August 2026

The Story Starter

Reader,

If you've been here a while, you know that I've been sharing school website copywriting best practices for ... quite some time. (Decades, actually.)

Which is why this week's topic is so important.

It's about AI search — and specifically, how AI reads your website and determines what (and if) it will share.

I spent the last few weeks down a research rabbit hole, and I'll be sharing my findings, thoughts, and tips in a series of blog posts.

This week's is the first, and it begins on the more technical side, which is a great place to start. But one takeaway that's crucial:

AI doesn't rank your webpage. It reads it in pieces, decides which piece is specific and trustworthy enough to repeat, and sometimes never sends the searching parent to your site at all.

The overlap between what ranks #1 on Google and what AI tools actually cite has dropped to under 20%. Yikes.

If you want to know why, read the full breakdown here→, because I think it changes how you should be looking at your school website this fall.

Your storytelling tip:

My research kept surfacing the same idea I've been sharing for years, just with a technical reason behind it now: generic language doesn't just sound bad, it gets filtered out. "Small class sizes" loses. "12:1 ratio, average class size of 14" wins — with a human reader and with a language model deciding what's trustworthy enough to repeat. Read story

Em-dash: a peek inside Emily's office

What I'm writing: This AI-and-website-copy series turned into a four-parter faster than I expected. Next up is what actually changes about how you write a page once you know AI is reading it in chunks, not top to bottom.

What clients are asking: Some version of "do we need to redo our whole website" almost every call this month. The answer is closer to "audit before you rebuild" — most of what's broken is fixable without a full redesign.

What I'm reading: The novel I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue. Imagine accidentally gaining access to the private emails of everyone in your office. What would you do? And how could you use it to your advantage? A really fun, and surprisingly touching, story so far.

Your school has a powerful story to tell. You just need help telling it.

Let's turn your school's expertise, differentiators, outcomes, legacy, and vision into one cohesive school story that attracts dream families, increases inquiries & enrollment, strengthens communities, and grows school influence. Find out how!

See you next week!

-Emily