How to write content for your own website without staring at a blank page

Most small business owners know their work inside out. Putting it into words for a website is where things grind to a halt. Here is a practical way through it.

You have been doing what you do for years. You could talk about it for hours over a coffee. But the moment someone asks you to write it down for your website, the cursor blinks and nothing comes. This is not a writing problem. It is a framing problem. Here is how to approach it.

Start with your reader, not yourself

The most common mistake in website copy is writing about yourself when your reader only cares about themselves. They arrived at your site with a problem and want to know quickly whether you can solve it.

Before you write a single word, ask: who is reading this, what do they need, and what are they worried about? Write to one person, not to a general audience. The more specific you are about that person, the more clearly your copy will speak to them.

Steal from yourself

You have already written your website copy. You just do not know it yet. Go through your emails from the last six months. Find the ones where you explained what you do to someone new, answered a question about how a project works, or described something you were proud of. The language you use when you are not trying to write is almost always better than the language you produce when you are.

Answer these six questions and you have a first draft

Do not try to write a homepage. Write answers to these questions in plain English, as if someone asked you face to face.

1. 1

   What do you do? One sentence, not a list of services.

2. 2

   Who do you do it for? Be specific.

3. 3

   What problem do you solve?.

4. 4

   Why does it matter to your reader?.

5. 5

   Why you and not someone else?.

6. 6

   What should they do next? One clear step only.

Write one or two sentences for each. That is your homepage draft. It will need tidying, but it will be honest and focused in a way that most agency-written copy is not.

Say it out loud before you write it down

If you are genuinely stuck, do not write. Talk. Set a voice memo going on your phone and answer the question out loud as if someone asked you in person. Transcribe it. What comes out of your mouth when you are not trying to write is usually far closer to good copy than what you produce staring at a screen.

The words to avoid

These are the phrases that make website copy sound like every other website. If any of them appear in your draft, delete them and say what you actually mean instead.

1. 1

   Passionate. Everyone is. What do you actually care about?

2. 2

   Bespoke. What specifically do you tailor?

3. 3

   Solutions. What does that mean in your context?

4. 4

   Taking your business to the next level. What specifically gets better?

The test for any sentence is: could your competitor copy and paste this onto their website without changing a word? If yes, rewrite it until they could not.

Keep it short and trust your reader

When in doubt, cut the last sentence of every paragraph. It is almost always the one where you started explaining yourself after you had already made the point. People do not read websites. They scan them. Short and clear beats long and thorough every time.

Your website copy does not need to be perfect. It needs to be honest, clear, and present. A website with genuine, slightly rough copy will outperform one with polished, generic copy every time.