How to format a blog post people actually read
A little while ago, my friend and fellow business owner Dani Gardner and I started meeting once a month. Dani has cleverly coined it our ‘minimind’ – like a mastermind but for just the two of us, to keep each other accountable and share what we're noticing in our work.
One thing that came up recently was blog posts that are hard to read.
Not necessarily hard to read because the writing is bad – most often the writing is great.
But because of the way the blog post has been formatted and structured. When a blog post is structured poorly, reading it feels like hard work.
If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of blogging. I often talk about how blogging is a form of marketing that can support your energy, rather than drain it. When done right, blogging is a very gentle and sustainable way to market and grow your business (so much more than social media).
So when I see blog articles that aren’t formatted correctly, I always think that this is such a shame. Because the consequence is that your visitors don't stick around and that incredibly helpful article you've poured hours into writing never reaches the people who really need it.
You might even start to think that your content sucks because people are clicking away, when actually, it’s just your blog formatting letting you down. With a few little tweaks you could improve the whole experience for your readers.
Dani noticed this with her clients and so did I.
So here we are. This is part one of a two-part series on structuring your blog posts.
This first part is all about how to format your blog posts for readability. We want the experience someone has while reading your article to be calm and gentle on their nervous system so they actually stay, read and feel good while they are doing it.
Part two will cover how to structure your blog for search so the right people find it in the first place. If you want to be notified when part two goes live, jump aboard my mailing list here.
Table of Contents
The anatomy of a well-formatted blog post
1. Your blog post title
Your title is obviously what your reader first sees and reads. There are two key things to pay attention to here:
Wording.
A title that's clever or poetic might feel satisfying to write, but if someone has to read it more than once to understand what the article is about, you've likely lost them.
Descriptive titles, so ones that clearly tell the reader what they’re about to learn or what they are going to get from the article, help people feel confident they're in the right place. As a bonus, they also tend to perform better in search, but we'll get into that in part two.
Size.
Your title should be larger than your body text so it’s large enough to read as the headline but not hugely gigantic that it’s a dominating monstrosity on the page.
If your blog post title is filling up most of the screen before your reader has even seen anything else, it can feel unintentionally loud – almost like you’re shouting at them.
As a rule of thumb, I generally like to set blog post titles to be about 2 to 2.5 x the size of the main body text. So if the main writing in your article is 20px, then the blog post title should sit somewhere between 40px to 50px. The title is then large enough to stand out but not so large to dominate.
2. Imagery
Just below your blog post title, add an image. Choose a high-quality, on-brand photo from your professional shoot or curated library of stock images.
A good image will create warmth and should visually support the messaging within the article.
Without one, your reader first sees a plain wall of text right when they land on the article – and even with a great headline, that can feel a little cold and uninviting.
3. Introduce the article
You know those recipe websites where you've found the perfect thing to cook, but before you can get to the ingredients you have to scroll through someone's entire life story? Gah, I hate that! Does anyone else relate?
The same applies to any blog article. If your intro rambles or takes too long to get to the point, people will click away before they've given your content a real chance.
I don’t have a hard and fast rule about how long an introduction should be but mine tend to sit around the 100-200 word mark.
What’s more important is that your intro lets your reader know exactly what the article is about and what they’ll take away from it. Ask yourself, why would they spend their time reading this? What problem is this solving for them or what benefit is it going to bring them? Put that in your intro.
4. Table of contents
For any article longer than a few hundred words, a table of contents is one of the most reader-friendly things you can include.
It gives people an instant overview of what the article covers and lets them jump to the section most relevant to them. It also helps with search discoverability – but more on that in part two.
I personally love this Table of Contents Plugin for Squarespace. It’s easy to install and populates automatically based on the headings in your blog article. You can see it being used at the start of this very article.
5. Narrow text column
This is one of the most overlooked things in blog formatting and it has a massive impact on how comfortable your content feels to read.
When a line of text stretches the full width of the screen, the eye has to travel a long distance to get from the end of one line to the start of the next. Most people won't consciously notice it, instead they'll just feel a low-grade fatigue and stop reading.
Research suggests the most comfortable reading width is around 50–75 characters per line (you can read more about that here). In practical terms for a blog, that means keeping your text column to around 600–750px wide on desktop. My own rule of thumb is 700px. I find this gives your content room to breathe without making your reader's eyes work too hard.
If your blog text is currently stretching to the edges of a wide screen, this is worth fixing. It will immediately make your content way more comfortable to read – which means your visitor is likely to hang around for longer (yay!).
6. Font size and headings
Now we’re into the juice of your blog article and this is where I see things go wrong quite a lot.
Font size and headings have a direct impact on whether someone actually reads what you've written. Get them right and reading your content feels effortless. Get them wrong and you're asking your reader to work too hard – at which point, they’ll probably leave.
Body text.
The general accessibility recommendation for body text size is a minimum of 16px. But for a long-form blog post, I’d recommend going a little larger. Somewhere between 18px and 20px is a good target. You can read more about font size and accessibility here.
Headings.
Before most people commit to reading something in full, they scan it first. Clear, well-sized headings let them do that quickly and find the parts most relevant to them.
This means your headings need to create a clear hierarchy. Your article title (H1) should be the largest thing on the page (but not too large - remember point 1). Your section headings (H2s) should sit noticeably below that. If you have sub-sections within those, H3s sit below your H2s. Each level should look distinctly different from the one above it. If you have to look twice to tell them apart, they're too close in size.
Heading levels aren't just for visual scanning though. H1, H2 and H3 are structural tags that tell browsers and screen readers how your content is organised. Using them in the right order matters for accessibility and it matters for search discoverability too (more on that in part two).
One more thing while we're here: please, please stop using script fonts for your headings. They might look beautiful in a mood board but they're almost unreadable on screen, especially on mobile. Save the script font for your logo and choose font styles for your headings that are clean and easy to read.
7. Text alignment
In a blog article, your text should always, always be left-aligned.
Centred text is popular. I see it a lot and it can look beautiful for a short heading or a quote.
But for a paragraph of body text, it creates a jagged left edge that your reader's eye has to hunt for at the start of every new line.
When you read, your eye naturally returns to the same starting point at the left margin. With left-aligned text, that point is always in the same place. With centred text, every line starts somewhere different, so your eye has to search for where the next line begins each time it sweeps back.
It doesn’t seem like much but over a full article, this gets really tiring.
8. Colour contrast
Colour contrast is the difference in lightness and darkness between your text colour and the background colour it sits on. The greater the difference between the two, the easier your text is to read.
Soft, muted colour palettes are very much in fashion right now and, while they look beautiful, if your palette hasn’t been selected with colour contrast standards in mind, it can make your entire website genuinely difficult to read, especially for people with low vision, older readers or anyone on a phone screen in bright light.
If you're not sure whether your current colours are up to scratch, I’ve recorded a helpful tutorial which steps you through how to check if your colour palette is ethical and meets colour contrast requirements.
9. Give your content room to breathe
A page with content that's packed tight can feel overwhelming and chaotic. A page with plenty of room to breathe feels calmer and the content becomes easily digestible, which means your visitors are much more likely to stick around.
This is where something called ‘white space’ comes in. White space is the breathing room on your page. It’s the space between your paragraphs, your headings and your images. Despite the name, it doesn't have to be white. It's simply whatever colour your background is.
In practical terms, this looks like adding some spacing between images and text and keeping your paragraphs short. Two to four sentences is a good guide. It can feel counterintuitive to break ideas apart but shorter paragraphs are significantly easier to read on screen than long, dense blocks of text.
Your headings also need room. There should be more space above a heading than below it. This separates it from the section before and makes it clear a new section is beginning.
10. The next step
Every blog post should end with an invitation for your reader to take a next step. This is called a ‘call to action’ or CTA.
By the time someone reaches the end of your article, they've spent time with you and hopefully found what you shared valuable. They’re probably thinking ‘what’s next?’
This is one of the most natural ways to move a reader from your blog to your sales page.
And because the blog post has done the work building trust, you definitely don't need to hard sell. Something as simple as "If this resonated and you'd like some help with X, you can find out more here" is enough.
Remember to keep the next step to one option only. If you give someone multiple options, they often end up doing nothing.
Blog post formatting checklist
Before you next hit publish on a blog article, run through this list:
Blog post title is descriptive and clear – not clever or cryptic
Title size is proportionate – around 2 to 2.5x the size of your body text
Hero image sits just below the title
Intro gets to the point quickly
Table of contents is included for longer articles
Text column is narrow – around 700px on desktop
Body text is at least 16px – ideally 18–20px
Headings follow a clear hierarchy – H1, H2, H3 in the right order
No script fonts in headings
All body text is left-aligned
Colour contrast is strong enough to read easily
Paragraphs are short – two to four sentences
There is breathing room between sections and headings
Article ends with a single, clear next step
Bonus tip: set up a blog template
If your blogging platform allows you to save drafts, I'd highly recommend setting up a blank blog post template with all of the above already in place. Add your formatting, heading styles, a placeholder image, your intro structure, table of contents and a placeholder for the main content and a CTA. Then save it as a draft.
This is something I set up for all of my SEO clients so that every blog post starts in the right structure. It takes a little time to set up initially but saves you a lot in the long run. You can then simply duplicate the draft when you're ready to write and the structure is ready to go.
All of these things might seem like small, finicky design details. But together they determine whether reading your blog feels like a pleasure or a chore.
The goal is a reading experience that feels calm and easy. It should respect your reader's time, energy and nervous system. That's kind design. And when your readers feel that, they remember you, they stick around and they keep coming back.
This is part one of two. Part two covers how to structure your blog post to be found in search – including how to use headings, keywords and meta descriptions to help the right people find your content. If you want to be notified when part two goes live, jump aboard my mailing list here.
Want a second set of eyes on your website?
If reading this has made you wonder how your Squarespace website and blog are holding up, a website audit might be a good next step. I'll go through your site with a fine tooth comb and give you an honest, expert review of the areas that could be improved to create a better experience for your visitors – and a more effective website for your business. You'll also receive a prioritised action list so you know exactly what to fix.
Frequently asked questions about formatting blog posts
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I don’t reckon there’s a magic word count but the sweet spot is giving enough information for your reader to learn something or solve a problem, without overwhelming them. You can think about what your reader needs to feel satisfied. In part two we'll cover how SEO factors into blog post length, as it does get a little more specific when you're writing for search.
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A well-formatted blog post starts with a descriptive title, followed by an image, a short intro that gets to the point quickly and a table of contents for longer articles. The body of the article uses clear headings to guide the reader through, with short paragraphs, left-aligned text and a narrow text column. It ends with a clear next step for the reader. Everything covered in this article, basically!
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Here’s my personal take: AI can be a genuinely useful tool for mapping out blog topics, structuring your thinking or helping you find the right wording. But if you're simply asking AI to generate content without editing or adding your own perspective, and without training it to write in your voice, you'll just end up sounding like everyone else, which makes it easy to forget you. Your readers remember you and keep coming back because of your unique point of view, your experience and your unique messaging. AI can support your writing process but it definitely shouldn’t replace what makes your content distinctly yours.
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Most of the common ones are covered in this article – an oversized title, no image, a rambling intro, text that stretches edge to edge, fonts that are too small, centred text, poor colour contrast and no clear next step. The good news is they're all fixable with a few small tweaks.
