How to Write Website Copy When You Know the Work

Your designer asked for the words. That was a fortnight ago. The document is still open on the laptop, still empty except for a heading you typed and deleted four times, and the whole project is now waiting on you. The frustrating part is that you are not short of material. You could explain this work to somebody in a pub for twenty minutes without pausing. What has gone wrong is that the moment it has to be typed into a box labelled Home Page, it stops sounding like you and starts sounding like everybody else. That is a solvable problem, and the fix is to stop trying to write.

The blank document is a bad starting point because it asks you to do two hard things at once: decide what to say, and say it in a voice you do not normally write in.

Split them. The deciding part is easy for you, because you do this work. The saying part is where you are stuck, and it is the part that can be sidestepped.

The technique that unblocks nearly everybody: pick one page, open your phone's voice recorder, and explain that thing to an imaginary customer for three or four minutes. Not to a search engine. To the person who rang you last Tuesday and asked.

Then transcribe it, or have your phone transcribe it. What comes back is messy, repetitive and full of asides. It is also, almost always, better than what you would have typed, because it is specific and it sounds like a person.

From there the job is editing, and editing is a much easier task than writing. Cut the repetition. Break it into sections. Add a heading to each. You now have a draft that says something only your business could say.

Do this once and every page afterwards gets faster, because you stop rediscovering the same details.

Write down, in a single document, the plain facts of the business. The services you actually deliver, in the words customers use rather than the trade terms. The area you genuinely cover. The sequence a job follows, from first contact to finished. What is included and what is not. Qualifications, licences or memberships you can prove. Your availability. How pricing works, even if it is "we quote after seeing it".

Then add the questions. The ones people actually ask before they book, in their words. You already know these because you answer them weekly, and they are the most valuable thing in the document.

Then the evidence: photographs you own and have permission to use, examples you are allowed to describe, anything that shows the work rather than describing it.

Keep it as a working file rather than a one-off. Google's own guidance on helpful content asks whether a page shows original information, first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge, and a fact bank is where those come from. It is also what makes the next update cheap instead of another blank document.

This step takes twenty minutes and it prevents most of the trouble a website can cause you.

Go through the fact bank and mark each statement.

Can substantiate. You can prove it, today, with a document or a photograph. Certifications, years trading, the services you offer, the areas you cover.

Needs qualification. True with a condition attached. "Same-day where we have availability" rather than "same-day service". "Most jobs completed in a day" rather than "one-day installation".

Do not claim. Anything about results, comparative superiority, safety, health, legal or financial outcomes, warranties, or another party's work that you cannot evidence. Also anything about a competitor.

That third pile is where a page becomes a liability rather than an asset. It is also, frustratingly, where the most attractive sentences tend to live, which is exactly why sorting them deliberately beats catching them later.

The middle pile is the one that improves your writing, because a qualified claim is more specific than an unqualified one, and specific is what makes a page sound like a real business.

A page has a job. When it has no job it turns into a description of the business, which is the thing every competitor also has.

A service page helps somebody decide whether you do their thing, and it needs: who it is for, the situation it addresses, what is included, how the work proceeds, what you need from them, the constraints, and what happens next.

A home page helps somebody decide whether they are in the right place, quickly, and route themselves onward.

An about page helps somebody decide whether to trust you, which is a question about people and history rather than services.

A contact page helps somebody actually reach you, and it needs to answer what happens after they press the button.

Write the questions in the order a person would ask them, then answer each one under its own heading. Descriptive headings help a reader skim and they help search systems understand the page, and Google's guidance is that its systems understand relationships beyond exact terms, so a heading written for a human is not a heading wasted.

What does not go on a page: a paragraph that could appear on any competitor's site with the name swapped. If you can substitute another business's name and the sentence still reads correctly, it is doing nothing.

Once you have a draft, three passes will get it most of the way, and they are different jobs done at different times.

The factual pass, done by you or whoever knows the work. Is every claim in the right pile? Are the numbers right? Are the qualifications current?

The plain-language pass, done by somebody outside the business. Give it to a friend or family member who does not do what you do and ask them to tell you what you offer and what to do next. Where they hesitate is where the page is unclear. The federal design system guidance treats comprehensibility as something to test rather than assume, and this is the small-business version of that test.

The implementation pass, done once the words are in the actual layout. This one gets skipped and it matters, because a paragraph that reads perfectly in a document can end up next to a button labelled something else, under a heading that changes its meaning, or beside an image that contradicts it. Check the buttons, the form labels, the headings and the small print around them.

While you are there, check what a form actually promises. If the button says "Get your free quote today" and the reality is that you reply within two working days with some questions, the page has set an expectation you have to meet.

There is no standard schedule for this, and the variables that control it are ones you can name: how many pages, how complex the subject, how quickly the person with authority can answer, how good the source material is, whether anything needs legal review, and how many rounds of changes.

The dependency chain is the useful version. Fact gathering cannot finish until one person can answer the questions. Drafting cannot finish until the page jobs are agreed. Approval cannot finish until somebody with authority has verified the claims. Placement cannot finish until the layout is stable.

On cost, one sourced benchmark exists. The Editorial Freelancers Association's 2026 rate chart, based on a survey of work performed in 2025, reports for work-for-hire business and marketing writing a median range of 32.0 to 87.5 cents per word and $65.00 to $75.00 per hour, with research at $47.50 to $60.00 per hour. At 1,000 approved words the per-word range works out to $320 to $875 before separately scoped research, interviews, revisions, legal review, design or placement.

That is a survey of freelance rates, not a local price list and not a quote. The Association itself notes rates vary with the type of work, turnaround, expertise and experience. What pushes a project up is original research or interviews, regulated fact-checking, a complicated offer, more pages, more people approving, more revision rounds, or a rush.

Writing it yourself removes the fee. It does not remove the time, and it does not remove the need for the factual review.

The knowledge-dependent half cannot be outsourced, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.

Nobody outside your business can invent the sequence a job actually follows, the questions your customers actually ask, the thing you decline to do and why, or the detail that makes your work different from the next quote. A writer can shape it, order it and sharpen it. They cannot supply it.

So, the parts that are yours regardless: answering a structured set of questions, assembling what already exists, listing real customer questions, recording the spoken explanation, naming the terms customers use, describing the sequence, verifying the claims, and choosing the examples you are permitted to use.

Where to stop and get help is not about writing ability. Stop when a claim carries legal or material risk to a customer: regulated services, safety, health, finance, legal outcomes, credentials, comparative superiority, customer results, warranties, or privacy practices. Those need a qualified review rather than a confident sentence.

And do not copy a competitor's wording. The Copyright Office distinguishes protected original expression from unprotected facts and ideas, and website content containing enough original authorship can be registered. Beyond the legal point, copied copy describes their business, which is the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

The honest position is neither that these tools are useless nor that they solve this.

They are genuinely useful once you have the fact bank: tidying a transcript, suggesting a heading, cutting a paragraph in half, telling you where a sentence is unclear. That is real help with the part you find hard.

They are not useful before the facts exist, because what comes back is the generic page you were afraid of writing. Worse, it will be confidently specific about things that are not true of your business, and those sentences read perfectly well, which is what makes them dangerous.

So, the rule is simple to apply. Supply the facts first. Check every sentence that comes back against the three piles. Delete anything you cannot prove, however good it sounds.

Google's guidance warns against extensive automation aimed primarily at manipulating rankings and asks whether a page leaves the reader satisfied. The workable standard is not whether a tool was involved. It is whether you can explain, evidence and stand behind every claim on the page.

There is no local rule about how a business writes its pages, and adding a town name to a generic sentence does not make it local.

What does make a page local is the specific and true. If you belong to the Greater Arlington Chamber of Commerce, which describes serving more than 1,000 members and runs a Keep It Local directory, say so and get the current name right. If you have taken part in an Arlington Economic Development Corporation cohort, hold a local permit, or work regularly in a particular district, those are facts a reader recognises.

The City of Arlington's business portal links small business assistance, economic development and planning information, and the Veterans Business Outreach Center hosted at the University of Texas at Arlington is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the Small Business Administration. Those are places to check a fact or find advice, not things to claim a connection to.

If none of it applies to you, leave it out. A page that names a real street, a real district and a genuine local constraint sounds local. A page that says "proudly serving Arlington and the surrounding areas" sounds like every other page.

The reason this was painful is that everything was gathered from nothing. Doing it once badly means doing it again from nothing next year.

Keep the fact bank as a live file, with the claims still sorted into their three piles and the source of each proof noted. When a service changes, update the fact bank first and the pages second.

Keep the customer questions list running. Every time you answer something new on the phone, add it. That list is your next set of pages, and it is free.

Keep the approved claims list separate and dated, so that when a certification lapses or a service stops, somebody can find every page that mentions it.

You will know it is working when the next page takes an afternoon rather than a fortnight, because the deciding was already done and only the editing is left.

How do I start when the page is blank?

Do not start by writing. Record yourself explaining that one topic to a customer for three or four minutes, transcribe it, then edit. Editing is a much easier task than writing.

How long should a page be?

Long enough to answer the questions somebody asks before they act, and no longer. The list of questions decides the length, not a word count.

Should I write for search engines or for people?

For people, using the words your customers use. Google describes its systems as understanding relationships beyond exact terms, so a heading written for a human reader is not a wasted heading.

Can I use AI to write it?

As a drafting aid after you have supplied the facts, checked sentence by sentence. Used before the facts exist, it produces the generic page you were trying to avoid, and it will be confidently wrong about your business.

What should I never put on the page?

Anything you cannot prove. Results claims, comparative superiority, and unqualified promises about safety, health, finance or legal outcomes. If a claim carries real risk to a customer, get it reviewed.

Is it worth paying somebody?

It can be, and it does not remove your half of the work. A survey of freelance rates puts business and marketing writing at roughly 32 to 87.5 cents a word, and no writer can invent the facts only you hold.

The document is empty because it is asking you to do the wrong task. You already hold everything the page needs. What is missing is a way of getting it out that does not require you to write in a voice you never use.

So, collect the facts, sort the claims, decide what each page has to establish, then talk it through and edit what comes back. Give the result to somebody outside the business and watch where they hesitate.

Keep the fact bank afterwards, because the reason this was hard was starting from nothing, and you only have to do that once.

If you would rather hand over the shaping and keep the knowledge part, Arlington Website Designer works with businesses around Arlington, TX and the interview is usually the whole job: you talk, we sort out the order and the sentences, you approve every claim. Tell us which page is stuck through the contact page, and you will get back the questions we would ask you first.