Writing content that gets lifted

An assistant does not quote your page. It quotes a passage. The practical implication: your page is not one document, it is a collection of potential extracts, and each one either works alone or does not.

Habit 1 — Answer in the first sentence

Journalists call it the inverted pyramid. Put the answer first, then the qualification, then the context.

Weak: Many factors influence quoting time, including job complexity, the number of line items, and whether you are working from a template. Once these are considered, most users find the process takes around five minutes.

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Liftable: Quoting a standard job takes about five minutes. Complex jobs with many line items take longer; working from a saved template takes about two.

The second version can be pulled out and used verbatim. The first cannot, because the number is stranded at the end of a sentence that depends on the previous one.

Habit 2 — Use the question as the heading

Your customer types a question. Matching that string in an H2 is the cheapest relevance signal available.

• Not "Pricing structure" → "Do you charge per user?"
• Not "Turnaround" → "How long does a quote take?"
• Not "Compatibility" → "Does it work with Xero?"

You do not have to make every heading a question. One or two per page is enough to change how the page reads to a machine.

Habit 3 — State the specific thing

Vagueness is uncitable. A model will not turn "competitive pricing" into a recommendation, because it cannot defend it.

If you cannot state a specific, that is a business problem before it is a writing problem.

Habit 4 — Make chunks self-contained

Avoid opening a paragraph with "this", "that" or "the above". Each section should survive being read on its own, because that is how it will be read.

Habit 5 — Put facts in text, not in pictures

Price lists, spec tables and comparison charts rendered as images are invisible. If it matters, it goes in HTML. If you want the pretty version too, keep both.

Habit 6 — One page, one job

A page trying to cover three topics matches none of them well. Splitting it gives you three URLs that can each be cited, and three chances to be the best answer.