Built your website with AI? 10 checks to run before it costs you customers
The short version: if you built your website with an AI tool and you are keeping it for now, these are the ten checks we run on every AI-built website a client brings us. Most take a couple of minutes each, none of them need a developer, and together they are the difference between a site that quietly loses enquiries and one that earns its keep. If you would rather we just looked at it for you, book a free call.
We wrote separately about why our packages are on launch promotion and what we honestly think of AI site builders. Short version: starting with AI is fine. Staying there without fixing the basics is what costs you money. Here is the fixing part.
1. Open it on your own phone, on mobile data
Why it matters: most of your visitors are on a phone, often on 4G, often standing outside a customer’s house. If the page takes more than about three seconds to show something useful, a good share of them leave before reading a word.
How to check: turn Wi-Fi off on your phone, open the site, and count. Then run the page through Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score, not the desktop one.
The usual culprit: photographs uploaded straight off a camera or phone at full resolution. A 6 MB image displayed at 800 pixels wide is six megabytes your customer pays for. Resize images to roughly the width they actually display and save them as WebP — for most small sites this single change is the biggest win available.
2. Check your page title and meta description
Why it matters: the blue line in Google and the grey text beneath it are the first thing anyone sees, and the title is one of the strongest on-page ranking signals you control.
How to check: search Google for your own business name and read what comes back. If the title says “Home” or “My Site”, you are wasting the most valuable text you own.
Fix it like this: say what you do and where. “Mobile Tyre Fitting in Dagenham & Romford — Same-Day Callout” beats “Home” every time. Do it for every page, not just the homepage.
3. One H1, and make it name the job
Why it matters: the main heading tells both the visitor and the search engine what the page is for. Generated pages often have no H1 at all, or five of them.
How to check: right-click the page, choose “View page source”, and search for “<h1”. There should be exactly one per page.
Fix it like this: name the service and the area. Your homepage heading is not the place for “Welcome to our website”.
4. Make the phone number tappable
Why it matters: on a phone, a number typed as plain text is a number nobody rings. People will not copy it out by hand.
How to check: open the site on your phone and tap the number. If it does not offer to dial, it is not a link.
Fix it like this: the number should be a proper tel: link, and it should be visible in the header without scrolling. For trades and callout businesses this is usually the highest-value change on the whole site.
5. Send yourself a test enquiry — properly
Why it matters: this is the most expensive item on the list to get wrong, and we find broken forms constantly. A form that shows “thank you” and delivers nothing looks perfect from the outside.
How to check: fill your own form in and send it. Then send another from a different email address, ideally a Gmail one. Check the inbox, then check spam and junk.
Fix it like this: set the form to send from an address on your own domain rather than the visitor’s, and put a copy into a folder you actually watch. Then test it again once a month. Every lost form enquiry is a job somebody else got.
6. Make your business details identical everywhere
Why it matters: business name, address and phone number that differ between your website, your Google Business Profile and directory listings is one of the quiet reasons local businesses under-rank.
How to check: write down exactly how the three appear on your site, then compare them character for character with your Google profile. “Unit 4” and “Unit 4,” are not the same string, and neither are two different mobile numbers.
7. Point your Google Business Profile at the right page
Why it matters: for most local businesses the Google profile does more work than the website does, and the two need to agree with each other.
How to check and fix: fill the profile in completely — primary category, hours, services, service areas, and real photographs rather than stock. If you serve several towns, link to the page that matches the search, not always the homepage.
8. Build a page per service and per area you care about
Why it matters: one page that mentions everything ranks for nothing. This is where nearly every AI-built site stops, and where the real work starts.
How to check: list the services you want to be found for and the towns you want them in. If there is no page for a combination that matters to you, you are not competing for it.
Fix it like this: write each page for somebody standing in that town with that problem. Do not take one paragraph and swap the place name — near-identical pages help nobody and read as filler to both humans and search engines.
9. Check you have not accidentally blocked Google
Why it matters: some builders publish with search engines switched off, and a site nobody can index is a site nobody can find.
How to check: search Google for site:yourdomain.co.uk. If nothing comes back after a couple of weeks live, something is blocking it. In WordPress, look at Settings → Reading for the “Discourage search engines” tick box, and make sure Google Search Console is set up so you can see what Google actually thinks of the site.
10. Click every link and every button
Why it matters: generated sites are full of links to pages that were never created, and template text nobody spotted. A dead Terms link or a stray line of placeholder Latin says more about your business than you would like.
How to check: click everything, including the footer, on both desktop and phone. Read the small print you never read.
A ten-minute order of play
If you only have one coffee break, do them in this order: test the contact form, make the phone number tappable, fix the page titles, resize the biggest images, then check you are indexable. The first two protect enquiries you are getting today. The next three decide how many you get next month.
Where the ceiling is
These ten checks will take an AI-built site from risky to respectable. What they will not do is make it competitive in a market where other businesses have proper service pages, fast mobile performance, structured data and a presence somebody maintains every month. At some point the limit is the build itself, not the settings.
That is usually the moment to move — and while our launch promotion is running it costs £424.15 for a Starter site rather than £499 £424.15.
Who we do this for
We work with small businesses across London, Romford, Dagenham, Basildon, Chelmsford and the rest of Essex: trades and construction firms, equestrian businesses, horsebox hire operators, glaziers, sash window joiners, mobile tyre fitters, jewellers, dog groomers and one-person consultancies. Live examples of all of it are on our projects page.
Frequently asked questions
Is an AI-built website bad for SEO?
Not inherently. What hurts is what usually comes with it: missing titles, no service or area pages, no structured data, heavy images and copy that reads like every other generated page. Fix those and the tool it was built with matters far less.
How fast should my site load on a phone?
Aim for something useful on screen within about two to three seconds on mobile data. If you are past five, you are losing people who will never tell you they visited.
How many pages do I actually need?
Enough to cover each service you want work for, plus the areas that matter to you. For most sole traders that is three to five pages; for a business with several services and towns it is usually closer to ten.
Can you fix my existing site instead of rebuilding it?
Often, yes — particularly if it is WordPress. Send us the link and we will tell you whether fixing or rebuilding is better value, honestly.
Do I need to pay monthly for SEO?
Not necessarily. A well-built site with proper local foundations will do a lot on its own. Monthly work helps when you are in a competitive market and want to keep climbing rather than hold position.
Want a second pair of eyes on your site?
Send us the link and we will run these checks for you, then tell you what we found — including when the honest answer is that it is fine as it is for another few months.
Further reading
Google explains what it looks for in its SEO Starter Guide, and you can test any page for free with Google PageSpeed Insights.