Answer-first formatting
Answer-first formatting puts the direct answer at the top of a page or section, with the detail and reasoning after it.
Answer-first formatting means putting the answer at the top. A page or section opens with the plain reply to the question it's about, then goes into the detail, the reasons and the exceptions.
Newspapers have worked this way for a long time: the main news first, the background after. It suits busy readers, and it suits AI platforms, which often pull a few sentences out of a page to answer a question.
Why it helps with AI answers
When a platform reads your page to answer a question, it's looking for the part that answers it. If the answer is in the first lines under a clear heading, it's easy to find and easy to quote. If it's buried in the fifth paragraph after a story about your founder, the platform may take its answer from a page that got to the point.
For example, take a page called "How long does Fernhill Coffee take to deliver?" One version opens with two paragraphs about the company's love of fresh coffee. The other opens with: "We deliver in 1 to 2 working days across mainland UK, and 3 to 5 days to the Highlands and islands." The second one gives a platform exactly what it needs.
How to do it
- Use the question as a heading, the way a customer would ask it
- Answer it in the first sentence or two under that heading
- Put the detail, examples and caveats after the answer
- Keep each section about one question, so its opening stands on its own
None of this means cutting the depth. The detail still matters, to people and to the platforms. It just comes second.
In AnswerOrbit
Page checks test a page against a prompt you choose. Two of the eight checks are about this: whether the prompt appears in a heading, and whether the page has an opening that answers it. We also run the checks on up to five pages the platforms cite for that prompt, so you can compare.