Anyone in charge of a team of writers, whether a content marketer, freelancer, or team leader, is familiar with the problem of inconsistent and poorly written initial drafts.
They are, without a doubt, well-written in terms of grammar and language. Editing can deplete your time and energy when drafts fail to match client needs, lack the necessary keywords, or connect to competitors.
If you're spending hours on revisions, it's time to provide your authors with a clear content brief explaining how to develop content. The content brief plays a major role in shaping your content for the search engines.
This blog post will tell you what an SEO content brief is and how to create an SEO-friendly content brief for any of the topics.
What is SEO Content Brief?
An SEO content brief is a list that outlines the key topics, subtopics, and keywords your team will be targeting when writing original content.
It's also where you'll specify how long each article should be (in words or numbers) and any unique selling points your team might want to highlight.
You can create an SEO-focused content brief to generate content targeted at ranking for a keyword on Google.
The main elements of a content brief are:
- Primary keyword
- Secondary keyword
- Word count
- Client information and guidelines
- Subtopics to cover
- Tone
- Target audience
- Questions & Answers
Content briefs give authors the guidance they need to execute their best job. They have the potential to improve your writing operations process, particularly when it comes to developing content that will rank and convert.
Benefits of SEO Content Brief
Here are some of the biggest benefits of creating a content brief.
1) It saves time and money
When writers write bad final drafts, editors have to spend more time fixing them. There are a lot of big changes that the writer needs to make.
A long editing process takes a lot of time and money, so it is not worth it.
Content creation may cost a lot of money, and a good content brief ensures that writers know what they're writing and how they are doing it.
A content brief helps writers understand what they need to do before writing their first draught. It tells them what to work on and helps them through the process of making content. This helps them make better content the first time around.
2) It ensures timely delivery
Bad content can also delay delivery.
Bad writing delays the delivery process, causing writers to overthink things and get bogged down in detail. Good writing prompts clarity and simplicity, enabling writers to move swiftly.
A missed deadline might lead to a cascade of late deliveries and customer complaints.
Without a brief, a content team will waste time obtaining important information or going through several modifications, resulting in missed deadlines.
A well-informed team understands what is expected of them and how to meet those expectations on time.
3) Improves consistency in content creation
The consistency of a brand's content is an important factor in the success of its marketing strategy.
Inconsistent content can confuse and frustrate customers, leading them to take their business elsewhere.
It's vital to keep everyone on the same page when marketing teams have writers and editors worldwide. If everyone follows the same set of instructions, they'll be able to consistently produce high-quality content that satisfies your and your clients' needs.
Using a content brief allows writers to produce higher-quality content, maintain brand consistency, and a brand voice.
4) To boost ranking on search engines
You may use a content brief to produce content that appeals to both your audience and Google.
If you're creating content by collaborating with a large number of writers, you can't expect them to research or comprehend sophisticated SEO needs, especially if they are inexperienced.
In order to outrank your competitors, you need to produce engaging and informative content that's also search engine optimized. A good content brief can help ensure that your writing is on track for SEO objectives.
What Should a Content Brief Include?
As previously mentioned, a content brief is made up of various factors by doing a competitive analysis.
The following are the essentials of a content brief:
Primary and secondary keyword
The primary purpose of SEO content is to rank high in search engines and generate organic traffic.
Select a few supplementary long-tail keywords and related keywords with a primary keyword.
These keywords are relevant and linked to your target keyword. It assists you in ranking for a range of search phrases.
You can pick up the keyword research tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to research the keyword around your topic.
Content format
When writing content for your audience, it is important to choose a specific type of content. There are various content types for your content marketing, such as:
- Listicles (list-type pages)
- Pillar pages
- How-to articles
- Guides
- Infographics
- Tool or resource round ups
- Case studies
- Ebooks
- Whitepaper
The best way to find the content format for the keyword is by searching the topic on Google and seeing what piece of content the top pages have. Have they written a case study? Is it a video content ranking on the SERPs? Or are there more listicles?
Target audience
The target audience you are trying to reach will provide important clues about what topics and formats work well for them.
If you target a customer segment, such as internet marketers or small business owners who sell products online, you will have to create content close to the searcher queries.
By researching the search engine, you will find what your targeted audience is.
The user's or reader's search intent should indicate the type of engagement they're seeking. It will be informative, navigational, transactional, or commercial.
It is a wonderful area to add whatever you know about the piece's target audience, demographics, or persona and where they're most likely in the funnel (top, middle, bottom).
Suggested word count range
Writers may often ask this question- How long a blog post should be?
As per Hubspot, pillar content is somewhere around 4,000 words. But, this is not always the golden rule.
Using our tool, you can find the suggested word count range for the main keyword. Head to Scalenut, enter the main keyword, and hit 'Create Report.'
The report gives the average word count for the results between 1 to 10, 11 to 20, and 21 to 30 positions.
You will get a suggested word count for your post by switching to the editor tab.
Create a content outline
Your outline should be a comprehensive guide that outlines the main points of your post. Create a strong H1 that includes the main keywords and the other relevant words around it.
A content outline is a mix of H2, H3, and subsequent heading tags depending on your content structure. Using the competitor's outline, you can create your content outline and ease the task of researching the subtopics while writing.
For the keyword 'How To Start Amazon FBA Business,' you will have all the suggestions for the top-ranking pages.
Head to the Report tab and scroll to the Outline section. This section gives you a complete view of H2s and H3s in the content.
On the right side of the column, click on the subheading that you want to add to your content brief. You can change the heading tags by clicking on the drop-down button against the subheadings.
A content outline also includes the common questions from Google People Also Ask, Reddit and Quora. You are creating content relevant to the main topic by answering these questions.
In the Scalenut report, scroll to the top under the Common Question section. From the list of these questions, click on '+' to add the questions to your content brief template.
Here is the five-step checklist for creating a content outline:
- Go to Google search and type in your primary term. Take a look at the search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Determine what the query's search intent is.
- Examine the top ten pages in detail.
- Examine your competitors' content for common headers, subtopics, and queries. This will help you figure out how to organize your outline.
- Make use of the 'People Also Ask' section if there are any queries that are relevant to the keyword.
Include competitor URLs and examples
In a content brief, competitor examples refer to articles that already rank for your target keyword.
From the Scalenut report, look at the top competing pages with a high content grade of A or B.
The competitors with a grade A have the most relevant content near the main keyword and provide a topic that may rank for various LSI keywords.
The more the use of NLP terms in the content, the better the content grade and the closer your content will be to the search queries.
Using this section, you can also determine the number of images to be used in the content and the best readability for your audience.
Scalenut also suggests the terms you can use within your headings or subheadings for higher relevance.
Internal and external links
Organizing your content into an outline will help ensure that every piece of information is seamlessly linked together.
By including links to other pages on your website, you can show your authority and prove that you are covering the topical clusters close to the main keyword.
You can use Google search console or SEO tools like Ahrefs to find how your competitors are doing the internal links.
Besides this, external links are crucial to ensure that your content is trusted. By providing the external links to the trusted source, you signal to search engines that the data is backed up with relevant stats and data.
Scalenut curates the data from the top-ranking pages on the SERPs and what sites they link to. By linking to the relevant sites, the search engines will even get an indication of what the topic is about.
In the report section, find the Citations section to find the sites you can link with.
To see the anchor text for the outbound links, open the competitor pages to see how they've linked.
Revising the SEO guidelines for your content
Your SEO content brief can be a one-stop solution for ranking on the SERPs. You can follow this SEO checklist to ensure all the guidelines are followed:
- The page title should be 55-60 characters.
- The meta description should be 160-180 characters.
- Format the title in H1 and other subtopics in H2, H3, H4, etc.
- Use the image alt text, including the main keyword and relevant keywords.
- Create a strong internal link strategy.
- Stay relevant to the search query.
FAQs
Q. Who should create the content brief?
Ans: A content brief is crucial for the content creation process. It should be created by content writers, freelance writers, content strategists, social media business owners, and professionals alike.
Q. What are the best tools for creating a content brief?
Ans: If you are looking for an easy-to-use and accurate tool for creating a content brief, Scalenut is one of the best choices. You can also use other tools like Frase, MarketMuse, and SEMRush.
Q. How do you write good articles for SEO content brief that will rank well in search engines?
Ans: Using the H1 and the other relevant keywords in H2, H3, and other subheadings, you can create an SEO-optimized content brief.
Q. Is Scalenut content brief creator free?
Ans: Scalenut is free to start for 14-days. You can create a maximum of 2 SEO content briefs using this tool.
Conclusion
If you're looking to produce high-quality, engaging content that will help you reach your business goals, using content briefs is a great way to get started. By understanding the importance of briefs and how they work, you'll be better prepared to produce high-quality, engaging content that will help you reach your target audience.
By using Scalenut SEO Assistant for free, you can instantly create a content brief and share it with your writers right away.
Additionally, you can import the content brief to the rich text editor with just a click. On the text editor, click on the content brief import to copy the content brief to the blank canvas.
Want to know how it works? Try out Scalenut for free to see if it is good enough.
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