Content production & Definition of Done

How the cycle’s content gets produced, and the bar every page has to clear before it counts as shipped. Production turns the tagged keyword plan into live pages; the Definition of Done is the checklist that keeps quality consistent across every account and whoever’s driving.

Two source pages merged here: Content Production Procedures and Definition of Done for Content. Cross-links point to the Part 2 how-tos for each step.

Content production

Production runs the tagged keyword plan through the generators (landing pages from the landing-page pillar, blog posts with the account’s refiners), then publishes and indexes them. The worked, step-by-step version lives in the Month-1 flow:

Landing pages: 3.1 Week 2 — pSEO pages and how-to: 2.3.2 Generate landing pages.
Blog posts: generate with the account’s refiners (typical defaults: Brand positioning, CTA, FAQ, TLDR), starting with listicles or BOFU how-tos. See 3.1 Week 1 — prep for blog posts and how-to: 2.1.7 Set up refiners.

Why the format matters: we produce for two search surfaces, Google and the AI answer engines. The mix of what ChatGPT cites shifts over time (listicles, comparisons, how-tos, and other formats), so format choice is a real production decision. See Part 1 §1.2 Two search surfaces. Reference data on how citation types shift: promptwatch.com/data/chatgpt-citation-types-over-time.

Production order and who does what

Landing pages lead, and they’re front-loaded. The first batch is the first 5 landing pages, picked by the product’s sharpest edge and the lowest cannibalization risk; blogs start at 3, listicles or BOFU how-tos first. Generate the whole cycle’s content in Week 1 so the publisher never runs dry partway through the month, then publish at the account’s set cadence (some accounts drip a few pages a day, others batch a couple of times a week). A standard cycle produces a set number of pages, split between landing pages and blogs per the client’s strategy. ❓ [needs Raymond / [DECIDE]: standard-tier output per cycle — pricing rework in progress] The account manager drives Pi to generate everything, then runs each page’s content check and technical SEO audit. Pi self-audits and flags as it goes; the AM signs off, so the person who generated the page isn’t the one who declares it done. Publishing is a separate handoff: for several accounts the BPO teammate publishes on the agreed schedule (coordinated in #bpo), and where the CMS belongs to the client (Framer, Shopify) the client reviews and publishes their own landing pages. See 3.14 Roles & handoffs.

Definition of Done

The bar is a 15-item must-pass gate. A page (and a first batch) is done only when all 15 must-pass checks clear. Miss one and the pipeline isn’t done: fix it, re-verify, and nothing publishes as done until it passes. Softer “nice-to-have” items don’t block; they get logged for the next batch. The escalation rules for a repeated gate failure live in 3.6 The Quality Gate. Ten of the must-pass checks carry a hard number. This is the quantitative bar:

Check	Must-pass target
First-batch post count	3 or more
Indexing lag per post	Within 48 hours
Primary keyword in the meta title	Within the first 100 characters
Meta description length	160 characters or fewer
Primary or secondary keyword in the meta description	Within the first 100 characters
Org mentioned and linked in the summary	Within the first 100 characters
Primary keyword in the H1	First word of the H1
Broken links	Zero
Competitor links in a blog	Zero, unless a reference carries a genuinely useful stat
Slug matches the primary keyword	Exact match, not derived from the title

The rest of the gate is the structural and qualitative checklist below. Pi self-audits and flags; the AM signs off.

Keyword selection: the page targets a validated keyword from the cycle plan (right intent, winnable SERP, no cannibalization). See 3.4 Organise keywords and Part 1 §1.4 SERP cliff.
DOM, everything present: all content elements are DOM-readable (they may be visually hidden on hub pages, but must be in the DOM).
Heading structure: one H1 with the primary keyword first, and a sensible H2/H3 hierarchy.
JSON-LD
- Primary structured-data type present for the page kind, e.g. ProductList (pSEO / listing pages), BlogPosting / Article (blog posts).
- FAQ JSON-LD: good to have, and required on pSEO pages.
Qualitative self-audit: keyword intent is BOFU or high-intent MOFU (no pure informational fluff in batch 1), each post fits a declared pillar (Core, Fringe, Alternative), brand voice passes any regulated-industry banned-term check, product claims trace to the product bible rather than a model guess, and client link sensitivities are respected (default: no Reddit links unless the client has approved them).

This checklist is the acceptance bar for the technical SEO audit run at publish time. The fully-expanded audit (canonical link, OG image, table of contents, Ahrefs toolbar checks) lives in 3.1 Week 2 — technical SEO audit and how-to: 2.5.2. This page is the concise Definition of Done; that page is the full audit procedure.

Full theory on the Definition of Done: Part 1 §1.11.

3.3 — Weekly planning flow: where production runs each week.
3.6 — The Quality Gate: the ranking outcome the DoD feeds.
how-to: 2.5.2 Technical SEO audit: the full audit.
Part 1 §1.11 Definition of Done: the theory.