Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

Apply ../00-blog-writing-guardrails/SKILL.md first; its gates apply to every post before this skill's guidance.

1. Direct-answer gate

For every question the post targets, answer it in a short, self-contained statement — typically 40-60 words — placed immediately under the question's own heading, before any elaboration, caveats, or background; Google's own systems select and elevate a passage for a featured snippet or related-questions ("People Also Ask") group based on how well the page answers the query, and a scanning reader or extraction system must be able to lift that passage on its own. [GOOGLE-SNIPPET-01]
Do not bury the direct answer after a story, definition of terms, or throat-clearing; a passage that requires reading prior paragraphs to make sense is a worse extraction candidate. [GOOGLE-SNIPPET-01]
Google explicitly states there is no markup or declaration that forces a page to become a featured snippet or PAA entry — selection is algorithmic only, and a low max-snippet setting does not reliably prevent selection either; write for a good answer, not for a guaranteed placement. [GOOGLE-SNIPPET-01]

Phrase headings for question-driven sections as the actual question a reader or answer engine would ask ("How does X affect Y?" not "Overview of X and Y"), so the heading itself functions as the query match and the paragraph beneath it functions as the answer. [GOOGLE-SNIPPET-01]
Keep these question headings in strict, real heading-level nesting per the guardrails' accessibility gate; a bolded question in body text is not a substitute for a real heading. [W3C-WCAG-01]
Group related questions a reader is likely to ask next under their own headings rather than one long combined answer; Google surfaces People Also Ask as a related-questions group alongside featured snippets, and single-question sections match that pattern. [GOOGLE-SNIPPET-01]

Do not add FAQPage structured data to blog posts expecting a rich result: Google's own documentation states the FAQ rich result feature stopped appearing in Google Search as of May 7, 2026, and the feature's dedicated documentation has been removed; markup that once produced expandable Q&A rich results in the SERP no longer does. [GOOGLE-FAQPAGE-01]
Before the deprecation, Google had already restricted FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites — most blogs were never eligible even when the feature was active. [GOOGLE-FAQPAGE-01]
Treat any existing FAQPage markup as inert for search-appearance purposes; removing it is not required by these gates, but do not write new FAQ sections on the assumption that adding the schema will win a rich result. [GOOGLE-FAQPAGE-01]