I use AI most working days. I’d be slower and worse without it.
I also rewrite almost everything it gives me, and there are pages I won’t let it near. That isn’t precious — it’s that after sixteen years of writing copy that has to sell things, I know which sentences are doing the work, and those are exactly the sentences it can’t write.
So here’s the practical version: what to use it for, what to keep away from it, and how to tell whether the copy on your site is costing you enquiries.
What AI is genuinely good at
Not grudgingly — actually good.
- Getting past the blank page. A serviceable first draft in thirty seconds is worth a great deal when the alternative is a document you’ve been avoiding for a fortnight.
- Structure. Ask it how to organise a service page and it’ll give you a sensible skeleton. Structure is a solved problem.
- Variations at volume. Twenty subject lines, fifteen ad headlines, ten ways to say the same thing shorter. Genuinely useful, genuinely fast.
- Tidying your own words. Talk at it for five minutes about what you do, then ask it to organise what you said. This is the best use of it for most business owners and almost nobody does it — because everyone types “write me a website” instead.
- Being an editor. “What’s unclear here?” “What question have I not answered?” “Where would a sceptical buyer stop reading?” It’s a decent, tireless critic.
Where it quietly costs you
The failures aren’t obvious. Nobody reads AI copy and thinks this is AI copy. They read it and feel slightly nothing, and go and get a quote from someone else. Three specific problems:
1. It writes what everyone else has
It’s built from what already exists, so it produces the average of your industry. And the average of your industry is: We’re passionate about delivering exceptional service and building lasting relationships with our clients.
Every competitor you have can put that sentence on their website without lying. Which means it says nothing, occupies the most valuable space you own, and makes you interchangeable at the exact moment somebody was deciding between you and two others.
2. It doesn’t know anything true about you
It can’t know that you’ve never missed an install date in eleven years, that your foreman does the survey personally, or that you’ll tell someone when they don’t need what they’ve asked for. Those are the things that win the job — and they’re exactly the things a language model has no access to.
The specific detail is the persuasion. Everything else is decoration.
3. It hedges, and hedging doesn’t sell
AI writes carefully. It qualifies. It offers balance. Good sales copy takes a position — this is who it’s for, this is who it isn’t, this is what it costs, this is what we’d do. Committing to something is uncomfortable, and models are trained not to be uncomfortable.
The rule I use
AI drafts what you could look up. You supply what only you know.
Which in practice means:
| Use AI freely | Use AI carefully | Write it yourself (or get it written) |
|---|---|---|
| Internal briefs and outlines | Blog posts, once you’ve supplied the substance | Homepage |
| Social captions from your own notes | Product descriptions at volume | Your main service pages |
| Email subject line options | FAQ first drafts | The “about” page |
| Summarising long documents | Ad variations | Case studies and testimonials |
| Editing and tightening your drafts | Meta descriptions | Anything explaining price or difference |
The right-hand column is maybe 1,500 words on a typical small business website. That’s the part that sells. Everything else is supporting cast, and supporting cast can be drafted at speed.
Will AI-written copy hurt your search rankings?
Not directly. Google’s position is about quality and usefulness, not the tool used. There’s no penalty for using AI as an assistant.
The indirect problem is real though, and it cuts two ways.
Content that says nothing new tends not to rank, because there are already ten thousand versions of it. And with AI assistants now recommending businesses directly, being generic is worse than it used to be — a machine deciding which three firms to name is looking for something it can verify and quote. Specific claims, real prices, named clients, actual numbers.
Which produces a slightly ironic conclusion: the way to be recommended by AI is to publish things AI couldn’t have written.
I’ve written a 20-point checklist on whether AI assistants will recommend your business if you want to test where you stand — about twenty minutes, nothing to buy.
A five-minute test on your own website
Open your homepage and try these.
- The competitor test. Could your closest competitor put your first paragraph on their site without lying? If yes, rewrite it. You’ve described your industry, not your business.
- The specifics count. How many verifiable facts are in the first screenful — years, numbers, places, names, prices? If it’s zero, that’s why the page feels weightless.
- The out-loud test. Read it aloud. Where you run out of breath, or feel faintly embarrassed, that’s a sentence written to sound professional rather than to be understood.
- The stranger test. Could someone read the first sentence once and repeat back correctly what you do and who for? If not, no machine will manage it either.
- The price question. Does the site answer it anywhere? A range, a starting-from, a typical project. Pages that state real numbers get quoted; pages saying “contact us for a quote” get skipped over for someone who answered.
What I do
I write the pages that sell, by hand, after a proper conversation with you — because the raw material is always in what you say when you’re not trying to sound like a website.
I use AI in the process, openly: to organise, to draft the routine parts, to argue with. What you get is copy that sounds like you at your most articulate, with the specifics left in.
£350 a day. A set of service pages is typically two to four days depending on how many services you sell. Available as part of monthly marketing or as a standalone piece of work — whichever suits.
Common questions
Can AI write website copy?
It can write usable first drafts, structure and variations quickly. What it can’t do is supply the specific, verifiable facts that persuade someone to choose you — your actual results, your real process, your prices, your point of view. Most businesses get the best outcome by using AI for drafts and supporting pages, and writing or commissioning the homepage, service pages and anything explaining price by hand.
Does Google penalise AI-generated content?
No. Google judges content on usefulness and quality rather than how it was produced. In practice, purely AI-generated pages often underperform because they repeat what already exists, and thin, generic content struggles regardless of who or what wrote it.
How much does professional copywriting cost in the UK?
Freelance copywriters typically charge £300–£600 a day, or £150–£500 per web page. Agencies charge more. I charge £350 a day, and a full set of service pages for a small business usually takes two to four days.
How do I know if my website copy is any good?
Try the competitor test: could a rival put your opening paragraph on their site without lying? If they could, it isn’t selling anything. Then count the verifiable specifics — years, numbers, names, places, prices — in the first screenful. Weak copy is almost always vague copy.
Should my website say how much things cost?
Yes, in some form — a range, a starting-from, a typical project. It filters out enquiries you don’t want, builds trust with the ones you do, and it’s one of the strongest signals available for being quoted by AI assistants. It’s the check most businesses refuse and the one with the clearest payoff.
Send me your homepage
Genuinely — paste in your first paragraph and I’ll tell you what it’s actually saying to a buyer, and what I’d change. Free, no pitch, five minutes of my time and it might save you a customer or two.
