You want to have SEO copy written, but you don’t want text that could just as easily have been for your competitor. Then you need to get two things clear upfront: which customer question this page answers and what makes your answer not interchangeable (proof, choices, approach, region, boundaries).
A generic SEO text often “checks out” in the sense that it contains general explanations (what it is, how it works, a few tips). But: if the text doesn’t include concrete choices, boundaries, and verifiable details, it won’t help a reader choose you.
1) Start with one specific customer question (not with ‘the keyword’)
A usable brief starts with one sentence that the page needs to deliver on. For example:
- “Someone wants to know whether we provide service X in region Y, and what they need for that.”
- “Someone is comparing option A with option B and wants to understand our reasoning and boundaries.”
- “Someone wants to understand a price indication: what’s the difference, what affects the price, what is and isn’t included?”
- Service area: which towns/regions do you serve (and which ones don’t you serve)?
- What you do and don’t do: your boundaries often make your offer clearer.
- Your own approach in plain language: how do you explain this to customers?
- Proof you’re allowed to publish: reviews, certifications, measurable facts, photos, examples (only what’s true and allowed to be public).
- Questions customers literally ask: email/phone/WhatsApp is fine, as long as they are truly your questions.
- People-first: the text must genuinely help a reader move forward (and not just “be present” for search engines).
- No keyword stuffing: the topic needs to be clear, but the text should read normally.
- No unsubstantiated claims: if something is a promise, it needs to be backed up or removed.
- Unique elements required: at least one element that only you can say (choice, consideration, practical detail, verifiable fact).
- Interchangeability check: replace your company name with “Company X”. Does everything still hold up? Then it probably lacks your own content.
- Adjectives check: cross out words like “professional”, “reliable”, “tailor-made”. Is there still anything concrete left then?
- Proof check: does it include data you can find back or verify (review platform, certification, photo, clear scope)?
- Fact check (by you): is every fact about your offer, service area, approach, and terms correct?
- Claim check (by you or someone internal): is there anything in it that you can’t deliver on or don’t want to promise?
- Readability (by the writer): can a customer understand this in one go, and do they then know what a logical next step is?
- Customer question: “Someone is looking for a painter in the Betuwe and wants to know whether this company is active there and what they can expect in terms of approach and costs.”
- Boundaries: “We only write what we actually do and where we actually work; no vague promises or text that also holds for ‘Company X’.”
- Proof/measurement source: “We measure visibility via Google Search Console and our AI mention tracker; include that visibility is not an enquiry.”
- Creating helpful content (developers.google.com)
- Core update spam policies (developers.google.com)
- Ai optimization guide (developers.google.com)
Google describes that SEO can be a useful activity when you apply it to people-first content1 (made for people, not primarily to manipulate rankings).
2) Make ‘not interchangeable’ a requirement, and provide that information
Our simplest quality agreement is also a hard check right away: can you replace your company name with another name without the text breaking? If you can, then the text is too generic.
You prevent that by explicitly providing, in your brief, the elements a writer can’t guess. Think of:
3) Put quality agreements in black and white (so you don’t steer by “feeling”)
If you outsource, you don’t want to argue about taste afterwards. So set down a few agreements in advance that you can verify. For example:
4) Quick quality checks before publication
These are three quick checks you can use to filter out generic content:
5) Agree on a publication check: who checks what?
A writer can write down your words, but you remain ultimately responsible for what it factually says. So define who does which check before publication:
Do you want to scale up with automation or AI? You can, but steer on substantive value. Google indicates that automation (including with generative AI) is spam if the primary purpose is to manipulate rankings2.
6) Make one volume agreement: no page per mini-variant
“Do we need to have a separate page written for every variant of a search term?” If the answer is mainly ‘yes’ because you want to capture every keyword, then you run the risk of lots of near-duplicates.
Google warns that creating separate content for every search variant with the primary goal of steering rankings or AI answers in Google Search3 can fall under ‘scaled content abuse’.
What you can agree on: one strong page that covers multiple variants, and only split if the intent is truly different (for example “costs” versus “approach” versus “comparison”).
What this can look like in practice (example from our work)
If you want to write this up as a brief, it could look like this, for example:
In our customer case of Ebbers Schilderwerken you can see how we publish content around region, costs, and approach and measure the visibility with Google Search Console and our AI mention tracker. That page also explicitly states: visibility is not an enquiry.
Want to get this clear faster? Take one page as a pilot
Not sure whether your brief is “hard” enough? Choose one page that matters commercially to you (a service page or a question with purchase intent) and set down your agreements on that. Only when that page isn’t interchangeable and is correct, do you scale up.
If you’re still hesitating between doing it yourself, outsourcing parts, or handing everything over: keep the choice sharp and define what you want to keep yourself.
And if you want to bring measuring, writing, and publishing together into one ongoing process: decide in advance whether you mainly want to measure, want content written, or want to outsource the work.