Writing the Paragraph That Gets Quoted

What being lifted requires

Anything that extracts an answer from a page takes a block of text and shows it somewhere else.

For that to work, the block has to make sense with nothing around it.

Most well-written paragraphs fail that test, because they refer to the sentence before, use a pronoun for something named earlier, or assume the heading above.

Which means writing to be quoted is a different craft from writing to be read, and the two can be done at once.

The shape that works

• A question as the heading.
• The answer immediately below.
• Forty to sixty words.
• No it, this, or they pointing backwards.
• The subject named inside the paragraph.
• A specific figure if there is one.

The fourth is what most paragraphs fail. Starting with it usually takes about three days is meaningless lifted out; starting with replacing a cedar fence panel usually takes about three days works anywhere.

Name the thing inside the answer

Which is the single most useful habit here.

The heading says what the question is, and the paragraph should repeat enough of it to stand alone.

That feels slightly redundant when reading the page in order, and it reads perfectly naturally to somebody arriving at that paragraph directly.

Since a growing share of readers arrive at a specific point rather than at the top, that redundancy is doing work.

It also helps anybody skimming, who reads headings and the first line beneath each.

So the cost is small and the benefit applies to several different readers at once.

A worked example

A business had a page answering a common question in a well-written flowing section that built up to the answer over four paragraphs.

Nothing was ever shown from it.

They restructured it: the question as a heading, then a fifty-word paragraph giving the answer with the price range and the timescale in it, then the four original paragraphs underneath as the explanation.

The paragraph began appearing above the results for that question within about two months.

Traffic to the page roughly doubled and the page was better to read, since the answer now came first.

Nothing had been removed.

Ranges and figures survive extraction

Which is worth knowing when choosing what to put in the paragraph.

A specific number is the thing somebody wanted, so a paragraph containing one is more useful lifted out than one containing an argument.

Give the range and what moves it in the same sentence, since a bare figure invites a wrong expectation.

Between four hundred and eight hundred dollars depending on access works better than about six hundred.

And put the units, the currency, and the timeframe in, since none of that survives from elsewhere on the page.

Lists and tables get lifted too

A second form worth using.

Where the answer is genuinely a sequence or a set, a short list under a question heading is frequently shown in preference to a paragraph.

Keep the items short, parallel in structure, and complete in themselves.

A table works for comparisons of two or three things across the same handful of attributes.

What does not work is a list of eleven items where each needs a sentence of explanation, since that is a section rather than an answer.

Do it on the questions you own

Rather than everywhere.

Pick the four or five questions where you have something specific to say that nobody else does, which is usually your prices, your timescales, and your local requirements.

Those are the ones where being the quoted source is worth having and where you can genuinely be the best answer.

Restructuring twenty pages produces twenty paragraphs competing with better sources.

Four done properly is a better use of an afternoon.

Being quoted is not always a click

Worth acknowledging honestly.

Somebody who gets the answer above the results may not visit your site at all.

For a factual question with a short answer, that is a real possibility and it is the trade being made.

What you get instead is your business named as the source at the moment somebody was deciding, which for a local trade is frequently worth more than the visit.

And where the answer prompts a follow-up question, which prices usually do, the click happens anyway.

The questions most at risk of costing you the visit are the ones with a single flat answer, which are rarely the ones a trade competes on.

Check whether somebody else already holds it

Worth doing before writing, since it changes whether the effort is worth making.

Search the question and look at whether an answer is already being shown above the results, and where it came from.

Where it is a national site with an answer that is not specific to anywhere, a local business with a real figure has a genuine chance of displacing it.

Where it is already a competitor down the road with a better answer than yours, the effort is better spent on a question they have not covered.

That check takes a minute per question and it is how you choose which four to do.

The counter-case

This can be overdone.

A page written entirely as extractable blocks reads as a document rather than as something a person wrote, which loses the voice that makes a small business page persuasive.

Some subjects also do not have a fifty-word answer, and compressing them produces something misleading.

And the placement is not something you control, so the effort should be worth making for the reader regardless of whether anything is ever shown.

Take four questions, put each as a heading, write a self-contained fifty-word answer beneath, and keep the explanation underneath it.

The afternoon

1. Pick four questions you can answer best.
2. Use each as a heading.
3. Answer in fifty words.
4. Name the subject inside the answer.
5. Remove backward pronouns.
6. Include a range and what moves it.
7. Keep the explanation below.

Step five is the mechanical check that most paragraphs fail, and it takes one read through with a specific thing to look for.

What to put in the answer is covered in showing the work behind an answer.

Frequently asked questions

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