The best content on client sites is written by the people who do the work. Our job is to make that possible, and the brief is the whole mechanism.
What a brief has to do
A good brief lets a busy technician, attorney or engineer sit down for ninety minutes and produce something genuinely useful without needing to understand search at all. If they have to think about keywords, the brief has failed.
The sections we include
- The reader. One paragraph describing who is searching and what has just gone wrong in their day.
- The question to answer. Stated as a single sentence, in the customer's own words.
- What the current top results miss. Specific gaps, named. This is where differentiation comes from and it is the section most briefs omit.
- Structure. Suggested headings in order, with a target word range per section.
- Required specifics. The numbers, part names, timelines or regulations that only an expert would know to include.
- Internal links. Three to five, with the exact anchor context.
- What not to write. The generic filler we do not want. Usually the introduction that explains what a heat pump is to somebody already searching for heat pump repair.
The three things most briefs leave out
A named sceptic. Who will disagree with this page, and what is their objection? Answering it in the copy is what makes a page useful rather than promotional.
A photograph requirement. One original image from a real job. It takes the expert thirty seconds and it does more for credibility than another four hundred words.
An expiry date. When should this be reviewed, and what would make it wrong? Content without a review date becomes a liability.
Editing
Everything an expert writes goes through our editorial director before publication. He cuts, restructures and fact-checks, but he does not sand off the voice. A page that sounds like a person who has done the job for twenty years will always outperform one that sounds like a marketing department.
Related reading
Not sure where your search traffic is leaking?
Send us your domain. We will return a 12-point technical and commercial audit within three business days — no fee, no obligation, and no automated PDF dump.