Write your website for people, not for robots

Many entrepreneurs think that a website becomes discoverable through clever tricks: repeating certain words frequently, adding technical terms, or writing in a particularly persuasive way. This is a misconception that has been circulating for years, and with the arrival of AI assistants it only becomes more important to let go of it. Both Google and AI assistants like ChatGPT try to understand what your business does and what you do precisely. They do not read your text the way a human does, with a sense for tone or persuasiveness, but they search for facts. What you make. For whom. Where you are located. What it costs roughly. How someone can get in touch. If your website is full of sentences like "we provide high-quality tailor-made solutions for the modern entrepreneur", a visitor gets little from that, and an AI assistant even less. That sentence says nothing concrete. What kind of solutions? Tailor-made for what? An assistant who has to determine whether to recommend your business to someone asking a question cannot work with such a sentence. What actually works Write down what you literally do, in plain language. A plumber can better write "we repair leaks and install new boilers in the Utrecht region" than "your partner for all installation-technical matters". A surveyor can better write "we assess properties for mortgage purchase, usually completed within a week" than "reliable valuations by experienced specialists". The difference is in specificity. Names, places, services, prices if you want to share them, opening hours, the type of customer you help. These are things that both a person and a system can use to understand what you offer. This does not mean your text has to be boring. You can certainly keep your own tone. But build that tone around concrete information, not instead of it. First the facts, then the style. What you can do today Take the most important page of your website, usually the homepage or the page about your services. Read it as if you knew nothing about your business. Ask yourself: does it state literally what this business does, for whom, and where? Or is it mostly about how good and unique everything is, without making that concrete? If you are in doubt, have someone else read the text who does not know your business. Ask that person to say in one sentence what you do. If they cannot, then there is a good chance that an AI assistant cannot either, and then your business simply will not be mentioned when someone asks a question that has to do with your services. It is not a matter of writing more text or updating more often. It is about clarity. A few good, concrete sentences do more than an entire page full of general promises.