How should a web page be written so an AI can quote it?
Short answer
Put the question in the heading and the complete answer in the first sentence under it, in plain words that make sense with nothing around them. Name the subject instead of writing "it", state facts specifically, and keep the text in the page's own code. This improves the odds of being quoted. It doesn't secure a quote.
Write the page so the answer sits in the first sentence under a heading that states the question, in words that still make sense when lifted out on their own. An assistant that quotes a page takes a sentence or two and leaves the rest behind. If those sentences depend on the paragraph above them, they are hard to use. Writing this way improves your odds. It doesn’t oblige any assistant to quote you.
Write sentences that survive being lifted out
A quotable sentence names its subject and finishes its thought. The usual faults are pronouns with nothing to point to, answers that hedge, and answers buried under a preamble. These examples are invented to show the difference:
| Hard to quote | Easy to quote |
|---|---|
| “It depends, but we usually suggest doing it every year.” | “A gas furnace should be inspected once a year, ideally in the fall before the heating season.” |
| “We offer great service across the whole region.” | “We repair and replace tankless water heaters in Carlsbad, Encinitas and Oceanside.” |
| “Many homeowners wonder about this. There are several factors to consider.” | “A main sewer line clog usually shows up as several drains backing up at once.” |
The test is whether a sentence can be read aloud to a stranger with no context, as the ones in the right-hand column can.
Give each question its own heading
Word the heading the way a customer asks it: “How long does a water heater last?” and not “Longevity considerations”. Keep to one question per heading and put the answer directly beneath. Don’t open the section with the company’s history or a welcome. A question that needs a long answer deserves a separate page. I write this site to the same pattern, which comes from Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO.
Be specific and checkable
“Quality workmanship at fair prices” appears on every contractor’s site, so there’s no reason to take it from yours. A specific statement gets quoted because it adds something. Say which services, which cities, which days, what the job involves and what you don’t do. Keep those facts identical to your Google Business Profile and other listings. A page that says you serve Poway while your listings say otherwise gives a machine two versions to choose between.
Leave out claims nobody can verify. “The best plumber in San Diego” is an opinion about yourself. A reader discounts it, and I’d expect software to do the same.
Keep the answer in the page’s own text
The answer should be in the HTML, the code the page is delivered as, and readable without anything else loading. Text inside an image or a PDF is a poor bet. So is text in a video, and text that only appears after a script runs or a tab is clicked. Whether a particular AI crawler runs scripts varies, and I can’t verify it for each one, so the safe choice is plain text in the page. That uncertainty is the short version of whether AI assistants can read a website built with JavaScript.
Structured data, which is part of entity and schema work, helps with a different job: stating business facts such as name, phone and service area in a form software can parse.
What good writing can’t do
It can’t make an assistant choose your page. Many pages answer the same question, and the choice changes from day to day. The companies behind these products don’t publish how the choice is made.
So I treat it as something to test. I record whether a page is cited for a set of prompts, rewrite one section, and check again about two weeks later. If the change made no difference, I say so. And a quote for a how-to question is a different thing from a recommendation when someone asks who to call.