Content brief template: a 10-part SEO brief for writers

A content brief is the assignment for one specific piece of content. It puts every decision that has to be made before writing in one place: why the piece exists, who will read it, which keyword it targets, which URL it will live on, what it must include and how you’ll know it’s done. The writer doesn’t have to guess, and you don’t end up rewriting the draft three times because the first one “wasn’t quite it”.

The brief comes from the client or the SEO lead, not from the writer. Whoever knows the business, the customers and the Search Console data decides on the keyword and the URL. The writer brings the craft: language, structure, examples. A good brief leaves room for that and doesn’t dictate every sentence.

This template covers a single piece: an article, a service page, a category description or an update to an older post. If you’re planning a whole new website, you need a different document: a website brief describes the whole site, the sitemap and redirects. And if you don’t know yet which pieces to write and in what order, start with a content calendar: every item in it then gets its own brief.

Write a brief for any piece that should bring in search traffic, and especially when:

• you outsource the writing to a freelancer or an agency and don’t talk every day;
• you’re writing a service page that should bring in inquiries, not just visits;
• you’re updating an older piece that has dropped in the results and need to pin down what it’s missing;
• several people write for you and you want them to work to the same standard.

This SEO brief template moves from the big decisions to the details. The first five parts say what you’re writing and why. The next four say how to write it. The last one is for reviewing the finished draft.

Fill in parts 1–5 before you talk to the writer. You can draft part 6 yourself or ask the writer for an outline and approve it before they start. Parts 7–9 you complete together, and part 10 is what you work through when the draft comes in.

1. Pick the keyword and the URL. One group of keywords with the same intent means one URL. Before you commission a piece, check Search Console (Performance report, filter by query, Pages tab) to see whether another page of yours already shows up for that keyword. If one does, it’s usually better to expand it than to write a second page.
2. Check the search results. Search the keyword on Google and open the top five. Note the type of pages (guide, list, service page, store), the topics they all cover and what’s missing. Check whether an AI Overview appears above the results and which pages it cites.
3. Write down the goal and the audience. One sentence: who reads it and what they should do next. Add the questions customers ask on the phone and by email.
4. Add what the piece will contribute. Data, an example, photos, a price or an expert’s view. Say who will provide the materials and by when.
5. Build the outline. H1, a direct-answer opening, H2 and H3 headings with the question each section answers, and questions for the FAQ.
6. List the links and sources. Which pages the piece links to and with what anchor text, which pages should link to it, and where the facts come from.
7. Set the tone, rules and deadlines. Voice, banned words, rules for using AI, the draft deadline and the number of revisions.
8. Review the draft with the checklist. Work through part 10 check by check. Write comments next to the check number so the writer knows what they refer to.

Your first brief takes the longest. For the next ones you copy part 8 (tone and rules) and the standing links as they are, so most of the work goes into the keyword, the SERP analysis, the materials and the outline.

SEO content answers a specific Google search better than the pages already in the results. The keyword tells the writer what to write about. The intent tells them in what form: does the searcher want to learn something, compare options or buy right now? The fastest way to check is the results page itself. If the top five are all guides, a service page with a price list has little chance there, and vice versa.

We put four rules in every brief because they come straight from Google’s documentation:

• There’s no ideal length. Google says the length of the content alone doesn’t matter for ranking and that there’s no target word count. So the brief gives a range based on the top 5 and a list of topics to cover, not a number to pad out. Our free SEO audit flags pages with fewer than 250 words in the HTML, because that’s usually too little to answer the question and describe the offer.
• There’s no keyword density. Put the primary keyword in the title, the H1 and the opening paragraph, then write naturally, synonyms included. Google’s spam policies list repeating the same words so often that it sounds unnatural as keyword stuffing.
• Headings organize the piece. Google doesn’t name an ideal number of headings, and the order of H2s and H3s doesn’t matter to Search, though it helps screen readers. In the brief, every heading should answer a reader’s question.
• Titles and descriptions are written for people. A title should be unique and describe the page. Google sets no character limit but truncates titles to fit the screen, so the keyword should come first. A meta description is a suggestion: Google builds snippets mainly from the page content. Our audit flags titles over 60 characters and descriptions over 160.

To find the topics your competitors cover and you don’t, read our guide to content gap analysis.

The weakest SEO content is a summary of the current top 10. It’s accurate, but it gives Google no reason to rank it above the pages it was built from. In its guidance on helpful content, Google asks whether the content provides original information, reporting, research or analysis, and whether it adds substantial value compared with other pages in the results. Its documentation on AI features in Search recommends focusing on unique, expert-led content that goes beyond common knowledge.

That’s why part 5 of the template is mandatory. Write down at least one thing the competition doesn’t have, and where the writer will get it:

• Your own data: the number of projects, turnaround times, the most common customer questions from last quarter. Only real figures that can be checked.
• A real example: a specific job, the problem and the solution, with the client’s consent or without details that identify them.
• Prices or price ranges: people look for them in commercial content, and many pages leave them out.
• Photos and diagrams: your own, from real work, instead of stock images.
• An expert’s view: a few sentences from someone who does this every day, credited by name.
• A table, checklist or calculator: something the reader can use, not just read.

The writer can’t make these up, and shouldn’t. If the materials aren’t there, it’s better to move the deadline and talk to an expert in the business than to publish another piece that says what everyone else says. On YMYL topics (health, finance, legal), add an expert reviewer in part 9: Google says its systems give even more weight to content that shows strong experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust on those topics.

Most content brief examples use a made-up company. We’re showing a real one instead: the brief we wrote this page from. Search volumes are 12-month monthly averages from Google Ads Keyword Planner (via DataForSEO, United States, pulled 11 November 2026). We checked the search results on the same day.

Look at part 3. In English the template is the product: seven of eight results were templates, so a long essay without a usable document would miss the intent. In Polish the same brief led to a page that also answers how to write SEO content, because that’s where the Polish search demand is. Same template, different intent, different emphasis.

• No intent. A keyword like “heat pump” on its own doesn’t say whether you need a guide, a comparison or a service page. The writer will pick a format by feel, and Google’s results may call for a different one.
• A keyword list instead of a topic. Twenty keywords to “work in” produce copy written for words, not people. List the primary keyword, a few variants with the same intent and real customer questions.
• Two pieces for the same keyword. The new article competes with the old one and neither wins. Part 3 has an “out of scope” field: list the keywords that belong to other URLs.
• Word count as the goal. “At least 3,000 words” leads to padding. Google has no preferred word count, so give a range from the top-5 analysis and the scope of topics.
• No materials from the business. Without data, examples and photos, all the writer can do is rewrite competitors.
• No internal links. A piece with no links from other pages is harder for crawlers and readers to find. Google recommends that every page you care about has a link from at least one other page on your site.
• Reviewing by gut feel. Without a checklist, feedback is about taste, not about what the brief agreed. Part 10 turns the review into a set of specific checks.

Part 8 of the template records whether the writer may use AI and for what. Google doesn’t ban AI-assisted content. It says generative AI can be useful for research and for adding structure to original content, but every fact needs a manual check, including the title, meta description and image alt text. Using AI to generate many pages without adding value for users is listed in Google’s spam policies as scaled content abuse.

You don’t need to write “for AI” either. According to Google’s documentation, AI Overviews and AI Mode don’t require any special way of writing or splitting text into small chunks: normal SEO best practices apply. Our working assumption is that what helps readers, such as a direct answer under a question heading, data with a source and clear comparisons, also helps AI tools that search the web for an answer to cite. To see how we work on visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, read about our AI search optimization.

Reviewing the draft is part 10 of the template: 13 checks before and after publication. Three matter most: does the piece match the intent and cover the must-cover topics from the SERP analysis, does it include what was meant to set it apart, and do the facts match the sources? The title, headings, links and images take a few minutes to check.

After publication, open Search Console. In the Performance report, the Pages tab shows the new URL’s clicks, impressions and average position, and the Queries tab shows the searches it appears for. Compare them with part 3 of the brief after 30 and 90 days.

Check the technical basics that even the best content depends on with our SEO checklist. If you’d rather hand content planning and writing to specialists, see how our SEO services work. Content is included in the packages: SEO Standard (from €450 net a month) includes 2 pieces a month, and SEO Premium (€590 net) includes 4.