keyword-research-briefslisted

# Keyword Research and Content Briefs Keyword research answers one question: given limited writing capacity, which pages will return the most for the effort? Everything else is spreadsheet decoration. The output is not a list of keywords. It's a ranked set of pages to build, each with a brief specific enough that a writer doesn't have to guess. ## Step 1: Establish what the business actually sells Skip this and you'll produce a plan full of high-volume terms that convert nobody. Before generating a single keyword, get: - **What the product does**, in the customer's words rather than the brand's - **Who buys it** and what they call the problem before they know the solution exists - **What the site already ranks for** (Search Console, if available) - **Domain strength, honestly.** A six-month-old site targeting "project management software" is wasting a year. That last point drives everything. Keyword selection is a function of authority, not ambition. ## Step 2: Generate the candidate set Pull from sources that reflect real language, not just a tool's autocomplete: - **Search Console queries** the site already gets impressions for. This is the highest-value source and it's free. Anything on page two is a page you already half-own. - **Competitor pages that rank**, read manually. What are they actually answering? - **Customer language**: support tickets, sales call notes, review sites, the exact phrasing in inbound emails. - **Forums and communities** where the proble