If the brief is vague, the draft will be generic
“Write 1,500 words about B2B SEO” produces a page nobody needed. A usable brief is short and strict. It tells the writer who the page is for, what question it answers, what it will not cover, and which existing pages it should point to.
The fields that matter
Keep the primary query in the title if it reads like English. Do not bend a heading into a stuffed phrase. Google is not the only reader; a VP of marketing forwarding the URL is.
- Primary query and two close variants — not a pile of 25 keywords
- Searcher job: learn, compare, or choose
- Audience: role and company type
- Outline with H2s that match real questions
- Sources the writer must cite (docs, your product, primary data)
- Internal links in, and internal links out
- CTA that matches intent (subscribe vs book a diagnostic)
How this site uses briefs
Every Northline journal page started as a brief with one job. Service pages do not try to be encyclopedias; journal pages do not try to sell the sprint in every sentence. That split is how you avoid a site of near-duplicate sales copy.
Internal linking for B2B sites covers what happens after the draft exists.