Tag: citations

  • How to write pages that answer engines cite

    How to write pages that answer engines cite

    When an answer engine cites a page, it is usually quoting one or two sentences. Pages get cited because those sentences exist and can be found. That is a writing problem more than a markup problem, and it is fixable in an afternoon.

    State the answer first

    Under every question-shaped heading, the first sentence should be the answer in plain words. Context, caveats and examples come after. Models and people both read top-down, and both leave early.

    Use headings that are questions

    “How long does a WordPress migration take?” is a heading an engine can match to a query. “Timeline” is not. You do not need every heading to be a question, but the ones that carry the main answers should be.

    Show who wrote it and when

    A visible author with a short bio, a visible date, and matching Person and dateModified fields in the page’s structured data. Engines weigh this more than they used to, and the plugin outputs it automatically from the author profile.

    Give them something to quote

    A number, a definition, a short list of steps, a comparison table. Original material is what gets cited; a paraphrase of someone else’s page is what gets skipped. Rankavia’s answer blocks (Key takeaways, Definition, Steps, Pros and cons) exist to make this structure easy to add without touching the theme.

    What about FAQ schema and llms.txt?

    Add them if they are cheap, and do not expect them to rank you. FAQ rich results are gone for most sites, and llms.txt is a courtesy index that some crawlers read and none are obliged to. Rankavia labels both honestly in the interface for that reason.