AI website mistakes to avoid

AI website mistakes to avoid (and how to fix them)

Published 9 February 2026 · 9 minute read · By AI Website Builder UK

The twelve faults we find on almost every unedited AI build, ranked by how much revenue they cost, with the fix for each one.

We audit AI-built websites most weeks. The same faults appear again and again, and they are almost all introduced by publishing the AI draft rather than editing it. Here they are, grouped and ranked by how much they cost you.

Content mistakes

1. Generic headlines. "Quality service you can trust" tells a visitor nothing and matches no search query. Replace with service plus location plus benefit.
2. Invented facts. Accreditations, years in business and guarantees the model made up. Check every claim.
3. No local specifics. No town names, no landmarks, no service radius, no local examples. This is the single most common reason a local site does not rank.
4. Thin service pages. Three sentences and a stock photo. A service page needs to answer what it costs, how long it takes and what happens next.
5. Duplicate copy across pages. Generated location pages that differ only by the town name are recognised and discounted.

SEO mistakes

1. Identical meta descriptions on every page, or none at all.
2. Multiple H1 tags because the template uses heading styles for visual size.
3. No structured data, so search engines never learn your address, hours or service area.
4. Missing or unsubmitted sitemap.
5. Keyword-stuffed alt text that helps nobody and can look manipulative.

Technical mistakes

1. Enormous images. A 4MB hero JPEG is the most common cause of a failing Largest Contentful Paint score.
2. Layout shift from images without width and height attributes.
3. Broken contact forms. We test every audited site and roughly one in five forms does not deliver anywhere.
4. Mixed www and non-www URLs without a canonical, splitting your ranking signals.
5. No 404 page, so a mistyped link dumps visitors on a blank server error.

Conversion mistakes

• Phone number as plain text rather than a tap-to-call link.
• The only call to action is "Learn more".
• No pricing at all, so visitors bounce to a competitor who publishes theirs.
• Contact form asking for eleven fields when three would do.
• No proof: no reviews, no photographs of real work, no named person.

The fix, in priority order

If you can only do five things this week, do these:

1. Test your contact form end to end from a phone.
2. Rewrite the homepage headline to say what you do and where.
3. Compress every image and add width and height attributes.
4. Write unique titles and meta descriptions for every page.
5. Add LocalBusiness structured data with your real address and hours.

Those five typically take half a day and they move the needle further than a redesign. If you would rather it was handled, our audit and rescue service covers all of the above and we usually turn it around within a week.

Frequently asked questions