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# Writing to be quoted — structure for AI answers
SEO gets a page found. This gets a page **cited**. Answer engines retrieve
**passages, not pages**: they lift a section, attribute it, and drop the rest.
So the section — not the page — is the unit of competition, and a section that
cannot stand alone cannot be quoted.
Run `awesomate_site_audit` to catch the mechanical faults (gate G8). It cannot
judge whether an answer is any good; that part is a human read.
## The one rule that matters most
**Answer first.** Under every heading, the first 40–60 words must be a
complete, standalone statement that names the subject.
Roughly **55% of AI Overview citations come from the first 30% of the page**, so
an answer buried under three paragraphs of preamble is an answer nobody quotes.
```
Bad: ## Our pricing
It depends on a few things. Every job is different, and we always…
Good: ## Our pricing
Robs Plumbing charges $180 for a standard callout in metropolitan Perth,
including the first 30 minutes on site. Emergency after-hours callouts
are $290. Quotes for larger jobs are free and fixed.
```
The second one survives being lifted out of the page. The first one is useless
the moment it loses its heading.
## Never open a section with a back-reference
"It", "this", "that", "these", "they", "also", "however", "as above", "as
mentioned". Once a section is extracted, there is no "above" — the subject has
vanished. Name it again, every time, even when it reads slightly repetitively on
the page. Repetition is the cost of being quotable, and it is a small cost.
## Section length: 120–180 words
Long enough to answer, short enough to be one clean retrieval unit. A 900-word
section under one heading competes with itself: the engine has to choose which
part to lift, and often lifts none of it. Split it and give each part a heading.
## Say the specific thing
Vague copy loses to specific copy, measurably. Adding **quotations from credible
sources raised a source's share of an AI answer by roughly 41%, statistics by
about 31%, and citations by about 28%**.
So: real numbers, real dates, named sources, units and currency **inline in the
sentence** rather than implied by a table header or an image.
```
Bad: We serve the whole metro area and have done for years.
Good: We service Perth from Joondalup to Rockingham, and have since 2009.
```
## Comparisons go in a real `<table>`
`<table>` with `<th>`, never styled divs and never an image of a table. A
comparison rendered as divs is a wall of unlabelled fragments to a parser; an
image of a price list is invisible to everything. This is the single most
common way a genuinely useful pricing page fails to get cited.
## Headings: descriptive, with the question phrasing in the first line
The evidence here is genuinely mixed, so hold it loosely:
- **FAQ *schema* shows a small negative correlation** with citations (one
analysis: 3.6 citations with it against 4.2 without). The effect is modest and
probably confounded — FAQ blocks tend to sit on thin support pages that would
earn fewer citations anyway. Google also retired FAQ rich results in May 2026.
- **Question-shaped *content*, on the other hand, is the extraction unit
everyone describes**: a question followed by a 40–80 word answer.
The safe position that satisfies both readings: **plain descriptive headings,
with the question phrasing carried in the first body line.** You keep the
question language on the page where models read it, without betting the page on
FAQ markup.
Keep real FAQs because users want them. Just don't expect the schema to be the
lever.
## Every schema fact must also be visible
The hard rule, and the one most often broken: **no fact may exist only in
JSON-LD.** Models read the rendered text; structured data helps machines agree
on entities, but a phone number, address or price that appears *only* in the
markup is invisible to the thing you are optimising for.
`awesomate_site_audit` cross-checks this automatically (gate G7b) and lists any
schema value missing from the page copy. The fix is always **add it to the
page** — never delete it from the schema.
## Freshness
A visible "Last updated" date, matching `dateModified` in the JSON-LD. Bump it
only on substantive change; a date that moves nightly while the words stay the
same is a stale-content signal, not a freshness one.
Sensible cadence: pricing quarterly, comparisons six-monthly, evergreen guides
annually.
## What not to bother with
- **llms.txt as a priority.** Generate it if it's free — it is one small file —
but one study of 137,210 domains found 97% of published files received zero
requests, and Google ignores it outright. Never present it as a pillar, and
never bill for it.
- **Speakable schema.** No engine confirms using it.
- **Hidden text or instructions aimed at crawlers.** Zero measured effect, and
classed as spam by both Google and Microsoft.
- **Mass AI-written listicles.** Hit hard by the August 2026 spam update, and an
organic penalty propagates into AI visibility.
## Local businesses: the profile usually outranks the site
For anything with a location or a service area, **Google Business Profile
supplies about 67% of local citations in AI Overviews** — more than the website
does. So a correct primary category, the full services list, real hours and
real photos are higher-leverage than another page of copy.
Keep the name, address and phone **identical** across the site, the profile and
the main directories for the vertical. Contradictions are what stop an engine
treating the business as one confident entity. For AU service businesses that
means ProductReview.com.au plus the relevant trade directories — not a blast to
hundreds of listing sites, which does nothing.