What Is a Brief?

An SEO Content Brief is the guide that the SEO team provides the writers with so that we can make content that is not only interesting for readers but interesting for Google too!

Parts of the Brief Broken Down

The brief, as pictured below, provides:

Piece Topic
Main Keywords
Piece Type
Whether the piece is New or a Rewrite
The piece URL (this is primarily for the SEO team unless the piece is a rewrite)
The POP Secret Key to use with the Page Optimizer Pro Google Add on
Recommended piece length (try to get within 100-200 words of this length)
The general/generic audience (review the client guide saved in the client's drive folder for more specifics)
The phone number to include in the piece's CTA

The brief also tells you the recommended headings to use in the piece. The longer the piece the more headings there will be. You can add additional headings or make the existing ones more interesting, but do not delete the ones there. If in doubt on how many headings is appropriate follow the heading every 150-300 words rule.

Most briefs also have a space for you to create an outline for the piece. This is especially helpful if you are having trouble deciding in which direction to go with the piece. You can create your outline and share with your team or manager before you start writing for fresh eyes. For SEO-focused pieces, the SEO team will provide you the outline, but you can add to it. For Outreach pieces (discussed later), you'll create the outline.

This is not all the brief includes however. Below, you will see some more information shared in the brief like:

FAQs to be answered at the end of the Piece in their own sub headed section. We write an FAQ section for almost every article. Answers to FAQs should be 3-4 sentences long on average. There is no formatting, links or bolding in FAQs. They are text only.
The top sites to beat (you can use these as the baseline for what may be relevant to include in your own piece)
Internal Links to include. An internal link is a hyperlink to other content on the same website. They help Google know what pages on the site are related and they helps the reader learn more about the topic.

The internal linking is incredibly important for SEO and drives a lot of traffic and what we call "link juice". When a link is recommended in this section of the brief, do your best to include it in a natural space in the piece so that way the SEO team does not have to try to shoe-horn it in at the very end.

Parts of the Brief, Continued

Meta Description

This is a one or two sentence synopsis of the article. It should include the main keyword.

GMB Post

This is a one or two paragraph summary of the article to be used for certain promotions. Again this should include the main keyword and some of the main points of the article.

Content SEO Checklist

Check this off every time. Ensure each item is completed.

Introduction Checklist

This is to ensure you have a solid blog intro that will keep people reading and satisfy our best practices. Check these for every article.

Headings and Body Copy

Check this off for every article. These checks help you write effective copy that fits our goal and objectives for both SEO and marketing.

CTAs (Call to Action)

This is the final area of a blog post, it is the only place we should pitch the client's services or try and make any type of ask. Do this checklist every time and you will always have a great CTA area.

PROCEDURES WHEN SEO CHECKING ARTICLES, PRESS RELEASES OR OUTREACH CONTENT

This section is for the web dev and SEO team. As a content writer you can ignore it.

SEO Based Content Briefs