What is a content brief, and what should it contain?
A document telling a writer what a piece needs to accomplish and why, before they start — and its purpose is to prevent the far more expensive process of discovering the mismatch after the draft exists.
Why briefs fail when they are just a keyword. Handing a writer a keyword and a word count produces content optimised for a search term rather than for a reader with a purpose. The result requires rewriting, and the cost of that rewriting exceeds the cost of having briefed properly.
What a good brief contains:
The reader. Who this is for, what they already know, and what they are trying to do. A piece for a complete beginner and one for a practitioner are different pieces even on the same subject.
The search intent. What someone typing this query actually wants — to understand, to compare, to buy, to fix something. Getting this wrong is the most common failure, and it is checkable: look at what currently ranks, because those results reflect what the search engine has concluded the intent is.
The goal. What the piece should achieve — traffic, a signup, supporting another page, establishing credibility.
The questions it must answer. More useful than a list of keywords, because it specifies substance rather than vocabulary. Drawn from related searches, forum questions and customer conversations.
A suggested structure — the main sections, so the argument develops rather than circling.
Target keyword and genuinely related terms, with the caveat that these are guidance, not a checklist to satisfy.
Competing pages, with a note on what they cover and what this piece must do that they do not. A piece that says the same things as the existing top results has no reason to rank above them.
Internal links to include, which is routinely omitted and then never added.
Tone, format and length guidance, with length as a range rather than a target — writing to a word count produces padding.
Sources and claims requiring evidence, and anything legally sensitive.
What to leave out: prescriptive phrasing, and keyword density targets, which are obsolete and produce unreadable text.