Values-First Marketing

3 Website Copywriting Changes I Made for Google Algorithm 2026

Megan Kachigan

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Google recently announced its 2026 algorithm updates at I/O in May 2026, and that made me stop and ask: Is my website actually built for how people are going to find me now?

And how can I incorporate this for website copywriting for my clients?

Google just fundamentally shifted how people discover businesses online. Information agents are scanning the web 24/7. Agentic booking is expanding to pull real-time pricing and availability. Conversational search is remembering context and surfacing deep-dive content. These affect how your business gets found online.

So I audited my own website against these new realities. And I made three specific changes that all business owners can make today.

In this episode, I'm walking you through the three specific website copywriting changes I made after Google's 2026 algorithm updates announced at I/O in May. These updates (information agents, agentic booking, and especially conversational search) are actively reshaping how AI finds, evaluates, and recommends service providers online. And the businesses who act on this now have a real advantage.

Let’s make sure the website you've already built is actually working for you in 2026 and beyond.


Want me to make these website copywriting changes for you so that YOU will be found through Google with its new updates? Book a call here to get started.


➡️ SHOW NOTES: Grab all the links and resources mentioned in this episode on the blog here! https://www.megankachigan.com/website-copywriting-google-algorithm-updates-2026


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Megan Loehr:

The Google recently announced its 2026 algorithm updates at IO in May of 2026 and that made me stop and ask, Is my website actually built for how people are going to find me now, and how can I incorporate this for website copywriting for my clients as well? Google just shifted how people discover businesses online. Information agents are scanning the web 24/7 agents are booking services, and that's expanding to pull real time pricing and availability and conversational search. You've probably experienced it already on the user end. It remembers the context now of your conversation, and it can surface deep dive content. All of these things affect how your business gets found online. So, I audited my own website against these new realities, and I made three specific changes that all business owners can make today. So, let me share these with you. Number one, I started creating content with specific detailed attributes, and I'm going back to my blogs and updating these as well. Google announced that information agents operate in the background 24/7 to find exactly what users need, and I have actually linked to Google's blog, where they summarize all of these changes as well, so you can see exactly where I'm pulling this information from. So, in more plain English terms, that what that means is these agents intelligently scan everything on the web, from blogs, news sites, social posts, real-time data, and they monitor for changes related to a user's specific question. So, what exactly does this mean when someone sets up an information agent looking for conversion copywriting strategies for values-based service providers, for example, Google's AI is now hunting for that exact phrasing or semantic variations of it, like very close across the entire web, it is pulling my blog posts, LinkedIn articles, podcast episodes, and guest content, looking for evidence that I am an authority, the authority on that specific niche. And before this update, I was creating content that answered maybe a little bit more broad questions. How to write better copy? What is values first marketing, which is all solid stuff, but it's not specific enough for information to information agents to surface that content when someone is hunting for something that is actually pretty niche or super specific. So, here's what I changed. You can tell even in how I am sharing this now, I'm using more I, which is funny, because back seven plus eight years ago now, when I first started as a copywriter, the whole thing was like, use you, use you, because it's a power word, people want to know how this affects them, it's reader centric, we want to make it about them, not about you as the writer, you want to make it about them as the reader, but, and I think that is still true, but incorporating more I in the sense of like, and here's what I did, and you can do it too, because that is something that AI cannot copy or generate on its own without your input, so one way that you can do this is start writing blog posts and LinkedIn content, all your content with highly specific criteria built into the titles, the headers, the opening paragraphs, so I'm not talking about five copywriting tips, but why, for example, why shame-based copywriting fails ethical coaches, and what to do instead, or instead of conversion strategy overview, I'm talking more specifically about how to structure your offer so ideal clients self-select without sounding exclusive, so way, way, way more specific to your ideal audience. So those were just examples. Obviously, you can apply this to your own business, to your own niche. So I also started updating old posts with new examples, case study data, and specific results, because information agents favor fresh, maintained content over static evergreen posts. I know back in 2020 evergreen was like the gold standard, but I don't know, I don't wanna say it's not anymore, but it has changed. Evergreen, obviously, is great, but my stance on evergreen is that, like, nothing is ever truly evergreen; you always have to be tweaking and updating it, so that doesn't - I mean, I also think it's unrealistic to, like, go back and update every single post all the time, especially if you are posting weekly content, which so many of us are. So, instead, let's do something again that is more simple, more sustainable, and maybe it's just revisiting your top 10 posts quarterly and adding new proof point and more current examples and revamping it in terms of geo and not just the basic SEO, though basic SEO obviously is a great foundation and we need that too, and this matters again, because these agents are looking for specificity and currency, and specificity has always been like a gold standard in copywriting, but now it's even more important in terms of organic search, both for them to find you through Google, and if you want them to find you through Chat GPT, or now Claude, or perplexity or Gemini, whatever they are using, so the more I publish about the exact problems my ideal clients face, I am literally pulling from transcripts to create my content, so I know I am speaking exactly to what they are, they want to hear what they are Googling, and here's the key, I am using specific language they would actually search for, so not how I would describe it in my expert language. How the what are the words that they are using that gives a higher chance for Google's AI to surface my content when someone is hunting for exactly that. So I know so many people are saying, oh, SEO is dead again because people aren't clicking as much anymore, because of these AI overviews, but the people who do click are way more likely to convert, because it is so highly specific, and so highly, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need, so this is no longer about keyword density anymore. What we need is to actually answer the niche questions that people ask, not the broad categories. Okay, I could go off on that even more, but let's move on to change number two, and that is that I am making my pricing, my process, and my ideal client crystal clear, and both in user-friendly language and in machine-readable language. So, here's what I mean. So, again, going back to I perused through, I scoured through Google's blog. Again, that's linked in the show notes. They announced that agentic booking is expanding to include pricing and availability data, that means users can now share highly specific criteria, like, for example, a therapist in Los Angeles who takes my insurance and has evening appointments, and search brings together the latest pricing and availability. It's not just search anymore, as we have traditionally known it. Now, users can ask Google to call a business on their behalf, but if your website doesn't clearly state service areas, pricing, booking rules, Google's agent will skip you and call your competitor instead, whose website is more friendly to this. So it's so important that not only that you do this, but that you do it now. Like this is not something to sleep on, and I know we are not necessarily in home repair or beauty, which I think a lot of this would most users would use it for, but the principle applies across all service-based businesses. If information is not explicitly clearly stated on your website, AI agents are not going to prioritize you, you're making it hard for them to do their job. So, when I looked at my own website, I realized that my pricing, even though it's transparent on the website, I think it could even be more clear and more simplified. And I think it's hard because, like, I do offer custom pricing based on your needs, and I give a starting value, but that's not necessarily useful for an AI agent trying to match users to service providers. So, here's what it's going to look like now, in terms of pricing. I'm adding a clear services page that breaks down my offers with actual price ranges. It no longer makes sense to hide pricing behind a discovery call again, so 2020 or even behind a downloadable services guide. I think that can make sense, or it could have made sense prior to this update, but I think what has been trending in the industry is people just want to know right away on your website, and they have their big girl panties on and they can make the decision of of if that works for them or not, they know their budget and they know, yeah, what level of service you know that pricing can provide. So now, in terms of this new Google update, it's even more important that your price or even price ranges need to be stated explicitly on your website, so you can say, for example, strategy at try that again, for example, let's say strategy audits, because I know that can be across many different industries. Strategy audits are super popular right now. You can say strategy audits start at x dollars USD, you know, or you know, whatever it is, the euro, whatever you're using, or you can say done for you content packages range from x to y dollars. So this is transparent, but it's also machine readable. The bots can easily crawl this and understand this and share this with the people who are looking for it, because let's be honest, when you are looking for a service, whether that is for your business or for otherwise, yeah, you want to know how much it costs, and is that in within the range of kind of what you are expecting and what you're looking to spend on this. So, in addition to pricing, you also need to be even more specific about your ideal client, so if you are still saying service-based entrepreneurs or female service providers, that's not enough, that that doesn't give us enough specificity, that's going to glance right over you and go to someone who's like really nailing, like this is exactly who it is, so if you say health providers earning, you know, a quarter million to a million plus annually, who want to book more aligned clients with values-based marketing, that is a level of specificity that actually helps Google's agents match you to the right people. And then there's availability. So, I have a sync calendar widget, I guess you could say. I just embed the Google scheduler, literally on my website, it shows my real-time availability for calls, and when someone's agent hunts for available consultants or service providers, whatever, Google actually has real data to work with, they can reach out, and then there is structured data, so this one's a little more technical, but you can add schema markup for pricing availability, service description, so that machines will read this correctly. This is something that is not visible to humans. If you're not an SEO nerd, you're probably like,'what? But it is essential for AI agents, so you can reach out if this is something that you're like, 'I know I need this, let's make this happen. Okay, so this matters because this agent's booking things like that doesn't just affect local services anymore, though it for sure affects them too. It is expanding to pull real-time data about any service provider, so if your website does not make your pricing availability ideal client explicit, that makes you invisible to these agents. They are not scrolling down to click on links, especially like page one, is getting smaller because the AI stuff is taking up so much. So, increasingly, I mean, not only invisible to AI agents, but increasingly you're also invisible to the actual humans who are using these tools too, because so many people are just trusting what the AI spits out, all right, stepping off my soapbox there, and going into change number three for website copywriting changes I made is rewriting my FAQs and my blog posts, and honestly, even my testimonials page as well, and so my testimonials page, I had a ton of screenshots of testimonials that people said that people have posted that people have shared, and like I kind of love seeing the actual screenshot because it shows like this is legit, like what they said with you know grammatical errors and all it was not cleaned up, like this is it, but again, Google's bots cannot read that, it's essentially invisible to them. So we need to use the actual, like, write the actual text of what the testimonial says. You could potentially also include the screenshot as well for that social proof aspect, if that's important to you, but actually have it written as text versus just an image is going to be really important. So, okay, so that was a little aside extra, but my point here is, is really about answering follow-up questions, and this is a nuance that I haven't heard people talking about yet, but I think it's really important, especially after I read this article. It stood out to me so much more of like, oh, I am totally using Google AI this way when I search things on Google again, both for about business and about just like, I don't know, life things that are not business related, just me as a human, and so, okay, so conversational search, as I'm sure you've already experienced, it's already live, we can already use it, so you can ask follow-up questions directly from an AI overview, so I'm searching for, you know, whatever it is, and then it used to just give me that AI overview snippet, but now when I, I, the next thing that is just like most natural is like, oh, and here I read that little AI snippet, and then I have a follow-up question to ask, and then I just type that in, and I'm like, oh, it's like talking to Gemini, is like talking to Chat GBT, it's like I'm talking to an LLM, which I guess essentially I am, but the point is here that Google retains the context of the conversation. Now you're not just Googling, you know, and having relevant links pop up anymore. That's not the way it works. That is like very old school at this point. So, as users explore more deeply, search services supporting articles and links that are relevant to the nuanced conversation, so before your FAQ section could be standard, you know, answering those basic questions, but conversational search works differently, and like this is another reason why having an FAQ session section, both on your website and in every single one of your blogs, I would highly recommend putting an FAQ section, because then AI, Google's AI, can directly pull from that. It's easy, you don't have to make it work, and then it's going to show you over other people, and when they click on the source, then it's you, you are the source that is showing up, so if a user asks, for example, how do I know if I need a copywriter, and then follows up with what if I only have time for a small project, or can you work with me if I'm just starting out, or if I'm at this range of entrepreneurship. Google's AI is looking for one piece of content, that's it, one piece that answers all three of those questions with nuance, with context, and with examples, so you need to write your FAQs and your blog posts to anticipate those follow-ups. So, go click over to my blogs on my website. I'll link that in the show notes as well. If you want to see examples of what this looks like, go search through my most recent blog posts, and scroll down at the bottom. There is always an FAQ section. If you want to just get a sense of, like, what is this like? What kind of questions do I need to be asking? And then you can kind of adapt that to yours. So, some key things here is I'm using clear headers, h h, so Google's AI can extract specific sections for specific answers. I'm writing in, like, an answer style format, so you're leading with the concrete answer, and then explaining the why, and so this is important too, because I know in copywriting you're like, like, if you're writing a social media captioning, like, you're writing with a hook, and you don't necessarily give them the answer right away, and then because you want them to keep reading and get down all the way to the bottom and stop their scroll, but blogs are actually a little bit different, I think that's still true, but also you need to lead with like the actual answer, because that's what Google is going to cite, like if your goal is to be found on Google now, or to have Google cite you in its Google AI overview, you need to give them the direct answer right away, and not make them go search for it down your blog page. So each section needs to be structured so that it really stands alone and works as part of a larger conversation. So we're really not just like your blog posts aren't competing just on single keywords anymore, though. I mean, I think keywords still are important, but it's not the only factor we have to consider anymore. You're also competing on comprehensiveness and context retention, so Google's algorithm is actively looking for content that can feed multiple parts of a multi-turn conversation, so if your FAQs are shallow, it's not going to surface. You need to be detailed and anticipate those follow-up questions, and this goes back, like, like, if you know your ideal client, like the back of your hand, like your best friend, like your spouse, then you know exactly, you're not, you're not like, oh, I wonder what they're gonna like, you know, like, go back to your sales call transcripts. What are they asking? Make sure all those questions are covered. Link to other blogs that go in more, more specific detail. The better you know your person, again, it's just becoming more and more essential. Again, it's always been important in copywriting, but now it's like an absolute non-negotiable. You gotta do this. Okay, so let's go over this again. Three action steps for your website copywriting. So, while this is still like too new for me to have real data, like literally at the time of recording, it's only been out for like, I don't know, maybe two or two, maybe it'll have been out for a month by the time this recording goes live, but still, either way, it's too new for me to have real data on how this is working for me, but again, based on my industry experience, based on what I've already been doing, and based on going scouring this Google article from Google IO, and with all their updates. Here's what I

would logically expect:

one is more qualified inquiries. Again, maybe total click number is down, but the number of qualified inquiries is probably going up. So people who find me through specific niche searches, and then also higher conversion rates on discovery calls again, because people already know my pricing, my process, who I work with. There's less friction, because they've, through their search, it's already narrowed down, and like they know they want me, because it has already been so specific, and that has been laid out in my content, in my blog, in my website, so that they already know before they even reach out to me, which is great, right? Less sales calls, or more qualified, shorter sales calls, and then I think more organic visibility across conversational search, because my FAQ content is really showing up and pulling, doing the work for me as context for those multi-turn conversations, those follow-up questions, like you ask AI something, and then you're like, well, what about this, and what about this, and what about this? My FAQs cover that, and then also it's just better data for Google's agents to work with. My calendar shows my real availability ability, my pricing is explicit, my ideal client is crystal clear. I have a list of, like, these are the clients that I have worked with in the last year, a couple years. This is who I love to work with. So, being specific, being current, and being comprehensive now matters more than it ever has. And don't get me wrong, it's always been important, but now it, like, ups the ante on how important it is. It's absolutely essential, and these changes are live as of now. Conversational search or rolling out the summer, which is the what I was talking about, about the information agent and agentic booking. So I would get on this now. We, it's such an easy opportunity to get ahead of the curve and get a leg up on your services, especially if, like, summer doesn't have to be a slow season. I know for so many online entrepreneurs, we say, 'Oh, summer is slow, we're on vacation, people are traveling, kids are off school, and at the same time, like, you don't have to. You can spend less time on marketing if your website and your blogs are already pulling a lot of the weight for you. And I have another gosh guest episode on that about a guest who, again, she has put in blogs since 2017 2018 and those blogs are still pulling the weight for her, so she, if she misses a couple days of posting on Instagram, or a season of that, like it's still bringing her ideal clients. I'll link to that in the show notes as well, but so again, and even if you haven't been posting, or haven't been posting regularly, it's kind of like the saying of, like, the best time to plant a tree was, you know, was yesterday, but the second best time is, or no, the best time plant a tree was like 10 years ago. The second best time is today, right? You don't benefit by waiting, you only benefit by starting now. Same with investing, right? So, let's summarize. One is, get specific about who you serve and what you do, the general generic broad trying to please everybody, trying to serve everyone. It's not, it's not serving anyone, especially in light of this new change. Using your ideal client's demographics still too general, specific would look like, for example, females ages 45 to 55 who are looking to increase their protein strength and perimenopause and menopause. Right, I am not saying I offer copywriting services, I'm saying things like email marketing and conversion strategy for memberships and group programs in the health and wellness space industry. Right, so the specificity helps AI agents match match you to the right people, because sure that falls under copywriting services, but someone who's searching for copywriting search in general is less clear on what they actually need versus someone who is searching for email marketing and conversion strategy for memberships, they know what they want and what they need, and they are a lot closer to hiring than someone who just googles generic copywriting services, you know. For example, and so expand that analogy to whatever your industry is. Again, make it easy for the AI agents to match you to the right people, and if you're like, 'Hey, blogging isn't for me, do this on your homepage, do this is on your services page, that in itself can go a long way, and that is that is the foundation and the starting point, and that brings me to number two, make to recap, make your pricing, your availability, and your ideal client visible on your website, you can no longer hide pricing behind forms or a call or a downloadable guide. You must be explicit, clear, and current. Think of it as feeding data to machines that are hunting for exact matches. They are not going to download their email, wait for the email to hit, look at the email, read the email, and then spit that back to person who's searching, they're going to look at the person who's it's just on their website and give them that information, right? Make it easy. Okay. And then next is I would rewrite or update or add in, add it into your workflow FAQs on blog posts to answer follow-up questions and not just surface questions. Anticipate what someone would ask next. Know your ideal client, so that you know exactly what they are going to follow up with. It's not a surprise when people are on a call with they ask. I'm like, oh yeah, I hear this all the time. Here's how we handle that. So you can answer it in the same post, you can link to another post of yours that answers it, like still give them, give them an answer, and then you can also link to a post, another post that goes into more detail, and then use clear headers, so that AI can extract the different sections for the different parts of conversation. It's worth updating your best performing blog posts with these, and then adding these your flow again, so so that helps you moving forward, and it helps you know all the work that you've already done on this. So, if you're like, "Gosh, I know I need to do this, how am I going to have time? What is exactly, does that look like auditing your website against these three changes, clarifying your positioning, so it's specific enough for AI agents, and building a content strategy that works within these updates. This is all like, I know, let's be honest, like, you're not gonna go in your back end, in your operations back there, and like, look at your Google data, and all of those things. You know that you just don't have capacity to actually do it. I do this all the time. I've recently done it for myself. I can do it for you in a VIP week, starting at $2,000 USD. There you go. See, being transparent in pricing, the service, practicing what I preach, right? So those who act first on this truly are going to be the ones that agents find, right? Cite and recommend, because you're you're on top of this. There's definitely an advantage to kind of being the first mover on this, and that there's a total opportunity to take action on this now. This is not something that you sleep on. This is something that needs to happen now, because it's rolling out. It's rolling out now. This summer, the summer is here. So, go ahead and book a call to get started. I'll have that linked both in the show notes and in the blog on this, or just head to my website, and there's a link to get a quote. We'll hop on a call, we'll book you out, we'll find a date that works. I anticipate that these spots are going to fill up quick, because again, don't waste a week playing around with it yourself. The time is now. All right, so I hope to chat with you soon, and I will be back in your earbuds next week.