A Complete Beginner's Guide to Writing Website Content Using AI

If you’ve decided to write content for your new website, you’ve made a great decision! Nobody knows your business and audience as well as you.

However, where we find some people get tripped up is that they will use ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, type one line like "write a homepage for my cleaning company," and paste whatever comes back onto their website.

The result reads fine. But it also reads exactly like the homepage of every other cleaning company that typed the same line.

At Cityline Websites, we still believe the strongest website content comes from a conversation between a business owner and an experienced writer who knows how to draw out the details that make a company worth choosing.

That said, many owners want to write their own pages, and AI makes that feel possible. And if you plan to go that route, we want you to do it well.

So we’ve put together this guide that walks you through the full process, from the notes you gather before you open an AI tool to the checks you run before you hit publish.

Treat AI as a Fast Typist Who Knows Nothing About Your Business

Here is the most important idea in this guide.

An AI tool writes quickly and clearly, but it has never met your customers, stood in your shop, or answered your phone. It fills every gap in your instructions with the most average, most common version of the answer it has seen. That is why one-line prompts produce generic pages.

Generic pages cost you in two ways.

First, visitors can't tell you apart from your competitors, so they don't call.

Second, Google has no reason to rank a page that says the same thing as a thousand others. In fact, in its guidance on succeeding in AI search, Google tells site owners to focus on unique, non-commodity content that visitors find genuinely helpful.

The solution? Follow our seven step guide below!

Step 1: Decide What Each Page Needs to Do

Before you write a word, give every page one job. A website usually needs a homepage, one page per main service, an about page, a contact page, and sometimes an FAQ page or location pages. Each one serves a different visitor at a different moment.

Your homepage tells a first-time visitor who you are, what you do, where you do it and why they should pick you, all within a few seconds.

A service page answers every question a person has about one specific service and asks them to book.

An about page builds trust by showing the real people behind the business.

If you're unsure how these pages fit together, our Websites 101 page covers the basics, and What Makes a Great Website Design? explains how structure and layout support your words.

The important thing to remember is that for each page, you want to think about three things: who lands on this page, what they want to know, and what you want them to do next.

For example, if we were writing a move-out cleaning page, the reader is likely a Langley renter who is moving and wants their damage deposit back. They want to know what's included, what it costs and whether landlords accept the result. The goal is to answer all those questions and to get a quote request.

Step 2: Build a Business Fact Sheet Before You Open Any AI Tool

This single step separates great AI-assisted content from forgettable content, and almost everyone skips it.

Instead of just going to an AI chatbot and asking it to write for you, spend some time beforehand gathering as much information as you can on your business and compiling it into a single fact sheet.

Your fact sheet is a plain document full of the specific, true details only you know. AI can't invent these, and it shouldn't try.

So set aside an hour and gather the following raw material into one document:

• The basics: business name, service area, hours, phone number, years in business, and any licences, insurance or certifications you actually hold.
• Your services in detail: what each one includes, what it doesn't include, typical timelines, and starting prices or price ranges if you share them.
• Your process: what happens from the first phone call to the finished job, step by step.
• Your proof: review quotes, number of jobs completed, awards, and customer stories you can describe honestly.
• Your differences: the things you do that competitors don't, stated as facts rather than slogans.
• Customer questions: the ten questions people ask you most often, written in their own words.
• Your voice: three words that describe how you talk to customers, plus one or two competitor sites whose tone you want to avoid.

Look at the difference specifics make:

Bad - "We provide thorough, reliable cleaning" could describe anyone.

Good - "We bring our own HEPA vacuums and unscented products, and we send the same two cleaners to your home every visit" describes your advantage and nobody else. Your fact sheet is where sentences like that come from.

You can use the onboarding document that you filled out as part of the Cityline Websites intake process, but don’t limit yourself to that. Any company material that you can provide really makes a difference.

Step 3: Do a Quick Interview With Your Preferred AI Writing Tool

Many business owners struggle when they try to write about their own work. You know it too well to see what's special about it. The easiest fix is to flip the roles and ask the AI to interview you.

To do this, go to ChatGPT and paste in this prompt:

"I own a small business and I'm writing my website content. Before you write anything, interview me. Ask me one question at a time about my business, my customers, my services and what makes me different. Ask follow-up questions when my answers are vague. After 15 questions, summarize my answers as a fact sheet. Do not write any website copy yet."

Answer out loud if typing slows you down. Most phones can transcribe voice memos, and people explain their work far better when they talk than when they type.

Be as detailed as you can during this. The small stories in your answers, like the customer who called you after her landlord returned her full deposit, are exactly the details that make content memorable.

One caution about privacy: never paste customer names, addresses, phone numbers or other personal details into an AI tool. Describe situations in general terms instead.

Step 4: Write a Prompt That Works Like a Creative Brief

After you do the interview and have a fact sheet, you are ready to start writing, but this is also the part where most people put in the least amount of effort and hope for the best.

Here is the weak prompt most people use:

"Write a move out cleaning page for my cleaning business in Langley."

This will get you some content, but it’s going to be very generic.

A good brief tells the writer who the audience is, what the page must achieve, which facts to use, how the business sounds, how the page should be structured and which rules to follow. Here’s an example

"You are writing a service page for Maple & Oak Home Cleaning, a two-person house cleaning company in Langley, BC. The reader is a renter who is moving out and wants their full damage deposit back. The goal of the page is for them to fill out a quote request.

Use only the facts in the fact sheet below. Do not invent prices, guarantees, certifications, statistics or reviews. If you need a fact that isn't there, write [NEEDS INFO] instead.

Write in a friendly, direct voice, like a neighbour who happens to be an expert. Use short paragraphs, plain words and active voice. Avoid words like elevate, seamless and unlock, and avoid openers like 'in today's fast-paced world.'

Start by writing an introductory paragraph for our move-out services.”

Notice how we reference the fact sheet, give specific company information, and share instruction to write [NEEDS INFO]. All of those instructions give the AI chatbot significantly more guidance towards creating unique content.

Step 5: Draft One Section at a Time

You may be tempted to get ChatGPT to write the entire content for you in one go, but long pages generated in one prompt tend to repeat themselves and drift into filler by the halfway point.

So instead, write the page one section at a time, review all generated text, and correct it before you move on.

If a section feels flat, tell the AI exactly why: "This is too general. Mention that we bring our own supplies and that most move-out cleans take four to six hours." Specific feedback produces specific writing.

Also, watch for the telltale signs of unedited AI writing. These include sweeping openers about how busy modern life is, stacks of three adjectives, phrases like "look no further" or "we pride ourselves on," and closing lines that repeat what the reader just read.

Cut them all. Then hunt down every vague claim and replace it with a specific fact.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

• The AI draft said: "At Maple & Oak, we pride ourselves on delivering exceptional, top-quality cleaning services that exceed expectations."
• After editing, it says: "We clean inside your oven, fridge and cupboards and wipe every baseboard, because those are the spots landlords check first."

The second version shows the reader why this company is different instead of simply claiming it.

Step 6: Fact-Check Every Claim Before It Goes Live

Even though the content may look great, AI tools make things up with total confidence. They invent certifications, quote prices you don't charge, promise guarantees you never offered and describe local rules that don't exist.

You are responsible for every word on your website, and in Canada, misleading claims in advertising can create legal problems under the Competition Act.

So check every number, every promise, every service you mention and every statement about laws, permits or safety. If the AI mentions a regulation, confirm it on an official government website or remove it. If it describes a service you don't offer, delete it. When in doubt, cut it.

Step 7: Send Your Content to Our Team

Once every page passes your fact-check, your writing is done and you're ready to hand it over.

Put each page into its own document in Word or Google Docs, and name it after the page it belongs to, such as "Homepage" or "Move-Out Cleaning." Paste the final text in the order it should appear, and keep your headings in place so we can see how you want each page laid out.

Don't worry about fonts, colours or perfect formatting. We handle all of that when we build the page. What matters is that the words are final and complete.

To help our team build each page without guessing, include these details alongside your content:

• Photos and images: real photos of your team, your work and your location, with a note telling us which page each one belongs to.
• Calls to action: the main thing you want visitors to do on each page, whether that's calling you, booking online or requesting a quote.
• Page connections: any spots where you want one page to point to another, like a service page linking to your contact page.
• Open questions: anything you weren't sure about, including leftover [NEEDS INFO] notes, so we can help you fill the gaps.

Put all your documents in one shared folder, such as Google Drive or Dropbox, and email the link to your Cityline Websites contact. Our team will review everything, flag anything that needs another look, and add the page titles, meta descriptions and internal links that help Google understand each page before it goes live.

What Google Says About AI-Written Content

Google does not ban AI content. Its official guidance on AI-generated content explains that its ranking systems reward original, helpful content no matter how it gets produced, and that using automation mainly to manipulate search rankings breaks its spam policies.

In 2024, Google introduced a scaled content abuse policy that targets sites publishing large amounts of unoriginal, low-value pages, whether a person, a machine or both created them. A small business rarely publishes at that scale, but the principle still applies. If you pump out twenty near-identical location pages, or a blog post every day that adds nothing new, you build the kind of site Google trusts less.

Google also looks at your website as a whole. A few thin, generic pages can make it harder for your good pages to get indexed and ranked. You usually won't see a warning or a penalty notice. You'll simply see pages that never climb. Every page you publish should earn its place.

Google's own helpful content self-assessment questions make a great yardstick. Read them once before you start, and again before you publish.

When It Makes Sense to Bring in a Professional Writer

AI can help a business owner produce solid content, but it can't replace the judgement of someone who writes for small businesses every day.

A skilled writer asks the questions you didn't think to answer, spots the detail that wins customers and knows how each page fits into a larger search strategy. Some of our clients write a first draft themselves and have one of our content specialists refine it, which often gives the best of both.

If your pages aren't bringing in calls, or you simply don't have the hours to do this well, Cityline Websites can help.

We build small business websites with content written by people who take the time to understand your business, and we can review, rewrite or optimize the pages you've already created.