What’s a content brief?
Brief content is a set of instructions to guide the author about how to compose a piece of content. Content pieces can be blog posts, landing pages, white paper, or a number of other initiatives that require content.
Without short content, you risk getting back content that doesn’t meet your expectations. This will not only frustrate your author, but it will also need more revisions, take more time, and your money.
Usually, content briefs are written by someone in the adjacent field – such as demand generation, product marketing, or SEO – when they need something specific.
However, the content team usually does not only work from pants. They will likely have their own calendar and initiative that they drive (content is one of the strange roles that need to support almost every other department while also creating and carrying out their own work).
Brief content focused on SEO is one of many types of content pants.
This is unique because the goal is to instruct the author about creating content to target certain search requests for the purpose of generating traffic from the organic search channel.
What makes a content brief “SEO-focused”?
Now we understand the content pants that focus on SEO in theory, let’s get into the ins and outs. What information should we include in it?
1. Primary query target and intent
It’s not a brief content that focuses on SEO without the target query!
Using keyword research tools like Moz Keyword Explorer, you can get thousands of keyword ideas that can be relevant to your business.
For example, in my current work, I focus on making content for retail store owners and others in the brick and mortar industry.
After listening to some sales calls and support on the gong (many teams use this to record customer calls and prospects), I might know that “merchandising” is a big topic of focus.
So I typed “merchandising” into the Explorer keyword, add some more useful filters, and boom! Many keyword suggestions.
Choose keywords (Check existing content to ensure your team has not written on the topic) and use it as a “North Star” request for your content short.
I think this is also very helpful to include some intention information here. In other words, what makes the seekers type this query to Google want?
We recommend that you look for requests on Google themselves to see how Google interprets intentions.
For example, if my keyword is “the type of visual merchandising,” I can see from the SERP that Google assumes information intention, based on the fact that URL rankings are mostly an informative article.
2. Format
Funny well from intention is the format. In other words, how should we compile content to provide the best opportunity to rank for our target query?
To use the same keyword example, if I google “type of visual merchandising,” the top ranking article lists.
You might note that your query target returns results with many images (general with queries including “inspiration” or “example”).
It’s better to help the author understand what content format might function the best.
3. Topics to cover and related questions to answer
Choosing a query target help the author understand the “big idea” of the pieces, but stop there means you risk writing something that is not comprehensively answering the purpose of the query.
That’s why I like to include “topics to cover / related questions to answer” in my briefs. This is where I registered all the subtopics that I found that someone who was looking for a query might want to know.
To find this, I like using a method like:
- Using keyword research tools to show questions related to your main keywords which are questions.
- See people also ask the box, if any, on your SERP triggering your target query
- Find sites that rank in the top spot for your target query, run it through keyword research tools, and see what keywords they also rank
- And while this is not specifically related, sometimes I like to use a tool called FOX FAQ to explore the forum for the Utas which mentions my target query
You can also make your own outline using your research with all H2S / H3 that has been written. Even though this can work well with freelance writers, I have found several writers (especially in-house content marketers) feel this is too prescriptive.
Every author and a different content team, so what I can say just use your best judgment.
4. Funnel stage
This is quite similar to intention, but I think this is very helpful to be included as a separate line item.
To fill in the short part of the content, ask yourself: “Is someone who is looking for this term just looking for information? Inspiration? Looking to evaluate their options? Or search to buy something?”
And this is the way you can label your answer:
- Top-of-funnel (know or “problem) is the appropriate label if the query intent is information/education / inspirational.
- Middle-of-the funnel (Mofu or “Sliding aware”) is the appropriate label if the query intention must compare, evaluate the option, or vice versa indicating that the seeker already knows your solution.
- Bottom-of-funnel (bofu or “ready solution”) is the appropriate label if the query intent is to make a purchase or convert.
5. Audience segment
Who are you writing this?
It looks like the basic question to answer, but in my experience, it’s easy to forget!
When it comes to content pants that focus on SEO, it’s easy to assume the answer to this question is “for anyone looking for this keyword!” But what fails to be answered is who is looking for and how they enter your personal/ideal customer profile (ICP).
If you don’t know what persona is, ask your marketing team! They must have the target audience segment available to send you.
This will not only help your writers better understand what they have to write but also help align you with all marketing departments and help them understand SEO connections to their destination (this is also an important component of getting a purchase, which we will talk about a little later ).
Conclusion
In this blog you learn about the How to Write an SEO-Focused Content Brief Your Writers Will Love.
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