SEO content brief

Use this before writing anything meant to rank. A brief takes ten minutes and saves a rewrite.

Start with the intent, not the keyword

Read the top five results for the exact phrase and decide which of these the searcher wants. Everything else in the brief follows from this one call.

• Answer — they want a fact and they want to leave. Short page, answer above the fold.
• Compare — they are choosing between options. Table, criteria, a verdict.
• How-to — they want to do the thing. Steps, prerequisites, what goes wrong.
• Considering — they are deciding whether to care. Problem framing first, product last.

If the top five disagree with each other, the intent is split. Say so and pick one; a page that serves two intents serves neither.

What goes in the brief

Six things, no more:

1. The primary phrase, and the two or three variants worth using once each.
2. The intent, named, in the words above.
3. The questions the page must answer, in the order a reader would ask them. Pull these from the "people also ask" box and the competing pages' subheads.
4. The angle nobody else has taken — the thing we know because of what we do.
5. Target length, taken from the median of the top five, not from a habit.
6. The one action the page should cause, and where it sits on the page.

Writing to the brief

• The first hundred words answer the query. Background goes after, not before.
• One H2 per question from the brief, phrased the way a reader would ask it.
• A claim that needs evidence gets a source or gets cut.
• Internal links go where a reader would want the next thing, not in a block at the bottom.

What not to do

Never repeat the phrase to hit a density target — write the sentence you would write anyway. Never invent statistics, study results, or customer numbers to fill the "data" section; leave a marked gap and say what is missing. Never promise a ranking or a timeline.