Website copy rarely goes out of date all at once. It goes out of date sentence by sentence: “for many years” turns into an understatement at some point, “new” stops being new after a while, the spring offer is still there in autumn, and the phone number in the service text differs from the one on the contact page. Every concrete statement is a spot that somebody has to keep up to date. This article shows how to search existing copy for such statements, put them into a form that stays true without upkeep or delete them, and cut promotional language and length along the way. The reason is your readers and your own maintenance effort, not a hoped-for ranking on Google.
The key points
Why every claim costs upkeep
Readers take less from a page than the text offers.
In 2008 the Nielsen Norman Group analysed browser logs and concluded that on the average page, visitors have time to read at most 28% of the words, and 20% is more likely (Nielsen Norman Group 2008). Half of the information was read only on pages with 111 words or less, while the average page in the dataset had 593 words (Nielsen Norman Group 2008). For a small business that means a large share of the sentences goes unread but still has to be correct. Every sentence that contains a number, a date or a name is a spot that has to change the next time something changes in the business.
These figures show a direction, not a measurement of your page. The 2008 analysis is based on the browsers of 25 people, and the data was collected in 2005 (Nielsen Norman Group 2008). As early as 1997 the same research group had observed that 79% of test users scanned every new page and only 16% read word by word (Nielsen Norman Group 1997). How this plays out on a phone today is not something these studies tell us. For reviewing your own copy, the direction is enough: visitors look for what they need and skip the rest. Copy that claims less has fewer places where it can become wrong.
How much brevity and a factual tone can matter is shown by another Nielsen Norman Group study from 1997, in which 51 test users worked with five versions of the same sample site. Written concisely, the site scored 58% higher in measured usability, 47% higher with a scannable layout and 27% higher in an objective rather than promotional style; all three changes together gave 124% (Nielsen Norman Group 1997). This too was a lab setting with a single sample site and no promise for your website. The direction does match what happens when you declutter, though: deleting statements with an expiry date makes copy shorter, and replacing promotional language with verifiable details makes it more factual.
Not a ranking lever
Step 1: search the live page
Search the published page, not the draft and not a text file. Only there do you see what visitors actually read, including the footer, info boxes and image captions that are easy to miss while editing.
Open the page in the browser and use its search with Ctrl+F, or Cmd+F on a Mac. The browser highlights every match and shows how many there are. Work through the search terms below one by one and note every sentence that can become wrong over time.
- “since” and “for … years” find relative time references such as “for many years” or “since last summer”.
- “new” and “soon” find announcements that happened long ago or never came; add “coming” and “now available” while you are at it.
- “currently” and “at the moment” find sentences that were only true at one particular point in time.
- “this year”, “next year” and the year numbers of recent years find dates, reviews and anniversaries.
- “€” and “euro” find prices that sit outside the pricing page.
- Staff names and your phone number find scattered contact persons and contact details.
One line in a list is enough for each finding: which page, which sentence, which type and which replacement. A column for the person who can confirm the fact saves questions later, because often only one person knows how long someone has been with the business or whether a membership is still running. The list doubles as your work plan for the coming weeks. An entry can look like this:
Page: About us
Finding: “Your partner in the region for over 20 years”
Type: relative time
Replace: “Founded in 2004, working in the region ever since”
Confirmed: owner
Page: Services
Finding: “New: maintenance contracts for heating systems”
Type: new and coming soon
Replace: delete “New”, describe the service like any other
Confirmed: operations managerSix types of statements with an expiry date
Almost every finding fits one of six types. For each type there is a replacement that stays true without upkeep, or the decision to delete the statement. The table gives the overview, the sections after it the details.
Scroll table sideways
| Type | Typical wording | Why it goes stale | Stable replacement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relative time | “for over 20 years”, “since last year” | The statement is only right in the year the sentence was written | State the founding year or a date: “founded in 2004” |
| New and coming soon | “New: online appointments”, “soon open on Saturdays too” | New things stay new on the page, announced things arrive or they do not | Date it with month and year or delete it |
| Countable claims | Staff, customers, projects, reviews | Every number changes, usually without anyone updating the text | Add “as of month year” or leave it out |
| Master data in body text | Prices, opening hours, phone number, contact person | The same detail sits in several places and only one gets changed | Keep it in exactly one place and link to it from the text |
| Offers and dates | “Spring offer”, “this month only” | The offer ends, the evergreen copy stays | Move it to its own dated page and remove it afterwards |
| Proof that expires | Certificates, memberships, funding | Validity, membership or funding period ends | State the validity or period, or remove it |
Relative time and “new”
A relative time reference counts from the day someone wrote the sentence. “For over 20 years” is right in the year of publication, a few years later the sentence understates, and anyone reading “since last year” cannot know which year is meant. The stable form is the absolute date: the founding year, the year of the master craftsman’s examination, the month in which a service was introduced. A sentence like “founded in 2004” is right in every year, and the reader works out the duration. The same goes for “recently”, “lately” and “by now”: these words carry no information that a date does not carry better.
“New” is the word with the shortest shelf life on a website. A service introduced years ago often still has “New:” in front of it because nobody thought of removing the word. To visitors this reads like a sign that nobody has looked at the page for a long time. Date news items (“bookable online since March 2026”) or delete the word and describe the service like any other. “Coming soon” and “soon” only belong on the page when a date is fixed. Otherwise an announcement is a promise without a date that can read as broken on the next visit.
Countable claims and scattered master data
Numbers about your own business are convincing as long as they are right: staff, customers, completed projects, reviews, vehicles.
Each of these numbers changes, and it usually sits in several places, on the home page, in the text about the business and in an image caption. The stable form is either the number with a date (“14 employees, as of October 2026”) or a description that needs no number (“our own team for planning and installation”). Statements like “countless satisfied customers” help in neither form; they belong in the second pass. How a page about the business builds trust without such statements is covered in the article About page: real trust instead of buzzwords.
Master data are details that exist exactly once in the business: prices, opening hours, the phone number, the name of the contact person. If they also appear in the body text of a service page, they exist several times on the website, and the next change misses one of them. The stable form is one source per detail: opening hours and phone number in the contact area and in the footer, which is the same on every page, prices on the pricing page, contact persons on the team page. The text then carries a pointer such as “You will find our hours on the contact page”. Why availability in particular drifts apart so often is described in the article on keeping opening hours and availability current, and how prices sit clearly in one place in the article Showing prices on your website.
Offers and proof that expires
Offers, discounts and dates come to an end; the text they were written into usually does not.
A spring offer in the service text, a “this month only” on the home page or a note about last autumn’s trade fair stays put until someone happens to trip over it. The stable form is separation: evergreen copy describes what always applies, while offers get their own page or a dated post that is removed or marked as expired once the offer ends. An expired offer still shown as running is more than a cosmetic flaw; what applies legally to prices and advertising claims is summarised in the article Pricing and advertising claims on your website. If you sell vouchers, the questions about validity periods and redemption are covered in Selling gift vouchers on your website.
Proof works because someone has checked it, and that is exactly why it expires: certificates have a validity period, memberships in associations and guilds end, funding programmes run for a set period, awards apply to a particular year. Expired proof tells visitors that the page is not maintained, the opposite of what it was meant to show. So state the validity or the year (“member of the guild since 2011”, “awarded in 2024”) and look at these details at every review. Which kinds of proof convince visitors in the first place is described in the article Website trust: seals, certifications and guarantees. Technology has expiring proof as well: how the lifetime of security certificates is getting shorter is shown in the article Certificate lifetime and the HTTPS warning in Chrome.
The test question for every sentence
Date it
Relative time references and “new” become a year or a month. A date stays right even if nobody touches the text.
Keep it in one place
Prices, hours, phone number and names appear once. Every other page links there instead of repeating the detail.
Delete it
Whatever can neither be dated nor kept in one place and is of no use to the reader gets deleted. That is the form with the least upkeep.
Step 2: promotional language as a second pass
Superlatives and empty phrases do not go stale. “Highest quality”, “competent advice” and “tailored solutions” will be just as right or wrong in ten years as they are today.
But they say nothing the reader could verify, and they cost reading time on a page of which only a fraction is read anyway. In the 1997 study mentioned above, the sample site scored 27% higher in measured usability in an objective rather than promotional style (Nielsen Norman Group 1997). So after the search run, go through the same page a second time and replace every promotional phrase with a verifiable detail or delete it. A ready-made list of such phrases with suggested replacements is in the article Writing website copy customers actually read; it is not repeated here.
There is a trap in replacing: a verifiable detail is again a statement that can go stale. “Long-standing experience” quickly becomes “over 25 years of experience”, and the problem from the first pass is back. So choose details that stay stable: the founding year instead of the duration, the qualification instead of the number of jobs, the service area instead of the number of customers, the way a job is carried out instead of a promise about its quality. Such details set your business apart from others and stay right until something changes in the business itself.
Step 3: cut and structure
After two passes the text is usually shorter already.
The third pass arranges what is left so that visitors find what they are looking for while scanning: one idea per paragraph, subheadings that make a statement instead of announcing a topic, and lists wherever a sentence enumerates. The limit of 111 words mentioned above is not a target for your page, but it shows how quickly the share that gets read drops on longer pages (Nielsen Norman Group 2008). A full blueprint for a new service page and a way to measure readability are in the article on website copy customers actually read; this article is about the copy that is already online.
- Delete introductions that only announce what comes next.
- Merge duplicate statements: whatever says the same thing on the home page and on the service page gets one fixed home.
- Turn enumerations in body text into a list.
- Split paragraphs with two ideas, delete paragraphs without an idea of their own.
- Phrase subheadings so that they say something when read on their own.
- Check sentences that start with “we”: the information for the customer often only comes at the end.
Step 4: one page per week
Decluttering a whole website at once often fails because of day-to-day business. A small fixed slot works better: one page per week, starting with the most visited one.
Your visitor statistics show which one that is; often it is the home page, the service pages and the contact page. That way the first improvements reach the most visitors, and after a few weeks the part of the website that most visitors see has been reviewed. How the review fits into a maintenance plan for opening hours, prices, forms and legal texts is described in the article A website maintenance routine for small firms.
- Open the page live and do the search run from step 1.
- Enter the findings in the list, with type and replacement.
- Compare the master data on the page with the central place and replace it with pointers.
- Put in the replacements or delete, and have facts confirmed by the person in charge.
- Second pass: replace or delete promotional language.
- Third pass: cut and structure.
- Have the revised page read by someone who did not write it; how a small test with outsiders works is described in the article A content test with real readers.
- Publish and note the date of the review in the list.
The date on the page
In the XICflow editor: text commands with a safety net
If you run your website on XICflow, you do the three passes right in the editor. Set a restore point before the round: in the “Version history” in the header, enter a label and click “Checkpoint”.
According to the documentation, in addition: “Snapshots are created automatically when publishing and on AI changes.” For small steps there is “Undo”; the editor remembers up to 50 steps of the running session, but only for the open page and only while the tab stays open (XICflow documentation). The details are in the chapter Editor and pages.
For the text itself, the “Properties” tab has a bar with seven AI commands below every text field: “Shorter”, “Longer”, “Rephrase”, “More professional”, “Simpler”, “Bullet points” and “Fix” (XICflow documentation). The documentation describes “Shorter” like this: “Makes the text more concise and noticeably shorter without losing the key points.” “More professional” makes the text more factual and sober, without promotional exaggeration, which fits the second pass; “Bullet points” turns an enumeration in a sentence into a short list. Each command works on one field only and processes up to 6,000 characters (XICflow documentation). Inside list entries, such as the cards of a grid, the bar is not available; there you edit the text by hand or through the chat. All commands are described in the chapter Working with the AI.
The tone is set by the brand voice. According to the documentation, it sets the tone in which the AI writes and revises text for the website. Before the round, set it to “Professional” in the “Brand & design” area under “Brand voice”, described in the editor as “Factual, competent, trustworthy”. The brand voice only affects text the AI writes or revises afterwards; existing text does not change by itself. How to set the brand voice is shown in the chapter Brand and design.
For master data that appears on several pages there is the “Content” area. There you keep uniform entries such as team profiles, references or a menu as a collection, and the “CMS list” block brings them onto every page where you add it. When an entry changes, you change it once; it appears on the live website as soon as you publish the website again. That is exactly the “keep it in one place” form from the table above. The set-up is described in the chapter Content, media library and blog.
Always proofread the result
XICflow builds websites from blocks that you then edit and publish yourself in the editor. What the path from the first description to the published website looks like is shown on the page How XICflow works. For decluttering this means: copy, master data and restore points live in one place, and every change goes live with the next publish.
What remains after the review
At the end you have copy that claims less and stays right for longer. The founding year replaces the duration, the date replaces “new”, prices and hours sit in exactly one place, offers have their own page and proof shows its validity.
Promotional language has been replaced by details that only apply to your business, and the paragraphs are structured so that visitors find what they are looking for while scanning. The next reason for upkeep is then a real change in the business, not the mere passing of time.