Have you ever read your own website back and wondered who it was actually written for?
Not in a “does this sound professional” way. In a “hang on, would an actual person say any of this out loud” way.
We ask ourselves this fairly regularly, because it’s a genuinely difficult question. Every business now feels like it’s writing for three different readers at once. There’s Google, still working out where you should rank. There’s the growing pile of AI tools, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, deciding whether to mention you when someone asks a question. And then, somewhere underneath all of that, there’s an actual human being trying to work out whether to ring you.
We’ve seen businesses write for one of those three and completely forget the other two. Some are still writing for a version of Google that stopped existing years ago, repeating the same phrase until the sentence barely makes sense. Others have swung the other way, chasing AI citation so hard the copy reads like a spreadsheet with full stops. And a fair few have gone all-in on being “human” and forgotten that structure and clarity are what actually help a website get found in the first place.
This article is about that tension, and why we think the honest answer is a lot simpler than most of the advice out there suggests.
Before We Go Any Further
This is simply our view.
We write our own website, we help other businesses with theirs, and we read an awful lot of other people’s copy along the way. Some of it is excellent. Some of it makes us wince.
Have a look around, compare a few sites in your own industry and make your own judgement. What follows is how we currently see things, not a universal rulebook handed down from above.
Is There Really a Difference Between Writing for Google, AI and Humans?
Sort of, yes. But not as much as people think.
Writing “for Google” used to mean stuffing a keyword into every other sentence, because that’s genuinely how search engines worked at one point. Google has since got a lot better at understanding meaning rather than just matching words, but plenty of businesses never got the memo, and their websites still read like they were written by someone who’d just discovered a keyword tool for the first time.
Writing “for AI” is the newer worry. Businesses want ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews to mention them when someone asks a question, so they’re told to add clear definitions, question-and-answer sections, bullet points and FAQs. All useful things. The trouble starts when that advice gets followed so literally that every sentence reads like it was extracted from a textbook rather than said by a person.
Writing “for humans” should be the obvious one, but it gets treated as if it’s somehow at odds with the other two. It isn’t, and that’s really the whole point of this article.
What Does Writing “For Google” Actually Look Like Now?
Genuinely, less than most people assume.
Modern search engines are trying to understand what a page is actually about and whether it properly answers what someone typed in. Repeating a phrase over and over doesn’t help with that. If anything, it can work against you, because it makes the page harder to read and less likely to be the kind of content someone links to, shares or spends time on.
What still matters is clear structure. Sensible headings. A direct answer near the top of a section rather than three paragraphs of throat-clearing before you get to the point. That happens to be good writing anyway, which is a fairly big clue about where this article is heading.
“If you’re still writing a sentence three different ways because you’re worried Google won’t notice the keyword otherwise, you’re solving a problem that stopped existing years ago.”
What Does Writing “For AI” Actually Look Like?
This one’s newer, so it’s worth explaining properly.
AI answer engines tend to favour content that is easy to lift out of context. A clear question followed by a direct, confident answer. A definition that stands on its own. A short comparison or a numbered list that doesn’t need the rest of the page to make sense.
The problem is that some businesses have taken this to mean every paragraph needs to sound like a dictionary entry. Short, robotic sentences. No personality. No opinion. Nothing that actually sounds like a person who knows the subject.
To give you a hypothetical example, and we want to be clear this isn’t a real client, just a composite of conversations we have fairly regularly: imagine a small services business rewrites its whole website after being told it needs to be “optimised for AI”. Every page becomes a rigid list of definitions and bullet points. Technically, an AI tool probably could lift an answer from it. Practically, a human reading the page has no idea whether this business is any good, whether they’d enjoy working with them, or why they should pick them over the next search result. The site becomes easier for a machine to summarise and harder for a person to trust.
That’s the risk with chasing AI citation too literally. You can end up with a page that answers questions perfectly and persuades nobody.
What Happens When You Write for a Human First?
Something quite reassuring happens, actually. Most of the AI and SEO boxes get ticked anyway.
A human reader wants a clear answer near the top, not three paragraphs of waffle before the point. So does an AI system pulling out an answer to cite. A human reader wants headings that actually tell them what a section is about. So does a search engine trying to work out whether your page matches what someone typed. A human reader trusts specifics, a real example, a genuine opinion, a plain explanation instead of jargon. AI systems and search engines are, in their own way, also trying to work out whether content is genuinely useful or just filler.
Clear, honest, well-organised writing tends to satisfy all three readers reasonably well. Keyword-stuffed writing and robotic AI-bait writing tend to satisfy none of them properly, because in both cases you’ve written for the algorithm instead of the point you’re actually trying to make.
“We’re not against structure. We’re against structure replacing substance. A good FAQ section and a good conversation should be able to say roughly the same thing.”
Isn’t Some of This Just Semantics?
Fair challenge, and we’ll give you the other side.
There is a real skill in structuring a page so it performs well in search and gets picked up by AI tools. Headings that match how people actually search. Direct answers near the top. FAQs that address genuine questions rather than invented ones. None of that is pretending. It’s just good communication, applied deliberately.
The mistake isn’t using structure. It’s writing structure instead of content. If your FAQ section exists purely because “AI content needs FAQs” rather than because those are questions real customers actually ask, it’ll read that way, and both your readers and the AI summarising your page will notice something’s slightly off.
So, What Should You Actually Do?
Here’s roughly how we’d approach it, in plain terms.
- Write the answer to the reader’s actual question first, in plain English, before worrying about anything else.
- Use headings that sound like something a person would type into Google, not a section title from a training manual.
- Keep paragraphs short. Long paragraphs get skipped by humans and are harder for AI tools to extract cleanly. Everybody wins from brevity here.
- Include real detail. Specific numbers, specific examples, specific processes. Vague copy is the easiest thing in the world to spot, by a person or a machine.
- Add an FAQ section, but only answer questions people genuinely ask you. If you can’t remember the last time someone asked it, leave it out.
- Read the finished page out loud. If it sounds like something you’d actually say to a customer, you’ve probably got the balance right.
Before You Publish, Check For:
- Does the opening line answer the reader’s actual question?
- Would a person reading this understand you’re a real business with real opinions?
- Could a chunk of this text be lifted out and stand on its own as a clear answer?
- Is there at least one genuine example, number or detail that couldn’t appear on a competitor’s page unchanged?
- Have you repeated the same phrase more than twice just to “hit the keyword”?
- Does every FAQ answer a question someone has actually asked you?
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I write website content for Google, AI or humans?
Write for the human reader first. Genuinely useful, clearly structured writing tends to work well for search engines and AI answer tools too, because both are ultimately trying to identify content that properly answers a question.
Does keyword stuffing still help my website rank?
No. Modern search engines focus on meaning and relevance rather than how often a phrase is repeated. Repeating keywords unnaturally can make a page harder to read and less likely to perform well.
What is AI citation and why does it matter for my website?
AI citation refers to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews mentioning or quoting your website when answering someone’s question. Clear headings, direct answers and genuine FAQs make it easier for these tools to reference your content accurately.
Will writing in a more conversational tone hurt my SEO?
Not usually. Search engines and AI tools respond well to clear, well-structured content, and that’s entirely compatible with sounding like a real person. What hurts SEO is vague, padded or repetitive writing, not personality.
How do I know if my website copy is too robotic?
Read it out loud. If it sounds like something extracted from a manual rather than something you’d say to a customer sitting across from you, it’s probably too robotic.
Do I need an FAQ section on every page?
Not necessarily every page, but it’s worth including on pages where customers genuinely ask recurring questions. Only include questions people actually ask you, not ones invented purely to fill the section.
Our Final View
We think this whole “Google versus AI versus humans” debate is a bit of a false argument.
Write clearly. Answer the question you’d expect a real customer to ask. Use structure because it helps people understand you, not because a checklist told you to.
Do that properly, and the search engines and the AI tools tend to follow along quite happily. Chase them directly instead, and you usually end up with a website that reads well to nobody at all.
Getting Website Traffic but Not Enough Enquiries?
If your website is getting visitors but the phone still isn’t ringing, it’s worth talking through what’s actually happening on the page rather than guessing.
Give us a call and talk us through it. We’re always happy to have a look and give you our honest view.