Content Brief & Editorial Standards — local playbook

Summary. How to turn a smeargle brief into a page that ranks and reads well — what each part of the brief is for, and the editorial standards a draft must meet. Local fallback; point smeargle at a live Outline wiki (OUTLINE + OUTLINE_API_URL, collection via SMEARGLE_WIKI_COLLECTION) to surface the team’s own version.

Surfaced by. smeargle: the content brief (search intent, title/meta/H1, outline, entities, FAQ, internal-link targets, word-count target) and, in URL mode, the page-vs-brief gaps.

Using the brief

• Search intent drives everything. Informational → teach; commercial → compare/justify; transactional → make it easy to act. If the page’s format fights the intent, fix the format first.
• Cover the entities. The listed entities are the sub-topics a page must mention to demonstrate depth — they’re not keywords to stuff, but concepts to genuinely address.
• Answer the FAQ. Each question is one real searchers ask; answering them earns FAQ rich results and feeds AI answers. Keep answers direct and factual.
• Place the internal links. The internal-link targets are anchors that should point to this page from elsewhere on the site — hand them to galvantula’s link graph as real links.

Editorial standards

• Title ≤ 60 chars, meta ≤ 155 chars, keyword near the front of the title, no clickbait.
• One H1, distinct from the title; H2s follow the outline; H3s for sub-points.
• Hit the word-count target ±20% — enough to cover the topic, never padding.
• No fabricated specifics. Prices, stats, claims, and business details are supplied by the client or left as a clearly-marked [placeholder] — never invented (smeargle draft follows the same rule).
• Write for the reader first, the engine second. Natural language that covers the intent outranks keyword density every time.