> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.snowdoughnut.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Article best practices

> What makes an article worth publishing and findable once it is: carrying new information, writing sections that survive being pulled out alone, and maintaining a capped library instead of an expanding one.

Applied guidance for the [article brief](/article-brief) and [article standards](/article-standards). The reasoning behind how search and answer engines pick sources is in [SEO and GEO concepts](/seo-and-geo-concepts).

## Carry information nobody else has

An article that restates what already ranks has no reason to be cited and no reason to be read. Before briefing, name the thing this piece knows that the current results don't: your own data, a mechanism nobody explains properly, a position competitors hedge on, or a worked example at real scale.

If nothing survives that question, the honest answer is not to write it.

## Write each section to answer its own heading

Retrieval systems pull passages, not pages. A section that only makes sense after the two above it is a section that cannot be quoted. Each heading is a question; the paragraph under it answers that question completely enough to stand alone.

This also happens to be how a skimming reader uses the page, so the two goals don't conflict.

## Answer in the first paragraph, then earn the rest

The reader arrived with a question. An article that spends four paragraphs establishing context before answering loses both the reader and the citation. Answer, then explain, then qualify.

## Cite the source next to the claim

A statistic with no traceable source is the one that gets repeated after it stopped being true. Record where each claim came from as you draft, not afterwards from memory. This is the same discipline as the reasons-to-believe table in [positioning](/positioning), for the same reason.

## Cap the library

A capped set of maintained articles outperforms a large set of thin ones, because maintenance is the constraint, not production. The [article library overview](/article-library-overview) sets the hero and supporting tiers and the cap on each.

Every new article is a maintenance commitment, not a one-off cost. Adding a twenty-first hero article means either dropping one or maintaining twenty-one badly.

## Set the review date at publish

[Content decay](/glossary#content-decay) does not announce itself. Traffic drifts down, the question shifts, someone publishes something more current, and nothing in the article changes to signal any of it. The review date set at publish is the only thing that catches it.

The [article maintenance process](/article-maintenance-process) covers the cycle; the [article update checklist](/article-update-checklist) covers the pass itself.

## Link both ways

An article added without inbound links from existing articles is an orphan, and orphans neither rank nor get found internally. When you publish, update the related articles to point at it, not just the other way round.

## The failures

| Failure                                 | Consequence                          |
| :-------------------------------------- | :----------------------------------- |
| No new information                      | Nothing to cite, nothing to rank for |
| Sections that need the previous section | Cannot be quoted or retrieved        |
| Answer buried below context             | Reader leaves before it              |
| Claim with no recorded source           | Repeated long after it expires       |
| Library growing without a cap           | Everything maintained badly          |
| No review date                          | Silent decay                         |
| No inbound internal links               | Orphan page                          |

## Related resources

* [**Write an article**](/write-an-article) The full path from idea to registered article.
* [**Article brief**](/article-brief) The workbook.
* [**Article standards**](/article-standards) Structure, headings, metadata, and links.
* [**SEO and GEO concepts**](/seo-and-geo-concepts) Why articles are structured this way.
* [**Article library overview**](/article-library-overview) The tiers and the cap.