AI search
the answer-first page template (steal this structure)
Every page on this blog is built from the same template, and this post gives it away, because the structure is not the moat, the honesty is. Use it exactly as written and adapt the voice to your own.
the title is the question
Write the title as the question your buyer actually types or says, in their words, not your category's jargon. One page, one question. If a second question keeps forcing its way in, that is your next page announcing itself, not a subsection.
the first two sentences are the whole answer
Open with the complete, honest answer, compressed. Not context, not a story, not "in today's landscape". The reader gets the verdict immediately, and the machine gets a passage it can lift whole. Everything after the opening exists to justify, evidence and qualify what you just said.
sections that survive being stolen
Each section gets a plain heading, one job, and an opening sentence that states its point. Name your subject in each section rather than trusting pronouns to survive extraction. Where a claim matters, weld its evidence to it in the same sentence: the number, the named source, the example. Three to six sections is the natural range; past that, you are writing two pages.
the honest catch, literally
Include a section that says what your answer does not cover, when the reader should not buy from you, or where the evidence is thin. This is the template's engine, not its decoration. It is rare enough to be memorable to humans, and calibrated enough to read as trustworthy to machines, and it will win you the readers your competitors' brochure pages lose.
close with questions and a person
End with three or four real follow-up questions, each answered in two or three self-contained sentences, marked up as FAQ structured data. Then a named author with a face, a one-line credential and a direct way to reach them. Pages with a human who stands behind them outperform anonymous ones with both audiences that matter.
the meta-note
You are reading the template right now: this page is built from it, as is every post on this blog, which means you can audit whether we follow our own advice before you take it. That test, advice that demonstrates itself, is one you should apply to anyone selling you content strategy, us included.
Common questions
Does every page need all of these parts?
- The opening answer, self-contained sections and named author, always. The FAQ block earns its place on any page answering a question, which should be most of them.
How long should a page built this way be?
- As long as the honest answer requires, usually somewhere between four hundred and a thousand words. The template controls shape, not length.
Will identical structure across pages look repetitive?
- To a skim, perhaps. To a reader with a question, every page rewards them the same way within two sentences, and that consistency is a feature buyers learn to trust.
Tom Claydon
Co-founder of Nudge
Ask Tom anything about search, he answers on WhatsApp.