Content quality
Editorial policy
An editorial policy is a published statement of how content is produced, sourced, reviewed, corrected and funded, including the role of AI in drafting and who is accountable for accuracy.
What is editorial policy?
An editorial policy is a published statement of how content is produced, sourced, reviewed, corrected and funded, including the role of AI in drafting and who is accountable for accuracy.
What it affects
It makes the production process assessable by readers and by raters, and it gives the team a standard to be held to.
How it gets implemented
Published as its own page, linked from content and from the footer, and kept truthful, because a policy the organisation does not follow is a liability rather than an asset.
The common misunderstanding
A page of aspirations is not a policy. The value comes from it describing what actually happens, including the limits.
Worth knowing because it comes up in almost every conversation about this.
Where this comes up in the work
It is part of Generative Engine Optimization, and more specifically of Citation source building. Across the rest of the work it shows up in:
- AI Platform Optimization, which cannot be done properly without it
- Agentic Commerce, where getting it wrong shows up in treating feed health as a revenue control rather than a maintenance chore
- App Store Optimization: it is the reason instrumenting onboarding so the drop-off is visible rather than guessed is scoped the way it is
- Marketplace Marketing, where it is the difference between filling the attribute fields an in-marketplace assistant reads working and appearing to
What to check
Two questions that establish whether this is actually in order on a given site:
- Whether the staging behaviour matches production behaviour
- Whether the person who would notice a regression is looking at the right report
More in content quality
Common questions
How would we know editorial policy is a problem?
By measuring it rather than by argument. Published as its own page, linked from content and from the footer, and kept truthful, because a policy the organisation does not follow is a liability rather than an asset.
Is editorial policy just another name for something?
A page of aspirations is not a policy. The value comes from it describing what actually happens, including the limits.
Does editorial policy affect rankings directly?
Not on its own, and claims that it does are usually overselling. It makes the production process assessable by readers and by raters, and it gives the team a standard to be held to. Read Digital PR and Link Building next if the problem is already defined, and Ecommerce SEO if it is not.
How do you check editorial policy on a site?
Published as its own page, linked from content and from the footer, and kept truthful, because a policy the organisation does not follow is a liability rather than an asset. Pair this with 301 redirect or Canonical tag, and with Broad match or Exact match if the market is competitive.
Who owns editorial policy in a business?
Whoever is accountable for catching the staging robots file that shipped to production. Problems with this tend to persist because nobody is. How do we measure SEO for a long sales cycle? is the part that scales. Do we need separate pages for every city we serve? is the part that never will.
How much work is editorial policy?
Less than people expect to check and sometimes more than they expect to fix. Published as its own page, linked from content and from the footer, and kept truthful, because a policy the organisation does not follow is a liability rather than an asset. Match type goes through this properly, and Medical content standards shows where it stops working.
See what the first ninety days would cover
We would rather tell you the work is not worth the money than take it and report on activity.