Using AI on Your Website Without Getting Buried by Google

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By Brandon Aubey

In short: AI blog posts and AI location pages used to rank. Now Google ignores most of them. Here is how to check your site and use AI the right way.

A lot of owners write their websites with AI now. Most have never checked if any of it works. I think most of it is hurting them.

The owner who never checked

A guy told me last week about his blog. He posts a new AI article every day. I asked him if any of them rank. He had no idea. He had never looked.

Here is how to check in about 20 seconds.

1. Go to Google.
2. Search site: followed by the full URL of one post.
3. If it shows up, Google has it. If it does not, Google does not.
4. Open Google Search Console. That is Google’s free tool for site owners.
5. Click Pages. Scroll down to the list of reasons pages are not indexed.

I would bet almost all of his posts sit in one bucket. Google calls it crawled, currently not indexed. Google read the page and chose to skip it. That happens when a page adds nothing new to the world. AI content written from nothing is exactly that.

So don’t do stuff just to do stuff. Fifty posts nobody can find is not a win.

Why doesn’t my site rank?

Owners ask me this a lot. They blame the slow site. Or the ugly site. Or not having enough pages.

Honestly, the answer is usually the same. You are writing with AI.

Slow site or AI writing? AI writing. Ugly site or AI writing? AI writing. Not enough pages or AI writing? Still AI writing. Pages competing with each other? You have competing pages because AI wrote ten pages that all say the same thing.

Fix the writing first. Then worry about the rest.

What worked last year is hurting you now

Last year a few tricks worked. Mass location pages. One page for every town near El Paso, all written by AI. FAQ sections pulled straight from a chatbot.

We did those tricks too. Everybody did. They worked for a while.

They don’t anymore. Google is punishing sites for it. I still see agencies pumping out a thousand AI location pages. I have not seen many of them change their approach. Their clients pay for it.

So if someone built you a pile of AI pages recently, I’m sorry. You are better off deleting them. A site with 15 real pages beats a site with 500 empty ones.

The right way to use AI

AI is not the problem. Empty content is the problem. The fix is to put original information on your site. Things nobody else can write.

• How many years you have been in business.
• Why you got into this trade.
• What you do differently than the shop down the street.
• Real numbers from your own jobs.

You can have AI help with this. Have it interview you. Ask it to play the reporter. It asks the questions, you answer out loud or by typing.

Say you run a roofing company in El Paso. Out of the last 100 roofs you inspected, how many actually needed a full replacement? Maybe 30. Put that number on your site. No competitor can copy that. And AI search tools love that kind of detail. It gives them a reason to recommend you.

That is the whole idea. AI pulls the real stuff out of you. It does not make stuff up for you.

Which website builder is best for SEO?

SEO means showing up on Google. People ask which builder is best for it. Here is my honest take on each one.

• AI website builders. Bad for SEO. Fine for a quick landing page.
• Wix. It works, but you are capped on what you can fix.
• Squarespace. Looks good. Not as much control as you need.
• GoHighLevel. Great for funnels. A big pain for SEO.
• WordPress. The best if you want to rank. The worst if nobody maintains it.

Pick based on who will take care of the site. A good tool with no one watching still breaks.

Websites are not dead yet

I don’t like the videos that say websites are dead. I don’t even want to click on them.

Will websites die one day? Probably. I think they end up like the back of a t-shirt. Everyone sells the shirt. Nobody reads the back. The site still exists, but people stop going there.

Just don’t plan on that happening tomorrow. Right now your website is still the strongest piece of your online presence. Google reads it. AI tools read it. Customers still check it before they call. Treat it like it matters, because it does.

When everyone has AI, who wins?

One day you will ask for a whole new web presence. You will get it overnight. New brand, new site, everything. Anybody will be able to do that.

So who wins when everyone has the same tools? People still want service. They want someone who picks up the phone. Someone who stands behind the work.

After AI takes over, we won’t be the sharpest people in the room. But we can still be the most in touch. The ones who win stay personally involved. They give great service alongside the tool. The tool does not replace that. It just makes it stand out more.

Want help cleaning up AI pages or adding real content? Take a look at our SEO services. Or book a strategy call and we will look at your site together.

We can do this for you

You can do everything above yourself. Most owners do not have the hours. Dead River Management builds and runs it for home service businesses. We work in El Paso and across the country. You keep running jobs. We handle the search and AI visibility work. You judge us on booked jobs, not reports. See SEO services, read about the Demand Flow guarantee, or book a strategy call.

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