What is in a brief?

Every page the plan says to build or improve gets a brief. It sits inline on the page view under The brief, and downloads as Markdown from Download Brief.

The sections

• Title and meta description. Ready to use, within the usual length limits.
• Target keywords. The group's keywords the page should carry.
• Audience. Who is searching and what situation they are in.
• The angle. The one thing this page does that the current results do not. This is the brief's centre; everything else serves it.
• Outline. Headings at two levels, each with a note on what the section must contain and why.
• Questions to answer. Taken from what people ask around the topic and from what the ranking pages leave open.
• Must include. Facts and elements from the gap analysis that the page cannot skip.
• Beat each competitor. For each competing top result, one line on how to be better than it.
• Internal links. Pages on your site the new page should link to. For a planned site, the other planned pages.
• Word count. A range appropriate to the page type.
• Notes. Anything else the writer should know.

Grounding

Every element in the brief comes from the research: the gaps from the page reviews, the questions from the results, the links from the site's page inventory. A brief never asks for a fact the research did not find; where one is needed, it says so and the draft leaves a placeholder.

Handing it over

Download the Markdown, or share the plan link so the writer can read the brief with the evidence beside it. See How do I export a brief?.