Writing Content in Inverted Pyramid Style • Yoast

Journalists have long used the inverted pyramid writing style. This puts your most important information in the foreground. Don’t hedge. Don’t bury your main point in the middle of the third paragraph. And don’t hold back; Tell the complete story in the first paragraph. Even online, this writing style holds up quite well for some types of articles. This is even convenient as web content is increasingly used to answer all kinds of questions from a searcher. Find out how!

What is the Inverted Pyramid?

Most readers don’t have the time or desire to read an article carefully. That’s why journalists place the critical parts of a story in the first paragraph to inform and entice the reader. This paragraph is, so to speak, the core of a story. This way, any reader can read the first paragraph or introduction and get a full picture of what the story is about. It immediately reveals the traditional Ws: who, what, when, where, why and of course how.

The introductory paragraph is followed by paragraphs containing important details. This is followed by general information and any background information that the authors consider to support the narrative. This has several advantages:

• It supports all Readers, even those who skim
• It improves understanding; Everything you need to understand the article can be found in the first paragraph
• You need less time to get to the point
• It gives authors a complete paragraph to attract readers
• When done well, it encourages readers to scroll and read the rest of the article
• It gives authors full control over the structure
• It makes editing articles easier

An example

Here is an example of such an intro. We wrote an article about writing meta descriptions in Yoast SEO that answers this exact question in an easy-to-understand way. We immediately show what it is and why it’s important, while encouraging people to read the rest of the article. Here is the intro:

“A strong meta description increases CTR and signals relevance to search engines. This post shows how to create descriptions that work, with practical tips and ready-to-use templates. You’ll learn the characteristics of good meta descriptions, common mistakes, and how Yoast SEO can help you get it right. Using these templates and guidelines can increase CTR, increase reader expectations Bringing harmony and improving optimization for both users and Google.”

The inverted pyramid is just one of many techniques for presenting and structuring content. Like us, you can use it to write meaningful news articles, press releases, product pages, blog posts or explanatory articles.

However, this writing style is not suitable for every content. Maybe you write poems, long essays with a full story arc, or just complex fiction. Critics are quick to add that the inverted pyramid style stifles their creativity. But even then, you can learn from inverted pyramid techniques to help you engage the reader and find a good way to structure a story. And as we all know, a solid structure is the key to helping people and search engines understand your content. We wrote about this in our article on setting up a clear text structure.

The power of paragraphs

Well-written paragraphs are incredibly powerful. These paragraphs can stand on their own. I always try to write modularly. This is because I regularly move paragraphs around if I think they fit better elsewhere in the article. It makes editing and changing the structure of a story much easier.

Good writers give each paragraph a standout first sentence; These are called core sentences. These sentences elevate one Question or concept per paragraph. So whoever reads the article by reading the first sentence of each paragraph understands the essence of the article and can decide whether to read the rest of the paragraph or not. Of course, the rest of the paragraph is spent answering or supporting that question or concept.

The pyramid, SEO and AI

Frontloading the main point helps SEO succeed in the AI ​​age. Lead with the core result to provide readers with a quick, clear understanding and signal relevance to search algorithms. Focusing on this idea will make snippets more likely and relevant while making the rest of the article easier to scan, summarize, and reuse across channels. In practice, the inverted pyramid anchors the article in intent and guides humans and machines toward the same goal: the core answer.

Answering questions

Something else is happening: a lot of content is written specifically to answer questions based on user intent. Nowadays, Google answers many questions and answers immediately in the search results. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to structure your questions and answers so that they are easy to understand for both readers and search engines. This also supports the inverted pyramid theory. So if you want to answer a specific question, do it directly below that question. Don’t obfuscate it. Keep it in advance. You can answer supporting questions or provide a more detailed answer later in the text. If you have data to support your answer, please provide it.

Summaries vs. the Pyramid

Bringing the main point to the forefront will clearly highlight the core idea for both readers and search engines. The inverted pyramid first provides the headline idea and then adds context and support. An abstract summarizes the article into its key findings and is useful for meta descriptions, excerpts, or short summaries. Yoast AI Summarize can create accurate summaries from your content, providing you with ready-to-use openings and meta descriptions that align with the pyramid and improve SEO performance.

How to write with the inverted pyramid

The Inverted Pyramid forces you to think about your story: what is it and what parts are key to understanding it? Even if you don’t follow the structure to the letter, it’s always a good thing to focus on the essential parts of your story and cut out all the bells and whistles. In his groundbreaking work The elements of styleWilliam Strunk famously wrote:

“Energetic writing is concise. A sentence should have no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine should have no unnecessary parts. This does not require that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all details and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he ensure that every word is meaningful.”

In short, writing works like this:

• Plan it: What are the key points you want to address?
• Filter: Which points are supportive but not decisive?
• Connect: How does everything fit together?
• Structure: Use subheadings to build an easy-to-understand structure for your article
• Write: Start each paragraph with your main sentence and support/prove/refute/etc. in the following sentences
• Revise: Are the paragraphs in the correct order? Maybe you should move some around to improve readability or comprehension?
• Edit: Ie, killing your favorites. Do you edit your work yourself or can someone do it for you?
• Publish: Add the article to WordPress and click the Publish button.

Need more writing tips? Here are 10 tips for writing a great and SEO-friendly blog post.

Try the inverted pyramid

As I said, not every type of content will benefit from the inverted pyramid. But the inverted pyramid has certainly left its mark over the last century or more. Even today, when we primarily write content for the web, this way of thinking about a story or article leads us to focus on the most important parts and how we report on those parts. It forces you to separate fact from fiction and platitudes from real content gold nuggets. Give it a try and your next article might turn out to be the best one yet.

Read more: SEO copywriting: the ultimate guide »