Keyword research & planning — high-level pointers (local fallback)

drilbur tells you what the demand looks like — volume, difficulty, intent, clusters, competitor gaps. The detailed, current prioritisation standards — how to weigh intent against difficulty for a specific vertical, when a cluster should become its own page vs a section, and how to read a competitor gap before briefing content — live in the team wiki (set OUTLINE + OUTLINE_API_URL and the report links them directly). This file is the minimal high-level fallback for when the wiki isn’t configured: direction only, deliberately not step-by-step, so there’s no detailed content to drift out of sync with the wiki.

• Seed expansion — start broad, then let volume + difficulty + intent (not one alone) decide what’s worth targeting.
• Search intent — weight buying intent (transactional/commercial) above informational when scoping a service or landing page; keep informational terms for supporting content.
• Easy wins — low difficulty + real volume + buying intent is the fast path; treat it as a starting shortlist, not the whole plan.
• Clusters — a cluster with strong shared volume is a candidate for its own page; a thin one is a candidate for a section on an existing page.
• Domain gap — a keyword a competitor ranks for and you don’t is an opportunity only if the intent and volume justify a page; not every gap is worth closing.
• Unit budget — always run --units before a large pull; a truncated report silently under-reports, which is worse than not running it.
• Handoff — a keyword chosen here becomes a content brief in smeargle, not a page written from the keyword list alone.

Full playbook → the team wiki’s keyword-research & prioritisation standards.