There are two writing styles in conflict on most marketing websites. One was designed to seduce a busy human — punchy hero, emotive subhead, "discover the way you work" energy. The other is what an AI assistant actually needs to lift a usable fact: a clean question, a direct answer, named entities, structured markup.
The good news is these two styles do not actually fight. You can write copy that feels human and is also trivially extractable by a language model. You just have to be more deliberate about the structure underneath the prose. This post is the template pack we use internally at doubleBaRRiL — three patterns, each with sample copy and JSON-LD, that you can lift onto your own pages this week.
The principle, in one sentence
Write like a human, structure like a machine.
Humans want clarity, voice, and a sense of who is talking. Machines want anchors: named entities, declarative facts, headings that match the question, and schema that tells them what kind of page they are looking at. Done well, the same paragraph satisfies both audiences. Done badly, you either sound like a robot reading a brochure, or you wrap genuinely useful information in so much marketing fluff that no model can find it.
Three things make the difference:
Answer first, context second. The direct answer to the page's question sits in the first 100 words.
Named, predictable sections. Headings match the sub-questions a curious reader (or a model) would ask next.
Schema that names the entity.
FAQPage,HowTo,Product,Service— whatever fits — applied with care, not sprinkled.
Template 1 — Hero Q&A (for FAQ and service pages)
The Hero Q&A is the workhorse. Use it on any page that exists to answer a specific question — a service page, a glossary entry, a comparison, a "what is X" article.
Structure:
H1 in question form. "What is technical SEO?"
Direct answer (1–2 sentences, 40–60 words). No throat-clearing. State the thing.
One supporting paragraph. Add the nuance, the "why this matters," the context the direct answer left out.
Two bullets with concrete examples. Specific names, numbers, or scenarios.
Related links. Two or three internal links to deeper pages. This is what AI assistants follow to confirm you are a real source with depth.
Sample copy:
What is technical SEO?
Technical SEO is the engineering layer of search optimisation — the set of crawlability, indexability, rendering, performance and structured-data improvements that let search engines and AI assistants read your site cleanly. Unlike on-page SEO, it is invisible to users but decisive for rankings.
For most South African businesses, technical SEO is the quiet lever behind everything else. You can publish brilliant content, but if Googlebot cannot render your JavaScript or your Core Web Vitals are red, none of it ranks. Fix the technical layer first; content compounds on top of it.
Example A: A retailer with 12,000 products discovered 4,200 were blocked by an inherited
robots.txtrule. Lifting the block recovered R1.2m in monthly indexed inventory.Example B: A SaaS landing page moved from LCP 4.1s to 1.6s by inlining critical CSS and deferring the analytics bundle. Sign-ups rose 18% in 30 days.
See also: Core Web Vitals, Schema for service pages, Robots.txt audits.
JSON-LD snippet to ship with this template:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "FAQPage",
"mainEntity": [{
"@type": "Question",
"name": "What is technical SEO?",
"acceptedAnswer": {
"@type": "Answer",
"text": "Technical SEO is the engineering layer of search optimisation — crawlability, indexability, rendering, performance and structured-data improvements that let search engines and AI assistants read your site cleanly."
}
}]
}
Template 2 — How-To (for procedural and tutorial pages)
The How-To pattern is for any page that teaches a process: "How to claim your Google Business Profile," "How to set up GA4 conversion events," "How to write a brief that doesn't get re-briefed."
Structure:
Quick summary (2–3 sentences). What the reader will achieve and roughly how long it takes.
Estimated time and cost. Numeric, even if approximate. Models love numbers.
Numbered steps with brief explanations. Each step has a verb-first title and one or two sentences of detail.
Common errors. A short "watch out for" block. This is genuinely useful and also citation gold.
Recommended tools. Named, linked.
Sample structure:
How to claim a Google Business Profile in South Africa
Claiming your GBP takes 10–15 minutes and costs nothing. You will need a Google account, the business's physical address, and a phone or postcard for verification.
Estimated time: 15 minutes (plus 3–14 days for postcard verification). Cost: Free.
Search for your business. Go to business.google.com and search by name and suburb. If it exists, click "claim." If not, choose "Add your business to Google."
Enter your category and address. Pick the closest primary category — this is the single biggest ranking lever.
Verify ownership. Phone, email, or postcard depending on what Google offers. Postcards are slowest but most reliable.
Complete every field. Hours, services, attributes, photos, description, area served. Empty fields cost rankings.
Post weekly. GBP posts are an active ranking signal.
Common errors: picking too broad a category, using a PO Box as the address, listing inconsistent NAP across other directories.
Recommended tools: Google Business Profile (free), BrightLocal (citation tracking), Whitespark (local citation finder).
JSON-LD snippet:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "HowTo",
"name": "How to claim a Google Business Profile in South Africa",
"totalTime": "PT15M",
"estimatedCost": { "@type": "MonetaryAmount", "currency": "ZAR", "value": "0" },
"step": [
{ "@type": "HowToStep", "name": "Search for your business", "text": "Go to business.google.com and search by name and suburb." },
{ "@type": "HowToStep", "name": "Enter your category and address", "text": "Pick the closest primary category." },
{ "@type": "HowToStep", "name": "Verify ownership", "text": "Phone, email, or postcard depending on what Google offers." }
]
}
Template 3 — Comparison / Best-Of
Comparison pages — "[Product A] vs [Product B]," "Best CRMs for South African SMBs" — are heavily quoted by AI assistants because they pre-aggregate decisions the user is already trying to make.
Structure:
Short summary verdict. Three sentences. Who should pick what.
Comparison table. Feature on the left, options across the top. Cells should be specific (numbers, yes/no, named features), not vague.
One-paragraph verdict per option. Plain language: "Pick X if you... Pick Y if you..."
Methodology and sources. What you tested, when, and against what criteria. This is the trust signal that earns the citation.
The table is the part AI assistants reach for. Keep it short (5–8 rows) and use the same units in every cell.
Practical guardrails
A few rules of thumb that keep the templates useful instead of formulaic:
Use the template, then break it. The structure is scaffolding. Once your direct answer and key sections are in place, write the connecting prose like a human — voice, opinion, the occasional joke.
Schema matches reality. If your page is genuinely a procedural how-to, ship
HowTo. If it is an opinion piece dressed as a how-to, do not — Google does penalise mismatched markup.Author and date. Both templates assume you ship an author byline and
datePublished/dateModified. These are E-E-A-T signals models actively look for.One template per page. Mixing patterns confuses both readers and parsers. Pick the dominant intent of the page and commit.
What to do this week
Pick five pages on your site that already get traffic — service pages, glossary entries, one or two high-performing blog posts. Rewrite the opening 100 words of each one to fit the Hero Q&A pattern. Add a single FAQ block at the bottom with two real questions and answers. Ship the FAQPage schema.
That is one afternoon of work. The compounding effect — across both Google rankings and AI citations — usually shows up within a fortnight.
If you want us to do the audit and rewrite for you, we run a fixed-scope package: three templates applied to five priority pages over two working days. Reach out via the contact form on this site.