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Playbooks 9 min read April 2, 2026 Marco Hill
The new content brief: writing for retrieval, not ranking.
The old SEO brief optimised for a ranking algorithm. The new brief optimises for a quoting algorithm. The structure is different — and a lot stricter.
What changed
LLMs don't read your article — they extract chunks of it. Your job is to make every chunk self-contained, quotable and unambiguous. Long, looping introductions get skipped.
The new brief template
- A 40-60 word answer paragraph in the first 200 words.
- Section headings that match real buyer questions verbatim.
- Numbered steps wherever instructions are involved.
- One quotable statistic per major section, with a primary-source citation.
- A clearly dated last-updated stamp at the top and bottom.
What to stop doing
Stop writing 2,500-word introductions to please a keyword model. Stop hiding the answer behind "In this article we'll explore…". The model — and your reader — both want the answer first.
