Most content teams spend far too much time:
- Communicating back and forth with writers
- Editing final drafts that missed the mark
And still, their content never ranks and is not unique nor expertise filled.
In short: many teams are wasting time and energy to achieve poor results.
In this article, I provide an SEO brief template and guide to help you:
- Communicate clearly with writers (no nasty surprises)
- Achieve a high-quality article that connects with the reader
- Ensure content is SEO optimized even by non-SEO expert writers
- Ensure your articles have E-E-A-T
We also hear from 6 SEO experts who write for companies like Hubspot, Zapier, Moz, Wordpress, and many more on their best advice for content briefs.
In the final section, I do a video walkthrough for filling out an SEO content brief the way I do before handing it over to any writer who works for me.
Let's dig in.
SEO Content Brief Template Goals
I pieced this template together from multiple briefs I've used throughout the years.
I took the best bits from each to create what I think is the BEST SEO brief template available today.
The brief will help you achieve these 9 goals:
Content quality goals:
- Goal: The article has a clear goal. It would move any reader down the funnel.
- Goal: The writer is equipped with your unique differentiators around the product and company mission.
- Goal: Your content doesn't explain easy, boring stuff to an expert audience. It's on-point and relevant.
- Goal: There are clear next steps built into the article, a CTA, etc.
- Goal: The writer is equipped with expert resources from your team, so it fulfills E-E-A-T.
Time-saving goals:
- Goal: You avoid back and forth with the writer. They are empowered to write the best article they can without asking more questions.
- Goal: You get exactly what you expected. You’ve communicated from your head to paper, so they can go away and execute—and there are no nasty surprises once the first draft returns.
SEO goals:
- Goal: The article is SEO optimized and designed to outperform top-ranking search competitors. It clearly fulfills search intent.
- Goal: The article helps with overall site SEO. For example, it has internal links to key pages.
New here? Check out the How the F*ck SEO podcast to learn to scale your traffic.
The Template & How to Fill it Out Properly
In this video, I explain how to use the template and how to fill out the brief to make sure your content is SEO optimized.
First, grab the template here and change your content operation for the better:
