Why AI Can't Understand Your B2B Website – Three Copywriting Principles
AI is trained by Americans, and it reads Chinese following English logic. Adjust your B2B website copy with these three principles, and AI will recognize who your company is and what it does.
In recent months, we've used Heiso's own website as an AEO experimental ground, from robots.txt and JSON-LD all the way to FAQ Schema. We've addressed all the technical requirements, but found that the most underestimated aspect was the copy itself.
Our initial About page had sentences like this:
Our company adheres to a customer-centric service philosophy, dedicated to providing one-stop digital transformation solutions for various industries.
It sounds professional, but AI had no idea who we were or what we did after reading it.
Why AI Can't Understand
A simple fact: AI is trained by Americans.
GPT, Claude, and Gemini's training data is almost entirely in English. When it reads Chinese, it uses English conventions – subject first, main point first, and each sentence understandable independently.
Let's lay out the differences in writing habits between Chinese and English:
| English Writing | Chinese Writing |
|---|---|
| Subject always written, main point at the beginning | Subject often omitted, inferred from context |
| Conclusion stated first | Build-up first, conclusion at the end |
| Each sentence is a self-contained unit, understandable when extracted | Sentences linked by feel, often fragmented when extracted |
| Verbs as the backbone | Stacking nouns, nominalizing verbs |
Humans are accustomed to reading Chinese, but AI adheres to the standards in the left column.
So, writing in the AEO era, in essence, boils down to one thing: writing Chinese to be more like English.
Three Writing Principles for Website Content
1. Put the Conclusion First
The first sentence of each paragraph should be the conclusion, followed by reasons and details.
Traditional writing goes: background → build-up → conclusion. If AI only reads the first sentence, putting the conclusion in the third paragraph means burying it.
2. Each Sentence Must Be Independently Understandable
If you pull a sentence out, without context, can the reader still understand it?
Common bad habits:
- Starting with a pronoun: "The advantage of this approach is..." – What does "this" refer to?
- Starting with a connective: "Therefore, we recommend..." – What came before "therefore"?
- Omitting the subject: "Can reduce operating costs" – Who does it, and whose costs are reduced?
Correction: In the first sentence of a paragraph, complete the subject, avoid pronouns, and avoid connectives.
3. Clearly State Who Did What
The most common bad habit in Chinese corporate copy is hiding verbs within nouns and not stating who did what. For example:
Website design and development is our company's main service.
Actually, it's: Our main service is designing and developing websites.
The two sentences mean the same thing, but their structure is completely different – the subject changes from the buried "our company" to the opening "we," and "design and development" reverts from a noun phrase to a verb. AI instantly understands what this company does with the latter.
Before and After Rewrite of an About Page Snippet
Before Rewrite
Our company adheres to a customer-centric service philosophy, dedicated to providing one-stop digital transformation solutions for various industries, leveraging forward-looking technologies and deep industry insights to help enterprises achieve sustainable development goals of cost reduction and efficiency improvement.
AI's conclusion: Has no idea who this company is, what it does, or who it has served.
After Rewrite
Heiso provides software outsourcing, custom system development, and AI Agent creation services. From corporate websites, LINE Bots, AI workflow automation, RAG enterprise knowledge bases, to AI implementation consulting, we assist SMEs in achieving digital transformation with an Agent-First mindset.
Similar word count, but AI clearly understands after reading:
- First sentence: Who it is + three main service lines (software outsourcing, custom systems, AI Agent creation)
- Second sentence: What exactly they do (corporate websites, LINE Bots, workflow automation, RAG, AI implementation consulting – allowing AI to pick up long-tail keywords)
- Third sentence: Who they serve + how (SMEs, Agent-First mindset)
Moreover, the rewritten version is actually less effort – you just state what you do clearly, without piling on adjectives.
This is the version currently used on heiso.io – you can directly open the homepage, view source, and you'll find this exact snippet in the Organization JSON-LD and meta description. Readers can verify this.
How to Test if it Works
After revising the copy and implementing the technical changes, verification is simple – open ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask:
- "What does [your company name] do?"
- "What services does [your company name] provide?"
If the answer can articulate your specific services and cite your domain as the source, these rewrites are working. If it's still vague or says "unable to determine," either AI hasn't re-crawled yet (give it 1-3 weeks) or the copy structure is still not clear enough.
Technical changes allow AI to crawl; copy changes allow AI to articulate. Both layers are indispensable, but 90% of the industry only focuses on the technical layer.
Closing
If you can only remember one thing – when writing Chinese, imagine you're writing English: subject first, main point first, each sentence independently readable.
The longer and more "professional" a sentence is, the less AI understands it; the shorter and more "direct" a sentence is, the more AI recognizes you. This is almost contrary to the Chinese writing intuition you've developed over the past decade, but it's the reality of the AEO era.
Next article: How to Verify AEO After Completion? Three Layers of Checking Methods.
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