Of every page a business can build, one matches the way engines assemble answers so exactly that it functions as a citation machine: the FAQ page. A question in customer words, a complete answer directly under it, repeated. That is the format engines lift from, which is why a good FAQ page gets quoted while whole websites get skipped.

Most FAQ pages are decorative. Here is what separates the one that gets quoted.

Real questions, not marketing questions

"Why choose us?" is not a question anyone asks an engine. The Day 6 questions are: the ones customers say on the phone, with the worried parts left in. What does it cost. How long does it take. Do you handle my situation. What happens if it goes wrong. The engine is answering those exact questions every day; your page has to ask them to be the source.

Answers that stand alone

Two to four sentences, complete, self-contained: the Day 10 four marks applied one answer at a time. Each answer gets read with no page around it, so it carries the specific: the range, the timeframe, the yes or no with its condition. "It depends, call us" is an answer a machine cannot use and a person does not believe.

One question per section, question as heading

The heading tells the engine which question the passage answers. Ten questions stacked in one paragraph blur into nothing liftable. One heading, one answer, then the next.

Plain text on the page

The Day 7 rule, and it kills more FAQ pages than any other: an accordion that hides answers behind a click can hide them from crawlers that never click. If your FAQ collapses, make sure the text is in the page itself, readable with scripts off. What a machine cannot read, it cannot quote.

Commit

The answers that get quoted are the ones that say something. A price range with its honest conditions. A real timeframe. A plain no where the answer is no. Committing is what makes the passage worth lifting, and it is also what makes a stranger trust the page.

Do this today

Take the five questions you hear most and write the liftable answer for the first two. Put them on one page titled the way a person would say it, "Questions about [what you do]," and add the rest this week. Five real questions, five committed answers, one plain page. That is the most quotable thing a small business can build in an afternoon.

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