What goes in an SEO content brief
A brief is the document that decides what a page is for before anybody writes it. It is worth an hour because it is the last cheap moment to disagree.
Below is what an SEO content brief is, the fields worth filling in, a template you can copy, and the mistakes that make one useless. The template is the shape ShownTrue generates, so you can read what it produces without opening an account.
What an SEO content brief is
It is a short document that settles what the page is for before writing starts: which search it answers, who is reading, what it will say, and why it deserves to exist when other pages already cover the subject.
That is a different job from an outline. An outline says what order the sections come in. A brief says what the page is for, which is the question that decides whether the outline is right at all.
The test of a brief is whether somebody who has never seen the subject could write a defensible first draft from it, and whether you could argue with it before they start.
What to include
Each field below earns its place by changing what gets written. Anything that would not change the draft is decoration, and a brief nobody reads is worse than none, because it looks like the thinking was done.
- Target query
- The one search this page is for. A brief covering several is two briefs sharing a document, and the writer ends up serving neither.
- Secondary queries
- Phrasings of the same need that a good page answers on the way past. They are not a quota to hit, and a page reads worse when they are.
- Intent
- What the searcher wants: to learn something, to compare options, to buy, or to reach a particular place. Get this wrong and every other field is answering a question nobody asked.
- Audience
- Who is reading, in their own words rather than a persona label. An agency lead auditing a client site and a shop owner fixing their own both search the same phrase and need different pages.
- Angle
- The reason this page deserves to exist when several already do. If the honest answer is that it does not, the brief has just saved you writing it.
- Outline
- The headings, in order, each one a question the section answers. An outline of noun phrases is a table of contents; an outline of questions is a plan.
- Subjects to cover
- The things the page has to address to be complete. Subjects, not keywords to place, which is the difference between a page that reads as informed and one that reads as optimised.
- Internal links
- Pages on your own site this one should point at, chosen from pages that exist. An invented internal link is the easiest error to publish and the hardest to notice, because it looks exactly like a real one until somebody clicks it.
- Title and description guidance
- What the entry in the results should say, written now while the reasoning is fresh, rather than by whoever publishes it at the end of an afternoon.
- Length
- A target, and a soft one. Length is an output of how much the subject needs, not an input you meet by padding.
A template you can copy
Paste this into whatever you already use. It is deliberately plain text, because a brief that needs a particular tool is a brief somebody skips when they are busy.
TARGET QUERY the one search this page is for SECONDARY QUERIES other phrasings of the same need INTENT learn / compare / buy / reach a place AUDIENCE who is reading, and what they already know ANGLE why this page deserves to exist when others cover the subject OUTLINE H2 the question this section answers H2 the question this section answers H3 a sub-question, only where the answer is long enough to need one SUBJECTS TO COVER things the page must address to be complete INTERNAL LINKS /a-page-that-exists why this page should point at it /another-page-that-exists why this page should point at it TITLE AND DESCRIPTION what the entry in the results should say LENGTH a target, adjusted to what the subject needs WHERE THE FIGURES CAME FROM name the source of every number above
The last line is the one people leave off. A brief carrying figures with no source teaches the writer that numbers do not need one.
How to write one, in order
- 1Read what already ranks for the search, and write down what each page is actually for. Most of them are for something slightly different, and the gaps are where the angle comes from.
- 2Write the intent and the audience first, in sentences. If you cannot write them, you do not yet know what the page is for, and no amount of outlining will supply it.
- 3Draft the outline as questions rather than headings. Convert them to headings last, once you can see whether each one has an answer.
- 4Choose internal links by opening the pages. A link chosen from memory is the one that turns out not to exist.
- 5Name the source of every figure you have included, next to the figure. Anything you cannot source, remove.
What makes a brief useless
Writing the brief after the page
A brief produced to justify a draft is a summary. Its value is entirely in being the thing you disagree with before the writing starts, when disagreeing is cheap.
A keyword list instead of an intent
Fifteen phrases and no sentence about what the reader wants gives the writer a word bank and no direction. The page comes back containing every phrase and answering nothing.
Numbers with no source
A brief that says a term gets some monthly figure, with nothing saying where that came from, hands the writer a fact they cannot check and will repeat. Every figure in a brief should name what produced it.
Internal links nobody verified
Suggested links to pages that do not exist are common when a brief is generated rather than written. They read as plausible, they publish cleanly, and they are found by readers rather than by you.
How this product writes them
ShownTrue generates a brief in the shape above from your own crawl and the figures Google already publishes to you about your site. Every suggestion names the number it came from, and estimated search volume bought from a third-party index is not one of the things it may cite.
A brief is approved by a named person before anything is written against it, and the record of who approved it cannot be edited afterwards. The database refuses the write, so it is not a promise this page is making.
It is honest to say what this has not done. No customer has run it, so there is no case study on this page and no figures about anybody’s results. The capability pages say exactly what exists today and what does not.