Website content is the job that holds up more of our projects than anything else. Design gets signed off, the build is ready, and the service pages are still blank because the owner is busy running the business. So it’s no surprise that more clients now arrive with content written by ChatGPT or another AI tool.
Some of it is genuinely useful. Some of it would have got the business into trouble. The difference almost always comes down to one thing: whether someone who knows the business edited it properly.
What Google says
There’s a persistent belief that Google penalises AI-written content. It doesn’t, at least not for being AI-written. Google’s guidance on AI-generated content says it rewards helpful, high-quality content however it’s produced, and that what it cares about is the quality, not the method.
What Google does penalise is using AI to churn out pages that don’t help anyone. Its spam policies describe “scaled content abuse”, and one of the listed examples is “using generative AI tools or other similar tools to generate many pages without adding value for users.” The classic small business version is forty near-identical suburb pages written by AI, each swapping in a different town name. That’s the pattern that gets sites into strife, whether a person or a machine wrote it.
So the question isn’t “is AI allowed?” It’s “is this page better than what’s already out there, and is it true?”
Where AI hurts
It makes things up
This is the big one. AI tools fill gaps with plausible-sounding detail. In our experience, the usual suspects in an unedited AI draft are years in business, awards, towns serviced, qualifications and statements about regulations. Any of them can be invented and stated with complete confidence.
On a website, that’s not a typo. Under Australian Consumer Law, businesses can’t make false or misleading claims about their services, and “we wrote it with AI” isn’t a defence. For health practitioners, advertising is also regulated by Ahpra and the National Boards, and AI tools happily write things like “guaranteed relief” or testimonial-style claims that breach those rules. On specialist health sites, like the one we built for the North Coast Head, Neck & Jaw Centre, every clinical statement needs to be checked by someone qualified, regardless of who drafted it.
This is general information, not legal advice. If a claim on your site would worry you in front of the ACCC or your regulator, take it out or check it properly.
It sounds like everyone else
Ask an AI tool for a homepage for a plumber and you’ll get roughly the same page every other plumber got. “We pride ourselves on quality workmanship and exceptional customer service.” Nobody has ever chosen a plumber because of that sentence.
AI defaults to the average, and average copy gives customers no reason to pick you. It also gives AI search tools nothing distinctive to say about you, which matters more each year. If your site reads like every competitor’s, there’s nothing for ChatGPT or Google to quote that it couldn’t have got elsewhere.
It doesn’t know what customers ask
The best service page answers the questions your customers actually ring about, in the order they think of them. AI doesn’t know those questions unless you tell it. Left alone, it writes about what a generic business in your category might do, not about what your customers are worried about.
Where AI helps
Used well, AI saves real time on the parts of content writing people find hardest.
| Task | How useful AI is |
|---|---|
| Getting past a blank page | Very. A rough structure gets you moving. |
| Turning your notes or a voice memo into tidy paragraphs | Very, if the notes are yours. |
| Suggesting page structure and headings | Useful as a starting point. |
| Rewriting clunky sentences you’ve written | Useful. |
| Writing meta descriptions and alt text drafts | Useful, with checking. |
| Writing service pages from scratch with no input | Poor. Generic and often wrong. |
| Anything involving prices, rules, qualifications or results | Risky. Always verify. |
| Testimonials or case studies | Never. These must be real. |
The pattern is clear. AI is good at shaping material you give it. It’s poor at supplying the material itself.
A workflow that works
This is the process we recommend to clients writing their own content, and it’s close to how we use these tools ourselves.
1. Write a fact sheet first (by hand)
Before any AI tool gets involved, write a plain list of facts for the page. For a service page that’s: what the service is, who it’s for, the towns you cover, what it typically costs or what affects price, how long it takes, what the process looks like, your licence or registration details, what makes your approach different, and the five questions customers most often ask.
Dot points are fine. Spelling doesn’t matter. This is the bit only you can do, and it’s the bit that makes the page worth reading.
2. Let AI draft from the fact sheet
Paste the fact sheet in and ask for a draft. Tell it explicitly: “Use only the facts provided. Don’t add claims, numbers, awards or qualifications that aren’t in the notes. If something is missing, leave a placeholder in square brackets.” Our guide to using ChatGPT for marketing without sounding like a robot has more prompts that work.
3. Check every fact
Read the draft with your fact sheet beside it. Highlight every claim, number and place name, and tick it off against your notes. Delete anything that isn’t on the sheet. This takes ten minutes and catches most of the dangerous stuff.
4. Add the proof AI can’t
Now add the things that make a page convincing: a real example of a recent job, a photo you took, the name of the person who’ll turn up, a specific detail about how you work. “We put drop sheets down and vacuum before we leave” is more persuasive than any amount of polished prose.
5. Edit for your voice
Read it aloud. Anywhere it sounds like a brochure rather than you talking to a customer, rewrite it. Cut the filler phrases, the triple adjectives and the closing paragraph that summarises everything you just said.
6. Get a second reader
Ask a staff member or a long-standing customer to read it. If they say “that doesn’t sound like you”, believe them.
If you’re getting someone else to write it
If a web designer or marketer is supplying your content, ask how it’s written. AI-assisted is fine. AI-generated and published without your review is not. You should always see and approve every page before it goes live, because it’s your name and your licence on it.
Our article on why website content is the real bottleneck covers other ways to get it done, including interview-style approaches that work well for busy owners. And as AI tools increasingly describe businesses to customers, distinctive, accurate content is part of being known by name.
When we build a site through our web design service, we’ll work from your fact sheet and edit with you, so the finished pages sound like you and are true. For ongoing content, that’s part of our SEO work.