Websites accumulate claims. Somebody wrote a line years ago, it was true then, and it has been sitting there ever since being read as current.
Most of them are harmless. A few are not, and the difference is worth an afternoon.
This is a pass over your own site looking for one thing only: sentences that assert something a reader would take as fact.
Mark them first, judge them after
Go through the site page by page and mark every sentence that makes a claim. Do not evaluate as you go, because evaluating slows you down and you will stop before you finish.
You are looking for:
- Numbers of any kind
- Anything about time: years in business, response times, how long things take
- Anything about qualifications, licences, insurance, memberships, accreditation
- Anything superlative: best, largest, only, first, leading
- Anything about your team: size, experience, who does what
- Anything about the work: what you always do, never do, or guarantee
- Anything about customers, satisfaction, or results
- Anything about coverage or availability
Mark first. There will be more than you expect.
Then sort them into four piles
Provable, and current. You can produce evidence today. Leave it alone.
Provable, but out of date. True once, not now. Correct the figure or the wording.
Not provable, but harmless. Vague and unfalsifiable. Consider cutting it, since a sentence nobody could check is a sentence doing no work.
Not provable, and risky. A specific claim you could not defend. This pile comes down today.
The fourth pile is small and it is the point of the exercise.
The claims that need the most care
Licences, insurance, and accreditation. These are the ones where being wrong matters most, and they go stale silently. Check that every one is current, that the numbers are right, and that the wording describes what you actually hold.
Superlatives. Largest, oldest, only, best in the area. Each of these is a factual claim that somebody could dispute. Unless you can support it, take it out.
Guarantees. Anything promising an outcome is a promise about something you do not fully control. We do not make outcome promises of any kind, and we would tell any business the same. Promise what you control: what you will do, when, and how you will handle it if something goes wrong.
Team size and experience. These drift as people come and go, and the number on the page is usually from whenever the page was written.
Anything with a year in it. A year printed on a page is a claim about currency, whether or not it was meant as one.
Where the claims hide
Claims are not only in the main text.
Check the footer, which frequently contains the oldest text on the site. Check image captions and the descriptive text attached to images. Check any repeated block that appears on every page. Check the questions page, which tends to be written once and never revisited. Check anything printed that came from the site.
Write down what backs each keeper
For every claim you keep, note in one line where the evidence is: which certificate, which record, which date.
This is the part that pays off later. The next time somebody asks, or the next time the page is edited, the backing is already recorded rather than having to be reconstructed.
If you cannot write that line for a claim, that tells you which pile it actually belongs in.
Do it on a schedule
Once a year, and after anything changes: a new certification, a lapsed one, a change in the team, a change in what you offer.
The annual pass is much faster once the backing notes exist, because most of it is confirming that recorded evidence is still current.
The uncomfortable part
Some of what comes down will be sentences you liked, that read well, and that were probably true.
Take them down anyway if you cannot back them. The whole value of a page that only says things it can support is that everything on it becomes more believable, including the parts that matter most.
If you want an outside read on how your site's claims currently stand up, the free check covers your website, your Google profile, your search results, and your reviews. Nothing is logged into or changed, and the findings are yours to keep.