A client sent me a 2,400-word blog post last year and asked why it wasn't ranking for a keyword their competitor owned. The post was well written. The competitor's page was a 6-item comparison table with a sticky sidebar and 40 reviews stapled to the bottom. Same keyword, 2 completely different formats. Google had already picked a winner, and it wasn't the essay.
I told the client we weren't going to fix the blog post. We were going to build the format Google was already rewarding. 11 weeks later, that new page held position 3.
This is the check most content briefs skip. Before I write a single word for a client, I open the actual top 10 URLs for the target keyword and classify every one. Blog post. Comparison table. Service page. Location page. Video result. Forum thread. Whatever the mix is, that is the mix Google has tested against real searchers and rewarded. My instinct does not get a vote.
The trap: writing what feels right
Every content brief I inherit from another agency starts the same way. Target keyword at the top. Estimated volume. A recommended word count. Sometimes a competitor URL or 2. Then straight into the outline.
The outline is where the guess happens. The strategist imagines what a good page for this keyword would look like, writes an H1 and 6 H2s, and hands it to a writer. Nobody opened the results page. Nobody classified the 10 URLs that Google is currently rewarding. The whole plan is built on what the strategist would want to read, not what the searcher is landing on and staying on.
I have seen this same mistake produce the same outcome across every vertical we work in: wellness, DTC food, AI SaaS, construction, exterior services. The page gets written, launches, and stalls at position 14 to 22. It never crosses into striking distance because it is fighting gravity from day 1.
The classification I actually run
For every keyword before I brief a page, I open the top 10 results and tag each URL by 4 things. This takes about 15 minutes per keyword and I have never regretted the time spent.
| What I tag | Why it matters | What I write down |
|---|---|---|
| Page type | Tells me the format the searcher expects | Service, location, blog, listicle, comparison, product, forum |
| Content shape | Reveals the structural pattern that wins | Table-led, video-led, long-form essay, short answer plus FAQ |
| Buyer stage | Confirms funnel position, guides CTA and internal links | Top, middle, or bottom of funnel |
| Local vs national intent | Determines whether a location page or a service page wins | Local pack present, location-specific URLs, or national results only |
After 10 rows, the pattern is either obvious or it is not. If 7 of the top 10 are comparison tables, that is what the searcher wants. Writing a 3,000-word essay to compete is a decision. It is not a strategy.
The AetherHaus example: why we cut the blog and built the service page
When we started with AetherHaus, the Vancouver wellness studio was invisible for its core buyer searches. Around 40 people a month found the site through organic search. Our first instinct might have been to write educational content: what is contrast therapy, why cold plunge, the science of sauna. That is the kind of brief most agencies would have shipped.
We opened the results page for the buyer keyword instead. Every top result was a service page or a location page for a physical studio. Not a blog post in sight above the fold. The searcher typing that keyword was ready to book a session, not read an article. So we built the service and location page first, stacked the supporting content around it, and let each format do the job it was already winning at.
9 months later, monthly organic traffic reached 4,800. Position 1 for the primary buyer search. Revenue lifted 50% within 2 weeks of hitting position 1. 89 AI citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. None of that happens if we lead with the wrong format.
The 2 mismatches I see most often
Mismatch 1: Blog post targeting a service keyword. The keyword is transactional. The results are all service pages. Someone on the team wrote a 2,000-word blog anyway because it fit the content calendar. The page gets some traffic on long-tail variants but never ranks for the money term. Every buyer clicks somewhere else.
Mismatch 2: Service page targeting a comparison keyword. The searcher is 1 step earlier in the funnel than the page assumes. They wanted a "best X" roundup or an "X vs Y" breakdown. The service page pitches them like they are ready to buy. Bounce rate confirms it. Conversion never materialises because the reader is 3 weeks from being ready.
Both mistakes come from the same root: nobody opened the results page and classified what was already winning. The industry data agrees on how central intent match has become. Search Engine Land's 2026 coverage of Google's content quality guidance notes that page type and intent alignment is 1 of the most consistent predictors of ranking stability across updates (Search Engine Land, 2026).
What this looks like in a brief
My briefs now open with a 1-page format audit before the outline even appears. Target keyword at the top. Below that, a 10-row table of the current top 10 results with the 4 tags I listed above. Below that, 1 sentence: "The dominant format is X. We are building X." Only then does the outline start.
If the dominant format does not match what the client wants to build, we have a conversation before a writer touches it. Sometimes we still choose to build differently, but it is a documented decision, not a default. We can trace every stalled page in our history back to a moment where someone skipped this step and let instinct pick the format.
Across our roster, from a construction client in BC to an AI video platform in San Francisco to a DTC food brand shipping across Canada, the pages that hit position 1 to 5 are almost always the ones where the format audit ran first. The ones that stall are the ones where we, or a previous agency, invented from scratch.
The takeaway most operators need to hear
You are not smarter than the results page. Google has tested those 10 URLs against millions of real searches and picked winners for a reason. If you want to rank, you build the format that is already winning, then you make it better with the specific proof only your business can bring. That is the whole job.
The next time an agency hands you a content brief that goes straight from keyword to outline, ask them 1 question: which of the top 10 ranking pages did you read before writing this outline? If they cannot answer with specifics, the brief is guessing and the page will stall.
If you want to see this thinking applied to your own site, our keyword research approach starts with exactly this classification step, and every SEO engagement we run bakes it in before a single word gets written.
Liam Lytton is the founder of The 66th, an SEO and GEO agency based in Vancouver, BC. He works directly with founders and owner-operators to build search presence that compounds.
