How To Write an Effective SEO Content Brief
An effective SEO content brief is crucial in developing compelling online content that engages your target audience and achieves your business goals. It pays dividends through more effective collaboration, fewer rewrites, and higher-performing results. Read on to learn everything you need to know about how to write a content brief.
What Is an SEO Content Brief?
An SEO content brief is a roadmap outlining content aimed explicitly at ranking well in search engine results. It is a helpful communication tool between your content strategist and the content writer.
An effective content brief gives writers the information they need to produce on-target content that is:
- Relevant to the target audience
- Optimized for search engines
- On-brand, using your brand identity and voice
- Effective in achieving its marketing and business goals
SEO content briefs drive quality and performance by replacing assumptions and ambiguity with facts and direction.
What Is a Content Brief’s Purpose?
An SEO content brief aims to create high-performing content that produces business results. A solid brief serves the following three critical strategic purposes.
1. Clarifies Expectations and Provides Direction
It clarifies expectations and guides the content creation process. A thoughtful brief outlines specific goals, defines the target audience, and includes details about the desired tone and technical requirements. This clear direction aligns each team member, empowering writers to produce a polished, tailored piece that meets your marketing needs.
2. Enhances Search Performance
A well-constructed SEO content brief enhances search performance. It maximizes organic traffic by incorporating keyword research, competitor analysis, and best practices. Writers are then equipped to incorporate these optimization elements to drive visibility, elevate your overall domain authority, and expand brand reach.
3. Enhances Team Consistency and Efficiency
Well-written briefs establish consistency and improve workflow efficiency. They conserve resources and maintain productivity by eliminating confusion and avoiding unnecessary rounds of content revisions.
When Should You Use an SEO Content Brief?
Your overall content marketing strategy may encompass diverse types of assets, and you may use general content briefs for all of them. SEO content briefs are most applicable to content designed to boost inbound organic traffic. This is usually content that is freely available to be indexed by search engines, not gated content that requires sign-up for access.
Content types suited to SEO content briefs include:
- Blog posts
- Product pages
- Landing pages
- Articles
- Guides
- White papers
- eBooks
An SEO content brief can be particularly valuable when focused on achieving specific content marketing goals like fueling lead generation, sales growth, and ROI through organic search.
What Should a Content Brief Include?
Compared to a general content brief, an SEO content brief adds specific elements to help the content resonate with the audience and rank well in search engines. Here’s what a well-crafted SEO content brief should typically include.
General Content Brief Elements
A general content brief clearly defines the following:
- Content goals and objectives. Is the primary purpose to inform, educate, or persuade? Are you seeking to expand brand awareness or generate leads?
- Target audience. Sharing your ideal reader’s demographics, interests, and pain points with the writer supports tailored, targeted content
- Content type, such as blog post, PR article, white paper, eBook, or video script
- Content format. For example, a guide, how-to article, or list
- Word count range
- Stylistic considerations like point of view (first, second, or third person). Many brands link to their style guide rather than outline everything in each content brief
Each of these elements enables the development of on-brand, on-target content positioned for organic success by providing clarity, direction, and focus.
SEO-Specific Elements
In addition to the items listed above, an SEO content brief includes specific elements to boost online visibility and generate inbound traffic. These include the following.
Target Keywords
Identify the primary and secondary keyword phrases you want to use. A well-crafted keyword strategy is essential if your goal is to be indexed by search engines and found by the right buyers at the right time. Include primary and secondary keywords. You may also include variations and long-tail keyword opportunities.
Search Intent
Real and lasting SEO benefits come from creating content that satisfies readers’ curiosity or answers their precise questions. Applying buyer search intent to your keyword strategy requires a nuanced understanding of the motivation behind your target searches.
For example, you may assume someone searching for “best supplements for energy” is ready to compare products. However, a quick scan of the first page of Google results reveals a mix of products and general energy supplement information. This tells you that many people using the search term want educational content on how different supplements work, their safety, side effects, and effectiveness.
Understanding why users search for your target keywords allows writers to match reader intent, boosting rankings and engagement.
Competitor Analysis
Provide an overview of what high-ranking competitors are doing well or overlooking with similar content types or links to blogs you would like to improve upon with your effort. You want your content to be more thorough and complete than the competition, so identifying who’s ranking for your target keywords helps differentiate your content for better visibility and performance.
Meta Description
Your writer can create a meta description that invites readers to click on your article and incorporates your primary keyword phrase. Your brief should explain if these are required and, if so, offer guidelines.
Internal Linking
Your website’s internal linking structure helps search engines understand which pages are most important and keeps readers on your website longer. You can use your SEO content brief to suggest relevant articles, product pages, or other owned assets that will improve user experience and site navigation.
High-Authority External Links
Incorporating links to authoritative, high-domain authority sources where appropriate enriches content, establishes additional keyword relevancy and gives credibility signals. You can provide specific articles, or give the writer guidelines for which external sites do and do not want to link to in your content.
Headings Framework or SEO Outline
What is an SEO outline? An optional part of your SEO content brief is a content outline. It is a list of headings and specific subtopics you want to include based on your competitor and SEO research.
Target CTA
Not all SEO content needs to include a call-to-action. However, if there is a page, free download, service, or offer you want to link to, include it in your brief.
SEO Content Brief Template
Here is a basic SEO content brief template to customize for your business needs. Filling out this template will guide your writer in creating high-quality content that meets your goals.
Project Basics
- Brief company description
- Project title
- Content type
- Due date
Content Goals & Guidelines
- The primary objective of the content (e.g., increase brand awareness, generate leads)
- Any secondary goals, if applicable
- Target audience and/or persona
- Style guidelines or preferred style book
- Point of view
- Desired tone
SEO Guidance
- Primary keyword
- Secondary keywords
- Target word count for the content
- Search intent (informational, transactional, or navigational)
- Basic SEO content outline (if applicable)
- Meta description guidelines (if applicable)
Optional Information
- A competitor analysis, either in your own words or as links to the articles you want to improve upon
- Internal linking, specific relevant blogs and pages you want the writer to link to, or a minimum number of internal links
- Guidelines for external links. For example, types of websites to prioritize or avoid
- CTA. What do you want the reader to do after reading the content?
- Reference materials, including links to any relevant research papers
How Do You Write SEO Content?
Optimized SEO content involves research, strategic creation, technical optimization, and performance tracking. Writers must balance the technical aspects of SEO content, such as keyword placement, with skilled writing. Ultimately, successful content is well-written, delivers value to the reader, and is easy to scan.
SEO content writers focus on crafting genuinely valuable, engaging copy while incorporating optimization elements. The same topic can be written in several ways, making an SEO content brief valuable. Writers can use it to understand who they are writing for, the stage in the buyer’s journey, and how to fill information gaps missed by your competitors.
Here are a few tips for writing SEO-optimized content:
- Ensure your content addresses the needs of your audience in an informative and engaging way.
- Incorporate keywords naturally, using your primary keyword in the title, headings, and throughout the content where it fits.
- Optimize your meta description by including the primary keyword.
- Organize your content with header tags to make it easier for readers and search engines to understand its structure.
- Create comprehensive content by covering the topic, related subtopics, and frequently asked questions.
- Link to relevant pages on your site to keep users engaged.
- Include links to authoritative external sources (not competitors) to provide additional value to your readers and boost your website’s credibility.
Let Our Wordsmiths Elevate Your SEO Game
If developing optimized, high-performing SEO content is a priority for your business, ContentWriters offers end-to-end SEO writing services spanning research, creation, and optimization based on proven best practices.
Our SEO experts can collaborate with you to build an effective SEO content brief, providing a strategic blueprint tailored to your goals, audience needs, and competitive landscape. We’ll identify the terms and topics with the highest ranking potential and outline how to maximize organic visibility.
From there, our experienced writers will produce custom SEO content that engages readers while seamlessly incorporating your keywords and executing your content goals. If you need a professional SEO content partner to fuel your inbound marketing results, connect with our team to explore how ContentWriters can take your content strategy to the next level.
Joan Weisman’s strong research skills, SEO knowledge, adaptability of style and voice, and passion for staying current make her an asset for freelance web content, SEO, and copywriting.
