Step 2B: Build an Outline Yourself

This section will walk you through how to build your own outline from scratch.

To get your outline automatically generated for you, see this article: Generate an Outline Using Longform AI

1. To start off, you can build your subheadings by choosing from the top topics on the right panel — simply click on the + icon to add a topic to your outline. You can drag and drop the subheadings to arrange its sequence, edit each subheading, remove and add more topics, or click on the refresh icon to generate more outline ideas. Alternatively, you can also add your own custom subheading section by clicking on the Add New button.

As you add more topics from the right panel, you will notice your Topic Coverage score increasing.

The Topic Coverage score compares your content’s subheading topics with those of the top 10’s.

The more topics covered by the top 10 you include in your outline, the better your Topic Coverage score.

Here’s a breakdown of what the score means:

• Excellent (66.67 - 100%): You cover most or all topics mentioned by the Top 10 pages
• Good (33.34 - 66.66%): You cover some topics mentioned by the Top 10 pages
• Weak (0 - 33.33%): You cover only a few topics mentioned by the Top 10 pages

Basically, you want to aim for an excellent score with the Topic Coverage.

It means you’re covering all topics covered by the Top 10, leaving no gaps and giving you a better chance of outranking them.

2. To increase your Topic Coverage score, you can add more subheadings to your outline using the suggested top topics on the right panel.
3. Next, you can supplement your subheading sections with details by getting Longform AI to Autofill it for you or by filling it yourself.
4. To Autofill it, click on the three vertical dots on the right of the subheading.
5. To fill it yourself, you can write your own talking points in bullet points under the subheading, and add information researched from the top 10 pages on the right panel.

Here are the details you can include and what they mean:

• Topics: Topics extracted from the top 10 pages
• Questions: Questions found on the top 10 pages and People Also Ask section
• Links: Frequently-linked to pages by the top 10
• Contextual Terms: High-frequency terms used by the top 10 that can increase your contextual relevancy in the eyes of Google

Next: Step 3: Customize the AI Settings

Tip: Click on the collapse icon next to “Outline” to expand or collapse your outline. The expanded view shows the details under each subheading section, while the collapsed view only shows the subheadings.