Content briefs
Know what to write before anyone starts writing.
A content brief turns the live top results for a keyword into a plan: the headings to cover, the questions to answer, the entities to mention and how long the page should be. Topic research fills in the subtopics and headline ideas around it, so writers start with a map instead of a guess.
Ask Brigham.aiBuild a brief for “custom software development cost” from the top 30 results and tell me which subtopics DEV.co’s current page misses.Pricing
Process
Hiring
Tech stack
- Top 30
- Results analyzed by default
- Top 100
- For deeper briefs
- 4
- Parts: headings, questions, entities, length
- CSV
- Export keyword lists
- ~967
- On-page factors per scanned page
- Used to set the targets
- 30 / 100
- Results per brief
- Top 30 by default
- A–D
- Grade for your existing page
- $20
- A month, briefs included
What a brief contains
An outline that comes from the results, not from a hunch.
Search.co reads the pages that rank for your keyword, pulls out their headings and groups the ones that repeat into a suggested outline.
Next to it: the questions searchers ask, the entities the top pages share, and a word-count range based on what ranks.
Headings
The H2 and H3 topics that show up most across the ranking pages.
Questions
What people ask about the topic, ready to answer in sections or an FAQ.
Entities
The people, products, concepts and terms the leading pages have in common.
Word count
A target range, so you neither pad a short answer nor shortchange a big topic.
The heading table
See how common each section is among the leaders.
Every suggested heading shows how many of the top ten pages cover it and whether your current page does. Sections nearly everyone covers are table stakes. Sections few cover are where you can add something new.
| Suggested heading | Top 10 covering | Your page |
|---|---|---|
| Factors that affect cost | 9 of 10 | Yes |
| Hourly vs fixed price | 7 of 10 | No |
| Example project budgets | 6 of 10 | No |
| Cost by team location | 5 of 10 | Yes |
| Ongoing maintenance costs | 4 of 10 | No |
| How to reduce cost | 3 of 10 | No |
01
Table stakes
Headings most leaders share. Missing one is often why a solid page stalls on page two.
02
Room to stand out
Topics few pages cover well. A strong section here gives searchers and AI assistants a reason to pick you.
03
Your coverage
If you’re updating a page, the brief marks what you already have so you only write what’s missing.
Entities and terms
The vocabulary of a page that ranks.
Search engines and AI assistants judge whether a page really covers a topic partly by the concepts it mentions. A brief lists the entities that appear across the leading pages, with how often they appear, so the writer covers the subject the way the best pages do.
Targets come from real pages, and the editor tells you when you’ve used a term enough.
Topic research
Everything around the keyword, not just the keyword.
Topic research expands one seed into the material for a whole content plan.
Subtopics
4 checks- Related themes the top pages branch into
- Grouped by how closely they connect
- Sized by search volume
- Each can become its own brief
Questions
4 checks- What searchers ask about the topic
- Grouped by intent
- Ready for headings or an FAQ
- Useful for AI-answer prompts too
Headlines
4 checks- Title ideas drawn from the theme
- Angles the current results skip
- Short and long variants
- Easy to test in a draft
How it works
A brief in about a minute.
Briefs are built from live results when you ask, so they reflect the page as it looks today.
Word-count target · from the top 10
- Shortest ranking page1,100words
- Median1,800words
- Longest ranking page3,200words
- Suggested targetYOU1,700–2,200
- 01
Enter a keyword
Pick the location and choose the top 30 or top 100 results to analyze.
- 02
Review the brief
Reorder headings, drop questions you don’t want and add your own notes.
- 03
Share or write
Send the brief to a writer, or pass it to the AI writer for a first draft.
- 04
Check the draft
Paste the draft into the content editor and score it against the brief for free.
Ask Brigham
Let Brigham decide what the brief should fix.
If you already have a page, Brigham.ai compares it with the brief and tells you which gaps matter most for that keyword.
Your page covers residential treatments well but has only two of the seven sections most leading pages share for commercial intent. It’s 640 words against a typical 1,500, and it never mentions inspections, compliance or service contracts.
Recommended fixes
Sorted by impact
- 1
Add industry sections
2 hrsRestaurants, warehouses and offices each get a heading on six of the top ten pages.
- 2
Explain inspections and compliance
1 hrMost leaders describe the inspection process and documentation. You don’t mention either.
- 3
Describe service contracts
45 minSearchers ask how often visits happen and what contracts include. Answer both.
- 4
Add a question block
20 minFive common questions from the brief can go in a short FAQ at the bottom.
Updating a page
Briefs work for rewrites, too.
Point a brief at a URL you already have and it scores your page on each part of the plan: headings covered, questions answered, entities used and length. You can see at a glance whether the page needs a few new sections or a full rewrite.
Reading a brief
What each number means.
- Coverage
- How many of the top ten ranking pages include a given heading or subtopic.
- Entity frequency
- How often a term appears on the leading pages, shown as a typical range per page.
- Word-count target
- A suggested length range based on the ranking pages, ignoring extreme outliers.
- Question source
- Where a question came from: the results page, the ranking pages or topic research.
- Grade
- For an existing page, the A–D grade from the content optimizer for this keyword.
How is a brief different from the content optimizer?
The optimizer grades an existing page against the top results and lists factor gaps. A brief is a plan for writing, with headings, questions, entities and a length target. They use the same live results, and you can move between them.
Should I use the top 30 or top 100?
Top 30 is the default and works for most keywords. Top 100 gives a broader view for competitive topics, at a higher credit cost: a top-30 scan uses 30 credits and a top-100 scan uses 90.
Can I hand a brief to the AI writer?
Yes. Any brief can be sent to the AI writer, which drafts the article in your brand voice with images and charts, then opens it in the content editor.
Can I export keyword ideas from topic research?
Yes. Save ideas into a keyword list and export it as CSV, or group them into clusters to plan a set of related pages.
Start every page with a plan.
Try a brief on your hardest keyword. You’ll see the headings, questions, entities and target length the leaders share in about a minute.
Build a content brief for my most valuable keyword and compare it with the page I have ranking for it now.