Lay out a page so an assistant can lift its key facts and quote them accurately.
Ask an AI assistant how far ahead to order a custom birthday cake in Singapore, then read its reply closely. Note which sentences it quotes word for word and which websites it credits for them.
The quoted parts are usually short and plain: a sentence or two that answers the question with nothing around it. They often come from a page whose heading asks that same question. Other bakers' pages may say the same thing and still not get quoted, because their answer is hidden. Sometimes it sits in the fourth paragraph of a story about the baker's first cake. Sometimes it is printed on a menu image that the assistant cannot read.
The goal is writing that lets an assistant find your answer, lift it and quote it accurately. The approach extends the work on page structure in Lesson 3.2, "Headings, body copy and the words people use". None of these methods is a trick, and every change also helps a person who is skimming your page in a hurry.
If a section of your page answers something customers ask, use that question as the heading, or a close version of it, phrased the way your readers would say it. Put the plain answer in the first one or two sentences below the heading. Background, examples and caveats come after.
Mei Ling bakes custom cakes from home in Punggol (an invented example). The heading on her ordering page was "Planning ahead". Below it, a paragraph started with how hectic the festive season gets, and only the last line gave the answer: about two weeks for most designs.
Her new heading reads "How far ahead should I order a custom cake?" The first sentence now tells customers to order at least two weeks before your date for most designs, and four weeks for tiered or sculpted cakes or for any date near Hari Raya, Deepavali, Christmas or Chinese New Year. Her explanations and the finer detail sit below that sentence.
Aim for a self-contained answer: an opening sentence that still gives the reader a correct and complete answer if an assistant quotes it with nothing else. A line like "As mentioned, it depends" needs the paragraph before it to mean anything, so quoting it helps nobody. Check your page by reading each opening sentence in isolation. Where one relies on "this", "it" or "as above", rewrite it to name the thing it refers to.
Lesson 8.2, "How other AI assistants find and cite sources", looked at how assistants find their sources. Google, for example, says its AI features may run several related searches, find supporting web pages and show links to those pages next to the generated response. Google's description covers only its own AI features, not how other AI assistants work, so check each assistant's own documentation for how it handles sources. A short answer that stands alone, under a heading that matches the question, gives any of them clear material to find and link to.
Assistants and search engines read text far more reliably than images. Facts are easy to miss or misread when they live in the prices on a menu photo, a timetable saved as an image, an important figure inside a PDF brochure, or a video with no text version. Write the facts that matter as ordinary text on the page. An image that helps people can stay, as long as the same information also appears in text.
Every figure you use should come with its source. Say whose number it is and when it applies. A financial adviser could tell readers that current CPF contribution rates are listed on the CPF Board website, naming the CPF Board as the source without quoting a rate that will change. Readers trust a passage more when it names a source, and an assistant can then attribute the fact correctly instead of repeating it as general truth.
Figures that change need care, in line with the fact rules in this course. If a page says "the current rate is" and was last checked two years ago, assistants will quote the old rate.
When an assistant comes across your business on several sites, it has to work out whether they all refer to one business. Keep your business name, location and services the same on your website, Google Business Profile, directories and social media pages. Lesson 7.2, "Set up and complete your business profile", covered this for name, address and phone number.
Mei Ling's website calls the business "MLB Cakes", her profile calls it "Mei Ling's Bakes", and one directory has "Mei Ling Home Bakery Punggol". With three names, people and machines alike find it harder to link the listings. She needs to choose one name and use it on every listing. The same goes for how you describe your main services: use the same words on each page, so a search such as "custom birthday cakes in Punggol" matches what every source says about you.
For most questions, many pages already give the same general answer. If ten pages all say "order two weeks ahead", an assistant has no particular reason to pick yours. Your own experience offers something it can cite and cannot get anywhere else. Lesson 5.2, "Add what the current results are missing", dealt with original information and first-hand detail, and they count here for the same reason.
Mei Ling could add a line from her own books: her records for last year show that about half of custom cake orders came in less than two weeks ahead. Content of these kinds makes your page the obvious one to cite:
a specific example from your own work a figure from your own records, with the source stated a clear explanation of a local detail, such as how festive periods affect ordering in Singapore
After writing the answer, go through it line by line. Read each opening sentence alone and swap "this", "it" and "as above" for the words they stand in for. Leave the detail, background, examples and caveats under the answer. Then confirm that key facts appear in text as well as in any images, PDFs or video, that every figure shows its source and date and is still current, and that your business name and service wording match your other listings.
Pick one section of a priority page that answers a question customers ask. Rewrite the heading as the question in their words. Write a two-sentence answer that stands on its own and names the source of any figure. Then keep the detail and examples beneath. The activity below asks you to do exactly that for one section.
Pick one section of a priority page. Make the question its heading, then write a two-sentence answer that makes sense by itself and names its source.
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