Should you use AI to write content for your website?

Should you use AI to write content for your website? Yes, you can, but it depends entirely on how you do it. AI can save you a lot of time. If you get the formula wrong, though, it can hurt your rankings on Google.

I have worked in digital marketing and SEO for over a decade, and I use AI a ton in my own work. I have seen it work well for businesses, and I have seen it cause problems. This article explains what makes the difference so you can decide what is right for your business.

What can go wrong

I saw the owner of an electrical business generate his whole website with AI. The writing on the site was generic. It did not give his customers anything useful.

When Google made its most recent updates, his website dropped in the search results. For a local business, a drop like that means fewer customers finding you on Google.

Google updates its search results several times a year to filter out pages that break its rules. The most recent update started on September 24, 2026. Google has not said exactly what it focused on. What I saw was that the websites that dropped were publishing a lot of content at once or using generic AI content.

Google’s published rules explain why. Google does not want pages that are made mainly to show up in search and give the reader little or no value. One example it gives is producing lots of pages with AI that add nothing for the reader.

The good news is that Google’s rules do not say you can’t use AI. What matters is whether the content is useful to the person reading it, no matter how it was made.

How to tell content was written by AI

The biggest giveaways are the phrasing, the way the sentences are built and the topics of the articles.

• It is too polished. Every sentence is smooth. None of it sounds like a real person who does the work.
• The sections don’t feed off each other. Each part of the page reads like it was written on its own. One section does not lead into the next.
• The blog jumps from one topic to another. There is no thread tying the articles together.

Once you know what to look for, it is hard to miss.

Why business owners end up with AI content

Most business owners end up with AI content for two reasons.

1. They don’t have the writing ability to create good content on their own. That is completely normal. You are good at running your business. Writing about it is a different skill, and AI looks like an easy way to get it done.
2. They hire a low-cost SEO company. Many of these companies use AI to produce a lot of content every month. Often that content is not based on research into your market or on what your customers are searching for.

If the second one sounds familiar, it is worth looking at what is being published on your website. There is a simple way to check further down in this article.

What AI does not know about your business

An AI can only make assumptions about your business. It works from what it can find on the internet and the information you give it. That is all it has.

It can’t understand:

• who your customers are
• which customers are the best fit for you
• how you handle your clients
• what your market really looks like

You know those things because you deal with them every day. They are also what make your content different from every other business in your trade. When they are missing, the content could be about any business in any city.

How I use AI in my own work

I use AI a ton. I use it as a writing assistant, not as a copywriter.

That means the knowledge comes from me and from my customers. AI helps me get it written. Before anything goes on a website, I make sure it is unique to my customer’s needs. Above all, I make sure it is helpful.

I have seen AI-assisted content work well for all sorts of businesses. It worked when two things were true:

1. The content was written to be unique to that business’s market.
2. A human had oversight.

Both matter. Without them, the content ends up generic.

If you are going to use AI, follow these rules

1. Make the content unique to your business. Build it on your own firsthand experience. Use the jobs you have done, the problems you have solved and the way you do things.
2. Answer real questions from your customers. Use the questions people ask you on the phone and on the job. Other people are searching for answers to those same questions.
3. Put the answer at the top of the article. Your reader is busy. This article answers its question in the first two sentences.
4. Never let AI just make things up. AI sometimes states things that are not true. Check every fact, number and claim before it goes on your website.

How to check the content your SEO company gives you

If you are paying a company for content, look at a few of the articles on their website. Then ask yourself:

• As a consumer, would you find value in what is being said? If you would not find it useful, your customers probably won’t either.
• How long is the article? Is it short? A very short article usually can’t answer a question fully.
• Are keywords stuffed into every header or page? Keywords are the words people type into Google. If the same phrase is repeated in every heading, the article was probably written for Google more than for your customers.

It is also fair to ask the company what the content is based on. A good company will be glad to show you the research behind it and what your customers are searching for.

The short answer

You can use AI to help write content for your website. It depends entirely on how you execute.

Use it as a writing assistant. Give it what you know about your customers and your market. Have a person check everything before it is published. Done that way, I have seen it work.

The risk comes from publishing generic content in large amounts with no one checking it. That is the kind of content I have seen drop in Google’s results.

If you would like a second opinion on the content on your website, contact Roughstock SEO Co. We are local to Clearwater and happy to take a look.