SEO content template: the brief, then the page, in one file

An SEO content template is a file you open before writing a page and close when the page is published, and most of the ones on offer are a list of places to put a keyword. This one is the order a page is built: six decisions taken before a word is written, then the page itself, slot by slot, with the reason for each slot beside it. It is the writing half of the on-page SEO checklist, one copy per page.

The checks in it are the ones applied to every page under our SEO content writing.

Download the SEO content template (Word, opens in Google Docs)

Everything in square brackets is yours to replace, and the guidance in italics comes out before publishing. It is free and it is not gated. The brief on the first page is the part people search for as an SEO brief template, so it is the same file.

Why the brief comes first

A page written for no particular search ranks for no particular search. That decision is the one most pages skip, and it decides everything after it: the title, the heading, what the first paragraph has to answer, which questions become the sub-headings, and what the reader is asked to do at the end. So the file opens with six things to write down before writing, and the writing half is filled from them. A writer who starts at the title has started in the middle.

The brief: six things decided before a word is written

The one search. In the words people type, with a note of what page one is made of for it. If the top results are guides and this is a sales page, or the other way round, it is entering the wrong race. The brief also asks whether a page on your own site already aims at the search, because two pages after one term split the signal and Google picks one.

What page one already answers. A table: the top results, what each covers, what each misses. The results show the shape of the answer people expect, and the gaps are where a new page earns its place. Fifteen minutes of reading here saves a page that repeats everyone else.

The questions people ask. From the box Google shows beneath the results and from the phone, written as people ask them. They become the sub-headings, in the order the answers are needed.

What this page adds. Something the other results do not have: your own photographs, your own figures, a worked example, the comparison the others skipped, the awkward question answered. Interchangeable pages lose to whichever one has the stronger site, and a small site cannot afford to be interchangeable.

The next step. Decided before writing, because the page is written towards it: a call, a form, a booking, or the service page a guide exists to feed, and how it is tracked.

Proof and the reviewer. What you can show for the claims the page will make, the sources that will be named, and who at the business checks the page because they know the subject.

The page: written into the file, in order

The second half is the page with its slots labelled. The title, with the search phrase near the start and what the page offers after it, measured in pixels rather than characters because that is how Google cuts it; the SERP preview shows where. The address, decided once. The description as the promise, with the search phrase in it because the matching words are shown in bold. One main heading in the words of the search. Then the first paragraph, which is the answer in one or two sentences a machine could quote, followed by who the page is for and the most important fact. The body follows as one heading per question from the brief, with the answer under each: named things, numbers, steps in order. Tables for the images, with alt text and file names in words, and for the links in both directions, into the page from pages that already rank and up to the page it feeds. A line for the markup type, with the rule that nothing declared is invisible on the page. The next step, with a button that names the action. And a short list of checks before publishing, ending with the date the page is measured in Search Console.

What it does not do

There is no word count in it, because length is not a ranking factor and covering the subject is. There is no keyword density, because repeating the phrase every paragraph reads as a trick to a reader and to Google. And it does not write the page: the slots are prompts for a person who knows the subject, which is why the reviewer's name is on the first page. The search results for this template's own phrase open with an AI answer, which is the ceiling for a page like this one and the reason it stays short.

On a page you already have

The fastest use of the file is on pages that already get impressions in Search Console and a poor click rate. Fill the brief from the page as it stands, and the gaps show themselves: a title that opens with the brand, a first paragraph that warms up, questions from the results box that the page never answers, no link from the pages that rank. Fix those and measure again in thirty days. The order of the pages to do is the order of their impressions, because that is where a better title turns into a visit soonest.

If you write for clients

The brief half is what a client signs off before the page is written, and the page half is what they review after, which is the review step the contract template puts in writing. Agencies that resell writing under their own brand send this file with their own name on it; how that arrangement works is on the white label SEO page, and the pages our own SEO content writing produces are checked against the same list.