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How to Create an SEO Content Brief in 10 Steps

Learn how to create a detailed SEO content brief that increases organic traffic and makes sure your content resonates with your target audience

Trusted By Industry Leaders
Trusted By Industry Leaders

Introduction

Our text compare tool is a fantastic, lightweight tool that provides plagiarism checks between two documents. Whether you are a student, blogger or publisher, this tool offers a great solution to detect and compare similarities between any two pieces of text. In this article, I will discuss the different ways to use the tool, the primary features of the tool and who this tool is for. There is an FAQ at the bottom if you run into any issues when trying to use the tool.

What makes Originality.ai’s text comparison tool stand out?

Keyword density helper – This tool comes with a built-in keyword density helper in some ways similar to the likes of SurferSEO or MarketMuse the difference being, ours is free! This feature shows the user the frequency of single or two word keywords in a document, meaning you can easily compare an article you have written against a competitor to see the major differences in keyword densities. This is especially useful for SEO’s who are looking to optimize their blog content for search engines and improve the blog’s visibility.

Ways to compare

File compare – Text comparison between files is a breeze with our tool. Simply select the files you would like to compare, hit “Upload” and our tool will automatically insert the content into the text area, then simply hit “Compare” and let our tool show you where the differences in the text are. By uploading a file, you can still check the keyword density in your content.

URL compare

Comparing text between URLs is effortless with our tool. Simply paste the URL you would like to get the content from (in our example we use a fantastic blog post by Sherice Jacob found here) hit “Submit URL” and our tool will automatically retrieve the contents of the page and paste it into the text area, then simply click “Compare” and let our tool highlight the difference between the URLs. This feature is especially useful for checking keyword density between pages!

Simple text compare

You can also easily compare text by copying and pasting it into each field, as demonstrated below.

Features of Originality.ai’s Text Compare Tool

Ease of use

Our text compare tool is created with the user in mind, it is designed to be accessible to everyone. Our tool allows users to upload files or enter a URL to extract text, this along with the lightweight design ensures a seamless experience. The interface is simple and straightforward, making it easy for users to compare text and detect the diff.

Multiple text file format support

Our tool provides support for a variety of different text files and microsoft word formats including pdf file, .docx, .odt, .doc, and .txt, giving users the ability to compare text from different sources with ease. This makes it a great solution for students, bloggers, and publishers who are looking for file comparison in different formats.

Protects intellectual property

Our text comparison tool helps you protect your intellectual property and helps prevent plagiarism. This tool provides an accurate comparison of texts, making it easy to ensure that your work is original and not copied from other sources. Our tool is a valuable resource for anyone looking to maintain the originality of their content.

User Data Privacy

Our text compare tool is secure and protects user data privacy. No data is ever saved to the tool, the users’ text is only scanned and pasted into the tool’s text area. This makes certain that users can use our tool with confidence, knowing their data is safe and secure.

Compatibility

Our text comparison tool is designed to work seamlessly across all size devices, ensuring maximum compatibility no matter your screen size. Whether you are using a large desktop monitor, a small laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, this tool adjusts to your screen size. This means that users can compare texts and detect the diff anywhere without the need for specialized hardware or software. This level of accessibility makes it an ideal solution for students or bloggers who value the originality of their work and need to compare text online anywhere at any time.

If you’re looking to prioritize the long-term work of creating compelling, interesting, and engaging content for your website, you need to make sure all of your writing team is on the same page. 

An SEO content brief helps you not only rank for your best keywords over time, but makes sure that every piece of content that’s produced and published is designed to match up with the user’s search intent

In this detailed guide, we’ll walk through how to create an SEO content brief step-by-step, from understanding keyword research and search intent to gleaning competitive intelligence and improving your on-page optimization. 

By the end of this article, you’ll have a rinse-and-repeat framework you can give to your writing team to make sure your content is not only sound but practical and impactful. 

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

  1. Outline content goals
  2. Define your target audience and who you’re creating content for
  3. Start keyword research
  4. Establish user intent
  5. Create the content structure (brief)
  6. Review an on-page optimization checklist
  7. Create content guidelines
  8. Conduct a competitor analysis
  9. Assign writing tasks
  10. Prepare the final version of your SEO brief

Bonus tip! Continue reviewing and optimizing content to stay ahead of the competition.

Step 1: What Are Your Goals for Your Content?

Before you even begin to research a single keyword to include in your SEO content brief, take a step back and be clear about why you’re creating this content. 

  • Are you looking to generate more organic search engine traffic? 
  • Do you want to rank for a specific keyword? 
  • Are you looking to increase backlinks or engagement? 
  • What stage of the customer journey are you targeting? 

Example: If you run a site that’s all about buying smartphones and you’re writing to attract an audience that’s looking for the “best budget smartphone,” your goal would be to drive affiliate sales and capture those users who are looking for affordable smartphone options. Once you’ve got the overall goal for your content in mind, it’s time to move on to step two. 

Step 2: Who Are You Writing For?

In order to create an SEO content brief and prepare content for your target audience, you have to know who they are. 

This means going beyond demographics and taking a deeper look into the pain points or interests that drive them, as well as the search intent behind their inquiry. They could just be looking for general information, want to do a product comparison, or need a solution. 

Example: Going back to our smartphone example, your audience could encompass several different segments from first-time smartphone buyers to budget-conscious shoppers. Knowing your audience is just the beginning, now you have to think like they do. 

Step 3: What Keywords are People Using to Find You?

To create a comprehensive SEO content brief, you have to know what keywords your target audience is using to find you. 

There are a variety of keyword research tools and content optimization tools that can help you find this out, from Google’s free Keyword Planner to Originality.ai’s Predictive SEO Tool (which offers suggestions for genuine content improvements and is resistant to keyword stuffing). Then there are also other premium tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. 

Depending on the tool you opt for it could provide insight into competitive analysis, content gaps, and more. 

Learn more about the breakthrough features of the Originality.ai Predictive SEO Tool in our Predictive SEO Accuracy Study.

Tips for finding relevant keywords

  1. First, select the primary keyword: the main keyword that your article will focus on. 
  2. From there, choose the secondary keyword that supports the main keywords. 

Example: So if you’re writing about the “best budget smartphones” as your primary keyword, your secondary keyword could be things like “cheap Android phones” or “best phones under [price point]”. 

Once you’ve chosen your primary and secondary keywords, take a look at the search volume. You’ll want to choose those keywords that have high search volume and low-to-medium competition. 

Step 4: What’s the Reason Behind the User’s Search?

One of the ways that Google’s algorithm ranks content is based on user intent. If your content doesn’t match what users are expecting to see, they won’t stay long on your site (impacting dwell time). So, in your SEO content brief make sure to clearly outline the reason or intent of the article.

Example: Someone searching for an inexpensive smartphone may want: 

  • Information: How to shop for a budget smartphone, what to keep in mind as they research, what brands or price ranges to consider, and so on.
  • Product comparisons/reviews: They want to see comparisons between the top-rated smartphones or reviews on which ones to buy, such as the “best budget smartphones in 2025”. 
  • To make a purchase: They’ve done their research and are ready to make a purchase and you want to do everything you can to make sure that happens on your site. That means attracting those users who are searching for bottom-of-funnel topics and keywords. 

For initial insight into the intent around a keyword, try searching it! Google your primary keyword and then look at the top-ranking articles. 

Keep an eye out for the type of content in the top-ranking articles as well: if all of the top-ranking sites are listicles, yours should also be a list. If all of the top results are product pages, a blog post may not align with the search intent. Pages are ranked at the top for a reason, and the reason is because they align well with the user’s search intent. 

Then, specify in the SEO content brief the type of structure you’re looking for to make sure the final article will have the best layout.

Step 5: Creating Your Content Structure

Next, it’s time to actually start laying out your content structure. Here’s a general template to follow that’s easy for your users to read and is designed to be structured in such a way that search engine robots, including Google, can follow easily: 

  • H1 Title (Include the primary keyword)
  • Introduction (Hook the reader and mention key takeaways)
  • H2 sections
    • Break the content down into logical sections (AI can help you with this!)
  • H3 sections
    • Designed to support the sub-section with more detailed information
  • Conclusion
    • (Optional) call-to-action

Include this structure in your SEO content brief and further customize it by incorporating previous steps such as keywords, target audience, and search intent.

Step 6: Your On-Page Optimization Checklist

Next, you’ll want to take steps to make sure that Google understands your content so that it can rank it. The structure of the article itself is just one piece of the puzzle. 

Include this easy on-page optimization checklist in your SEO brief:

  • The article includes a title tag that uses the primary keyword naturally
  • The article includes a meta description of 150 characters or less
  • Keywords are used strategically in the headings (H1, H2, H3)
  • The article links to other internal pages on the website
  • The article cites authoritative sources
  • The article includes alt text for images

Once you’ve done that, you’ll need to move on to creating content guidelines or standard content briefs

These guidelines are designed so that all members of your writing team write consistently in a way that reflects your brand’s tone, style, voice, and formatting. 

Step 7: Create Content Guidelines

Content guidelines don’t necessarily have to be as long and drawn out as a full-on brand voice guide, but they do have to cover the basics in a way that keeps your content uniform and consistent. Here’s what to include: 

  • Tone and style: Is it casual? Authoritative? Technical? 
  • Word count: Choose a word count length that’s in line with competitors (or longer).
  • Use of lists and tables: To improve readability and make the piece easy to visually scan.
  • Call to action within the article and below it: What action do you want your readers to take? 

Specifying these in your SEO brief will help to keep content consistent and optimized.

Step 8: Do a Detailed Competitor Analysis

If you’re not sure where your competitors are, it’s worth doing a detailed competitor analysis. 

Here’s how:

  1. Go to Google and type in your primary keyword or phrase
  2. Check the top 3-5 results
    • What do they cover? Do they include comparison tables? Expert opinions or reviews? Pros and cons? Video? Infographics?
  3. Spot their content gaps
    • What are they missing?
    • Can you add your own original research, video, or infographics? 

Originality.ai’s Content Optimizer can help you streamline this process. It works as an alternative to MarketMuse and Surfer SEO. Simply add your copy and select a keyword to optimize for. Then, you’ll see competitor sites, their Google rank, and content score.

You could then optionally include competitor comparisons in the SEO brief to give writers, editors, and SEO specialists of the content you are trying to rank ahead of.

Step 9: Assign Writing and Editing Tasks

If you have several content creators on your team, you’ll need to define who’s responsible for what before assigning the SEO brief to your writing team.

For example, the writer creates the draft, the editor reviews it for clarity, the SEO specialist optimizes the meta tags and structure and the graphic designer creates images. 

There are a variety of project management tools out there that can help you track the progress of the article as it moves through each of these steps. 

Step 10: Final SEO Brief Checklist

Finally, it’s time to do one last look over the brief and make sure it includes everything you need to publish and polish each piece for the best possible SEO. Ask yourself these questions as you review your SEO content brief: 

  • Does the content align with the user’s search intent?
  • Am I using both long-tail and short-tail keywords throughout the piece?
  • Do the keywords flow naturally without sounding like they’re stuffed? 
  • Do the tone, style, and length match brand guidelines? 
  • Are there clear calls to action that match the goals of the content?

Bonus Tip: Track Your Content Performance Over Time

Even when you have your SEO content brief in your hands — the work still isn’t done. 

You’ll need to monitor how your content is performing over time in order to make adjustments and revisit certain points over time. 

Be sure to check Google Search Console and use Google Analytics to check metrics like page views and time on page

Then, incorporate tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to check things like organic traffic growth and backlink performance. 

After Creating Your SEO Content Brief: Next Steps 

Once you’ve created your SEO content brief, what’s next? 

From here, you can take the time to build more topical authority, learn how to use AI for topic clustering, and continue optimizing content with the Originality.ai Predictive SEO Tool to stay ahead of the competition. 

By following these steps, you’ll make sure that every post you write is as optimized as possible, built to perform, and designed to engage! 

Learn more content marketing and SEO best practices in our top guides:

Sherice Jacob

Sherice Jacob is a seasoned copywriter and content professional fluent in English, Spanish, and Catalan, with over 25 years of experience crafting high-converting copy. Passionate about AI, she enjoys exploring the new innovations and possibilities it brings to the world of content creation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out the entire form?

No, that’s one of the benefits, only fill out the areas which you think will be relevant to the prompts you require.

Why is the English so poor for some prompts?

When making the tool we had to make each prompt as general as possible to be able to include every kind of input. Not to worry though ChatGPT is smart and will still understand the prompt.

In The Press

Originality.ai has been featured for its accurate ability to detect GPT-3, Chat GPT and GPT-4 generated content. See some of the coverage below…

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Featured by Leading Publications

Originality.ai did a fantastic job on all three prompts, precisely detecting them as AI-written. Additionally, after I checked with actual human-written textual content, it did determine it as 100% human-generated, which is important.

Vahan Petrosyan

searchenginejournal.com

I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism.

Tom Demers

searchengineland.com

After extensive research and testing, we determined Originality.ai to be the most accurate technology.

Rock Content Team

rockcontent.com

Jon Gillham, Founder of Originality.ai came up with a tool to detect whether the content is written by humans or AI tools. It’s built on such technology that can specifically detect content by ChatGPT-3 — by giving you a spam score of 0-100, with an accuracy of 94%.

Felix Rose-Collins

ranktracker.com

ChatGPT lacks empathy and originality. It’s also recognized as AI-generated content most of the time by plagiarism and AI detectors like Originality.ai

Ashley Stahl

forbes.com

Originality.ai Do give them a shot! 

Sri Krishna

venturebeat.com

For web publishers, Originality.ai will enable you to scan your content seamlessly, see who has checked it previously, and detect if an AI-powered tool was implored.

Industry Trends

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it important to check for plagiarism?

Tools for conducting a plagiarism check between two documents online are important as it helps to ensure the originality and authenticity of written work. Plagiarism undermines the value of professional and educational institutions, as well as the integrity of the authors who write articles. By checking for plagiarism, you can ensure the work that you produce is original or properly attributed to the original author. This helps prevent the distribution of copied and misrepresented information.

What is Text Comparison?

Text comparison is the process of taking two or more pieces of text and comparing them to see if there are any similarities, differences and/or plagiarism. The objective of a text comparison is to see if one of the texts has been copied or paraphrased from another text. This text compare tool for plagiarism check between two documents has been built to help you streamline that process by finding the discrepancies with ease.

How do Text Comparison Tools Work?

Text comparison tools work by analyzing and comparing the contents of two or more text documents to find similarities and differences between them. This is typically done by breaking the texts down into smaller units such as sentences or phrases, and then calculating a similarity score based on the number of identical or nearly identical units. The comparison may be based on the exact wording of the text, or it may take into account synonyms and other variations in language. The results of the comparison are usually presented in the form of a report or visual representation, highlighting the similarities and differences between the texts.

String comparison is a fundamental operation in text comparison tools that involves comparing two sequences of characters to determine if they are identical or not. This comparison can be done at the character level or at a higher level, such as the word or sentence level.

The most basic form of string comparison is the equality test, where the two strings are compared character by character and a Boolean result indicating whether they are equal or not is returned. More sophisticated string comparison algorithms use heuristics and statistical models to determine the similarity between two strings, even if they are not exactly the same. These algorithms often use techniques such as edit distance, which measures the minimum number of operations (such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions) required to transform one string into another.

Another common technique for string comparison is n-gram analysis, where the strings are divided into overlapping sequences of characters (n-grams) and the frequency of each n-gram is compared between the two strings. This allows for a more nuanced comparison that takes into account partial similarities, rather than just exact matches.

String comparison is a crucial component of text comparison tools, as it forms the basis for determining the similarities and differences between texts. The results of the string comparison can then be used to generate a report or visual representation of the similarities and differences between the texts.

What is Syntax Highlighting?

Syntax highlighting is a feature of text editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) that helps to visually distinguish different elements of a code or markup language. It does this by coloring different elements of the code, such as keywords, variables, functions, and operators, based on a predefined set of rules.

The purpose of syntax highlighting is to make the code easier to read and understand, by drawing attention to the different elements and their structure. For example, keywords may be colored in a different hue to emphasize their importance, while comments or strings may be colored differently to distinguish them from the code itself. This helps to make the code more readable, reducing the cognitive load of the reader and making it easier to identify potential syntax errors.

How Can I Conduct a Plagiarism Check between Two Documents Online?

With our tool it’s easy, just enter or upload some text, click on the button “Compare text” and the tool will automatically display the diff between the two texts.

What Are the Benefits of Using a Text Compare Tool?

Using text comparison tools is much easier, more efficient, and more reliable than proofreading a piece of text by hand. Eliminate the risk of human error by using a tool to detect and display the text difference within seconds.

What Files Can You Inspect with This Text Compare Tool?

We have support for the file extensions .pdf, .docx, .odt, .doc and .txt. You can also enter your text or copy and paste text to compare.

Will My Data Be Shared?

There is never any data saved by the tool, when you hit “Upload” we are just scanning the text and pasting it into our text area so with our text compare tool, no data ever enters our servers.

Software License Agreement

Copyright © 2023, Originality.ai

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Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

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  1. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

Will My Data Be Shared?

This table below shows a heat map of features on other sites compared to ours as you can see we almost have greens across the board!

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