry white papers, brave the degeneracy of forums, and run ideas past social media groups to uncover hidden insights and unique angles.

And don’t be afraid to shoot out a couple of HARO requests. Reaching out to experts for their opinions or advice is never a bad thing. The more diverse your sources, the richer and comprehensive your guide will turn out to be.

FYI: if you’re interested, we offer HARO link-building services.

Step 3: Outline Your Masterpiece

With your mountain of research compiled, it’s now time to organize your thoughts. A well-structured outline is your best friend here. It’s the backbone of any successful how-to guide.

Outlines keep your thoughts on track, make sure your content flows logically, and provide a clear path for readers to follow.

Start by breaking down your topic into smaller, bite-sized sections. Each section should focus on a specific aspect of the task or problem you’re addressing. Then, create subheadings and bullet points to further organize your ideas.

Here’s a little example to help you envision what this step might look like:

Title: How to Optimize Your Website for Voice Search

1. Introduction 
   1. Growing popularity of voice search
   2. Importance for SEO and user experience
2. Understanding Voice Search 
   1. How it differs from traditional text search
   2. Keywords and phrases commonly used in voice search
   3. User intent behind voice queries
3. Optimizing Your Website Content
   1. Using conversational language
   2. Structuring content for featured snippets
   3. Answering common questions
   4. Optimizing for local search
4. Technical Considerations
   1. Website speed and mobile optimization
   2. Schema markup for voice assistants
   3. Using structured data for voice search results
5. Measuring and Analyzing Voice Search Performance
   1. Tracking voice search traffic
   2. Identifying top-performing keywords and phrases
   3. Adjusting strategy based on data
6. Conclusion
   1. Recap of key points
   2. Future trends in voice search optimization
   3. Call to action for readers

Psst—this’ll help: How to create a website outline for SEO.

Step 4: Write Like a Human (Not a Robot)

Now, the time-consuming bit: bringing your guide to life with words. Before you put fingers to keyboard, though, refer back to step one. Who is the target audience, and what kind of content do they resonate with?

If they’re fellow marketers, an engaging, witty, and conversational tone typically engages this audience. For more technically-minded folk, a more direct, to-the-point writing style will probably land better than niche cultural references and memes.

To generalize, though, for how-to guides, most audiences will appreciate an active voice, short sentences, and plenty of white space to make your content easy to read and follow along with.

Oh, and one more thing.

If you’re going to use AI to help with the writing process, be sure to fact-check and edit. Most out-of-the-box AI writing is generic and rather boring to read. So, by all means, use it, but don’t rely on it to do all the work.

A lot of audiences are adverse to AI content and are getting increasingly good at spotting it. Just keep that in mind if you’re thinking of heading in that direction.

Step 5: Make Your Guide Pop with Visuals

For how-to guides, pictures aren’t worth a thousand words. They’re worth at least ten thousand. Seriously, images are super important in how-to guides, particularly if you’re showing your audience how to do something technical.

So, use high-quality images, screenshots, and even embed a video tutorial. I mean, why not? A lot of us are visual learners, so images and videos are a no-brainer.

The more helpful you can be, the more your audience will reward you with click metrics and time-on-page, and the higher Google is likely to rank it.

Step 6: Spread the Word and Watch the Traffic Roll In

Outline checked, writing and editing done, and visuals sorted? Now, it’s time to get it in front of the right people.

Do your on-page SEO thing—add internal and external links, optimize for keywords, earn backlinks—but don’t rely on just that. If we’ve learned anything from the recent algorithm updates and reshuffling of the SERPs, is that it’s not a good idea to rely on one traffic source alone.

So, share the guide on socials, email it out to subscribers, and submit it to relevant online communities and forums.

And if it’s in your budget, consider running a paid ad or two. You could also reach out to influencers in your niche and see if they’re willing to share your insights with their followers.

The more eyes on it, the better it’ll perform.

Oi, check this out: on-page SEO tips to help your site rank.

Step 7: Gauge Your Guide’s Greatness

Let’s not set and forget. Once your guide is published, make sure to check back in and monitor its performance. This will help you understand what’s working, what could be better, and what areas you can improve in so your next guide is even better.

Keep a close eye on the usual suspects: organic traffic (and paid, too), engagement metrics, shares, and conversions.

But why stop there? Why not ask your readers directly what they think? Their feedback is gold.

Now, use all this information—the cold, hard data and the honest opinions—to make your guide even more awesome. The best guides are never truly finished. Products get updated, new techniques emerge, and the audiences’ preferences change.

Not to mention, content freshness is a thing, so frequent updates have SEO benefits as well.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Welcome to the end, my friend. We’ve covered a lot of ground together, so as a refresher, remember to find your niche, do killer research, craft a logically flowing outline, write like a pro, and promote like a boss.

But the most important takeaway?

Creating a truly helpful how-to guide takes time, effort, and genuine passion for the topic. Don’t be afraid to experiment, learn from your mistakes, and most importantly, have fun doing it.

If you need a helping hand along the way, don’t forget that Loganix, that’s us, is here to support you with expert content marketing and SEO services.

🚀 Head over to our content marketing services page, and let’s create something truly amazing together. 🚀