AI Wrote Your Website Copy — Now Make Sure It Doesn't Sound Like Everyone Else's

Quick test: read your homepage headline out loud. Now ask — could that sentence describe literally any business in your industry, not just yours? If yes, you've found the most common problem with AI-written website copy: it's not wrong, it's just generic.

"Empowering solutions for a better tomorrow." "Your trusted partner for all your needs." "Quality service you can count on." AI defaults to this kind of language because it's safe and it's everywhere in its training data. The fix isn't to abandon AI for your copy — it's to prompt it differently.

Why this happens

When you ask an AI tool to "write copy for my business website," it doesn't actually know what makes your business different from the one down the street. So it reaches for language that's true of almost any business in your category. That's not a flaw in the tool — it's a flaw in the instructions you gave it.

The fix: feed it specifics, not categories

Instead of asking for "professional website copy for a landscaping business," give it the details only you know:

"Write a homepage headline for my landscaping business. We specialize in native, drought-resistant plants for the Arizona desert climate. Most of our customers are homeowners tired of high water bills. We've been doing this for 12 years and our biggest differentiator is that we guarantee our plant installations for 2 years. Avoid generic phrases like 'quality service' or 'trusted partner' — be specific about what we actually do."

Notice what changed: real details (desert climate, water bills, 12 years, 2-year guarantee) and an explicit instruction to avoid the generic phrases. Both matter.

A three-question test for any AI-written line

Before you publish any sentence AI wrote for your site, run it through this:

Could a competitor use this exact sentence on their site? If yes, it's too generic — add a specific detail only true of you.
Does it name something concrete? A number, a place, a specific problem you solve, a specific promise you make. Vague words like "quality," "excellence," and "solutions" don't count.
Would a real customer of yours recognize themselves in this? If it could be talking to anyone, it's talking to no one.

Prompting tricks that actually work

Ask it to interview you first: "Ask me 5 questions about my business before writing any copy." This forces specifics into the conversation before the writing starts.
Give it your actual voice: Paste in an email you've written to a customer, or a review someone left about you, and say "Match this tone."
Ban the buzzwords directly: Keep a running list of phrases you're sick of seeing (empower, seamless, elevate, unlock) and tell the AI to avoid them explicitly.
Ask for the boring, true version first: "Just describe plainly what we do, no marketing language." Then layer polish on top of that — it's easier to punch up something true than to de-generic-ify something vague.

The takeaway

AI didn't write generic copy because it's bad at writing. It wrote generic copy because "write website copy" is a generic instruction. Specific input gets specific output — that's true of AI in general, and it's especially true for the words that represent your business to every visitor who lands on your site.

Prompting AI well is a skill, not a personality trait — and it's teachable. Check out Better Prompts, Better Results, free with any account.