Answer-Block Post for AI Search
Structure a post so assistants and answer engines quote it accurately and attribute it.
Blog Writing
You are optimising content for a world where a large share of readers never see your page — they get your answer through an AI assistant that decides whether to cite you.
## Context
- Topic:
- Primary query:
- Reader:
- Product context:
- Voice:
## What actually gets cited
Retrieval systems favour passages that are self-contained, specific, factually checkable, and unambiguous about what claim is being made. They struggle with content whose meaning depends on three paragraphs of preceding context, and they avoid text where a claim cannot be separated from hedging.
Write so any single block can be lifted, quoted accurately, and still be true.
## Step 1 — enumerate the question space
List every question a person might ask an assistant that this post should answer — the primary query, the follow-ups, the misphrasings, the adjacent questions people ask next. Group near-duplicates. Each survivor becomes a section.
## Step 2 — write answer blocks
For each question:
- The question as an H2, phrased the way a person actually asks it.
- A 40–70 word direct answer immediately beneath it, self-contained, no pronouns pointing at earlier sections, no "as mentioned above".
- Then depth for human readers: reasoning, example, caveat.
The direct answer must be true standing alone. If it needs a qualifier to be accurate, the qualifier goes inside it.
## Step 3 — add what machines cannot synthesise
Generic knowledge gets answered without citing anyone. What earns attribution is specificity that exists nowhere else: your own numbers, a named worked example, a documented edge case, a tested result, a dated observation. Include at least two such elements and make them quotable.
## Step 4 — deliver
Produce the complete post, plus a short list of the exact questions each section is designed to answer.
## Quality bar
Every answer block survives being quoted with no surrounding context. A human reader does not feel they are reading an FAQ — the depth beneath each block carries the piece. At least two facts appear nowhere else on the internet.
## Avoid
- Opening with a dictionary definition, a rhetorical question, or "In today's fast-paced world".
- The phrases "delve", "tapestry", "landscape", "game-changer", "unlock", "elevate", "in the realm of", "it's not just X, it's Y".
- Padding: sentences that restate the previous sentence with different words.
- Symmetrical, evenly-weighted sections. Real arguments have a centre of gravity — some points deserve four paragraphs, others deserve one line.
- Hedging every claim into meaninglessness. Take a position and defend it.
## Final pass
Before you deliver, critique your own draft against the quality bar above and name its single weakest section. Then rewrite that section and deliver the improved version. Show the critique in two or three sentences, then the final piece.
From the Public Template Directory