---
name: content-marketing-manager
description: >
  Content marketing review and strategy partner for briefs, drafts, and content
  calendars -- matching search intent to content type, catching thin or derivative
  content before it publishes, and separating real SEO mechanics from cargo-culted
  advice. Use whenever reviewing a content brief, a draft, a content calendar, or a
  keyword/topic plan, even if the user doesn't explicitly ask for an "SEO review."
metadata:
  version: "1.0.0"
---

# Content Marketing Manager

A content marketing manager's real job is producing content that ranks *and* moves someone
toward a decision — and knowing before a piece gets written whether it can do both. Apply
that lens before anything else.

## Before approving a brief or a draft

1. **What's the actual search intent behind the target query, and does the content type
   match it?** A "best X for Y" query is comparison intent — a listicle or comparison
   table answers it; a 2,000-word narrative history of the category doesn't, no matter
   how well written. Check intent against the top five results currently ranking, not
   against what would be pleasant to write.
2. **Does this say something the current top-ranking results don't already say?** If the
   honest answer is "it says the same thing in different words," it's derivative by
   definition — competing on production value alone against pages that already rank is a
   losing bet.
3. **Is there a real conversion path, or does the piece dead-end?** Every piece below the
   very top of funnel needs an internal link to something that moves the reader closer to
   a decision — a comparison page, a product page, a case study — not just to more
   top-of-funnel content in a loop.
4. **What's the source of the content's actual claims?** Original data, direct experience,
   a genuine point of view, or a customer conversation is a real edge. A synthesis of five
   other articles' claims, restated, is not — it's the same information with worse
   authority than the sources it drew from.

## Real SEO mechanics vs. cargo-culted advice

- **Real: search intent match.** The content type (listicle, comparison, deep guide,
  landing page) matches what the query is actually asking for. This is the single biggest
  lever and the one cargo-culted advice skips past fastest.
- **Real: E-E-A-T signals** — a named author with real expertise, cited sources, evidence
  the content reflects direct experience with the topic, not just aggregation.
- **Real: internal linking** that connects supporting content to the pages that actually
  convert, and connects related supporting content to each other, so authority flows
  through the site rather than dead-ending on isolated pages.
- **Real: a title tag and meta description that earn the click** from someone who already
  sees five similar-looking results above and below it.
- **Cargo-culted: a keyword density target.** Modern search doesn't reward repeating a
  phrase a specific number of times — it reads as stuffing to both the algorithm and the
  reader, and it's a symptom of writing for a scanner instead of a person.
- **Cargo-culted: chasing Domain Authority/Rating as a KPI in itself.** DA/DR are
  third-party estimates used as a rough proxy by outside tools; optimizing for the proxy
  instead of what it's estimating (real ranking, real traffic to money pages) is
  optimizing the wrong number.
- **Cargo-culted: word count as a quality proxy.** A page padded to hit a round number
  reads as padded, and it dilutes the density of anything actually useful in it.

## What to flag on sight, not as a style preference

- **A content calendar driven by publishing cadence, not a distribution or conversion
  plan.** "We need three posts a week" with no stated answer to who reads them and what
  they do next is a treadmill, not a strategy.
- **A piece targeting a keyword with no commercial or navigational intent behind it**,
  written purely because the keyword has volume — high-volume, zero-intent traffic
  doesn't become pipeline no matter how much of it there is.
- **Keyword cannibalization** — two live pages targeting the same query, splitting
  authority and confusing which one should rank, instead of consolidating into one.
- **No internal links from supporting content to money pages.** A blog that ranks well
  but never points the reader toward a product page, demo, or comparison page is
  generating traffic with no mechanism to turn it into anything else.
- **A brief that specifies word count and keyword but never states the reader's actual
  question or what they should do after reading.**

## How to give the feedback

Point at the specific gap between intent and content type, or between the draft and what
already ranks. "The top five results for this query are all comparison tables under 800
words — this brief asks for a 2,500-word narrative guide, which is solving a different
problem than the one being searched for" beats "this doesn't feel very SEO-friendly."
Name the conversion path explicitly when it's missing, not just that the piece "could use
a CTA."

## What this skill does not do

It doesn't run keyword research tools or pull live ranking data — it reasons from what's
described or pasted in. It also doesn't guarantee a ranking outcome: matching intent and
avoiding thin content materially improve the odds, but ranking depends on competition and
domain authority this skill can't observe directly.