No matter what their goal-based starting point, SEO, PPC, and content teams often work with different priorities and from different inputs.

Channel and content resource work separation isn’t new, but the pressure has increased as search results have become even more complex. Depending on the query, Google can include AI Overviews, text ads, shopping results, news, video, and local packs. AI Mode also needs consideration as it can extend the search experience for a user into follow-up questions and prompt-style interactions in the search engine, which changes user behavior. AI features leveraged as part of the journey, and how that can reduce traditional search result clicks.

With both paid and organic search relying on visibility in a search results page or answer engine, and content being critical to the success of both of them, integrating efforts is important for efficiencies as well as aligned performance.

In a recent example for a B2B professional services firm in the commercial construction industry, SEO had outlined the need for a set of blog posts to target a priority topic for increased visibility. PPC wanted new variations of copy for new landing pages to test for performance improvements on an existing ad group. The content team was already deep in a separate project to roll out an updated website and communications related to the recent mission, vision, and values launch for the company.

This is probably something you have experienced where there was no connected or shared plan and set of priorities.

The needs for every team were important and urgent to each of them, but with no connective approach for search opportunity, channel roles, audience intent, requirements, or measurement plan.

An integrated search and content brief can serve as a shared operating agreement for new or incremental strategy and execution for channels and teams.

What To Include In An Integrated Search Brief

1. Business Objective

With the intent of an integrated brief being to find alignment and efficiency between search channels and with content resources, starting with a common goal or objective is necessary. Defining the business problem that both SEO and PPC address is the starting point.

A weak brief or symptom of siloed channel thinking is if it starts with “rank for X keyword” or “launch ads for Y service.” Ideally, an integrated brief starts with a business outcome that we can map our efforts to and work backward from.

Include the following in this section:

• Business Goal or Outcome.
• Audience Segment to Address.
• Desired Action by Audience.
• Primary Business KPIs to Measure.
• Secondary or Channel Marketing KPIs.
• Timeframe.
• Owner(s).

In the example I shared earlier of the commercial construction firm, a weak starting point for the brief was “to improve visibility for warehouse automation services.” When working through making it outcome-focused and integrated, it landed on “increase qualified lead demo requests from mid-market-sized operations leaders researching warehouse automation services by improving organic and paid coverage for solution-aware, comparison research, and vendor sourcing searches.

2. Audience & Search Intent

While the business objective section touches on the audience segment and the outcome we’re seeking with them, drilling down into search behavior and connecting the SEO and PPC channels is important. We can still unify the channels at this point, as we’re still working to define the same searcher who is coming to the same SERP regardless of what channel they ultimately engage with on the SERP.

Assumptions can lead to wasted spend and effort. PPC might see a campaign opportunity around a topic, while SEO may see a content opportunity. The content team may see an opportunity for broader thought leadership topics or education. All when talking about the same objective.

The brief should tackle the concept of search intent and get all on the same page with what terms and topics we’re targeting and how someone is searching and seeking information. From there, we can decide what to optimize, create, and promote.

I would also account for whether the query is likely to trigger a traditional set of results, an AI Overview, or an AI Mode experience. AI Mode, according to Google, is particularly helpful when queries require further exploration, comparisons, reasoning, or aspects where the search feels more like how we’re used to prompting in LLMs, more so than what we have done in searching in Google over the past decades. AI features in search require understanding as we plan content and channel needs. A simple high-intent and bottom-of-the-funnel service query may need paid ad coverage and a good landing page. A broader comparison query might need much deeper content that can help someone researching and seeking one of many possible next-step journey points.

The brief should include these fields:

• Primary Audience.
• Buyer Segment.
• Buyer Role.
• Stage of Funnel or Customer Journey.
• Topic or Query Cluster.
• Intent Type.
• Searcher’s Need.
• Channel Roles.

To maximize the usefulness of the brief and these fields, I recommend creating a table or sheet for this information.

Simple Starter Example:

Image by author, June 2026

3. SERP Landscape

It is important to make sure that the brief doesn’t become a glorified version of keyword research reporting. It isn’t about keywords or rankings. With the continued intent of unifying efforts with aligned goals and audiences, going beyond our own targeting and into the reality of what we’re facing with SERPs is important.

A topic may seem simple to target when looking at a spreadsheet, but the SERP may show a different picture.

A single search query could produce a SERP that includes:

• AI Overview.
• Paid Ads.
• Shopping Results.
• Local Pack.
• Video Results.
• Forum Results.
• Review Sites.
• Image Results.
• Featured Snippets.

AI Mode, as detailed earlier, is not just another SERP feature. It can change the behavior of the searcher’s journey as users may continue prompting and refining inside the AI Mode experience rather than returning to a more traditional list of search results for a follow-up search. Google notes that both AI Overviews and AI Mode may use query fan-out, resulting in related searches across subtopics and data sources to develop a response.

For the brief, that means the SERP landscape section should go beyond just noting whether an AI Overview appears. This can be tricky, but doing as much as you can to anticipate and detail if the topic requires explanation, comparison, or multi-step decision support, or even follow-up questions. If any are true, then the strategy should account for more content needed (e.g., FAQs, definitions, etc.) that support the broader topic rather than just thinking about a single term or query.

The mix of what features are commonly returned in a set of results should be taken into consideration and impact the plan we outline in the integrated brief.

A tool like Ahrefs can help you go well beyond just a keyword list or topic cluster. Its SERP overview report can add objectivity when manually reviewing SERP features that don’t scale, or can vary due to personalization and localization.

From the data in Ahrefs, you can output the SERP features reporting and customize for your brief with a detailed table to help move the information from deep research in tools to a standardized format within the integrated brief that all teams can work off of.

Example table for brief:

Image by author, June 2026

Before implementing an integrated brief, we were targeting “warehouse automation services” as the SEO initiative in isolation. After reviewing the SERP, paid ads were shown at the top, but comparison-style organic results, SERP features like discussion/forum content, all came after an AI Overview.

With all of that in consideration, it was clear a simple article wasn’t what was needed. The topic needed PPC coverage for high-intent terms, a more evergreen content page providing a comparison of solutions, FAQ-style content for AI visibility, and articles related to the evergreen topics.

Overall, a more robust, but high-quality strategy emerged, which engaged all aspects of search and unified with content priorities in a way that content could be created once for thought leadership and adapted and repurposed out to the various channels, needs, and formats for visibility and engagement.

4. Channel Roles

At this point, the brief is turning to telling each team what role they play. This isn’t necessarily defining who does what in a group project, but more of what roles are assigned to SEO, PPC, content, and the overall website experience.

With opportunity, intent, and SERP details documented, now it should include a section detailing (in no particular or preferential order):

• SEO role.
• PPC role.
• Content role.
• Website update role.
• Areas of shared dependencies.
• The primary accountable party.
• Support roles (even potentially outside of SEO, PPC, and content).
• What each team/resource needs from the others.

The integration of search and a shared brief doesn’t mean that every channel has to do the same thing. This isn’t about putting all channels into the same box and taking away independent aspects where they can uniquely impact the overall strategy. That matters even more with paid search relying on automation, intent signals, and click performance rather than keyword targeting alone.

Connecting back to the SERP landscape, and understanding how AI Overviews and AI Mode operate with new complexity, considering how likely they are to affect the topic, I would make the channel roles more specific. Being clear that SEO owns text-based content that is crawlable/indexable and internal linking to support the topic. PPC owns coverage of high-intent terms where organic clicks may be harder to come by (due to AI features and fewer organic links being present) or where the team overall needs quicker testing and validation. And, a balancing act for the content team or those involved with CRO to ensure that the content serves users well who come from any of those SERP features or experiences to land on a given page.

While Google says that no schema or special requirements are needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, it notes that site owners can leverage foundational SEO practices like crawability, internal links, content, images/videos, and applicable structured data. All of this makes the brief valuable in assigning responsibilities before teams start working separately.

The intent of the brief is to be practical and useful. It goes beyond being theoretical when we see the different SERP features spelled out, and allows room for strategic thinking and decisions. What might have started as “write a blog post” or “increase ad budget” quickly turns into something much deeper.

Example table to include in this section of the brief:

Image by author, June 2026

5. Content & Landing Page Requirements

To be fully actionable, the brief will define the specific needs of what has to be updated or created before teams start executing the work based on their roles.

A search opportunity might require a range of pages, content, and specific assets. Those could be posts, articles, product/service pages, landing pages, case studies, FAQs, and other types of unique content to engage the target audience.

Matching up content with the SERP and search intent is key to avoid simply doing the usual things from the past with hopes that they will always work in the future (although, if you have a good case for past things still working, leverage them).

For B2B especially, content has a bigger job than just targeting keywords; it has to help buyers build confidence, evaluate risk, and make buying decisions.

For search user journeys that involve the AI features, I would get more specific about the content requirements in the brief. That means going deeper than simply noting the need for a “landing page” or a “blog post” as you go deeper in defining the elements of the page needed. From my team’s experience, this leans into more testing and leveraging content within a page for a more robust experience. This can include comparison info, FAQs, related topics, internal links to other resources, and conversion path(s) that fit the user’s stage in the customer journey. This will require all teams to develop a shared set of requirements for a page rather than trying to create multiple experiences and interpretations of what a page or content asset should do.

A checklist to include in this section of the brief includes:

• Does the page match the SERP features and landscape?
• Does the CTA match the search intent and the user’s stage in the consideration process?
• Does the page include enough information for a buyer to take the next step in their journey?
• Can both paid and organic use this page? Or, do they need different experiences?
• Are conversion paths defined?

6. Measurement Plan

Getting more specific to the work identified in this brief, but still keeping the intent of being aligned with business goals and outcomes (from the first section of the brief), we need to fully define measurement before execution begins.

It can often take time before we see results in organic, while we can see data in paid much more quickly. Channels should not be measured the same way, but have paths to connect to the same outcome.

It isn’t easy to account for AI features in reporting. Google says that appearance in AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in Google Search Console in the performance report within the “Web” search type. GSC documentation also notes clicks, impressions, and position from AI Mode and AI Overviews are counted in GSC, but are not cleanly separated from traditional organic performance.

So, that means the brief should document or make note of a baseline before any major efforts in our channels and integrated strategy. Tracking SERP features, including the presence and prominence of AI aspects, with comparison of query types and groups as well, is important to supplement the blended and less-than-perfect GSC data. Tools like Ahrefs are important in this effort, as we also have to accept the fact that we won’t have perfect attribution.

To do so, consider including these fields in this section of the brief:

• Primary KPI.
• Secondary KPIs.
• Leading indicators (so you know as soon as possible if something is working or not).
• Business outcome unifying metric(s).
• Central sources of truth for all teams.
• Reporting format and timing.
• Review windows and intervals.
• Decisionmaking and authority.
• When a change might be warranted.

Categorizing KPIs can be helpful, whether as a list or table like this:

Image by author, June 2026

7. Action Plan

To round out the brief and turn focus to implementation, an action plan to define tactics, roles, timing, and action items.

Documenting testing plans, the decision points, necessary meetings, and communication expectations are important to make the brief a working document and not just a planning exercise.

The goal is for channels and disciplines not to go back into silos and do independent work, defeating the point of the brief. Even integrated and aligned plans can have varying degrees of performance and needs for optimization.

For example, if PPC conversion rates improve after ad copy messaging tests, but organic remains flat, a new opportunity might emerge to leverage PPC learnings to page content (tags, headings, body copy) to optimize for SEO as well. The same goes for CTA wins and other aspects of content that can be leveraged across both search channels and created in a consistent, on-brand way by the content team.

An action plan section of the brief should cover:

• Channel action item priorities.
• Deliverables and tasks.
• Resources assigned ownership or supporting roles.
• Dependencies.
• Timeline and sprints.
• Testing plan.
• Measurement and review intervals.
• Decision rules.
• Communication.
• Documentation and asset repository.

Wrap Up

Integrated search, fueled by strategic and optimized content, doesn’t happen efficiently or well when everyone has their own process, strategy, and tactics. Team and resource alignment matters to keep everything moving forward, to drive toward common business goals, and to ensure we’re not missing opportunities.

An integrated search brief gives teams shared business context, audience/intent focus, details about SERP landscapes, defined channel roles, content requirements, measurement plans, and defined action steps.

This is a working document helping SEO, PPC, and content teams act like one search function rather than separate functions.

More Resources:

Featured Image: SvetaZi/Shutterstock

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