How to build a website with AI, step by step (and what AI won't decide for you)

What's the hard part of building a website with AI?

The hard part isn't the design: it's the architecture. A website built with AI can look finished and answer no search at all, or have three pages competing for the same one. Knowing which pages to make, with which keyword each and how to link them, is what decides whether anyone finds it.

The most common mistake is asking the AI to "make me a website for my business". You'll get something pretty, with generic sections nobody searches for.

The hardest part for me was getting the AI to build what I had in my head. Along the way I had to learn a lot of technical SEO: things I never imagined mattered for building a website.

The alternative is to come to the AI with the groundwork done. That means knowing what your competitors do, what your customers search for and which URL answers each thing. With that, the AI stops guessing.

How do you build a website with AI, step by step?

In eight steps: study your competitors, research what your customers search for, make a keyword map and write in their words. Then choose your AI and design, ask for a build plan, connect Search Console and measure. The first four don't need any AI design tool, and they're the ones people skip most.

Step 1. Study your competitors: what does the ideal website look like?

Search Google for what you sell, with your city if it's a local service, and open the three or four websites at the top. Don't copy them: study them. Notice which pages they have, which service goes on each and how they link to each other.

That's your starting "ideal website". If the sites that already rank have one page per service, it's a hint of what Google understands people are looking for.

An example from my competitor sheet, read on Oct 15, 2026: Diego González, an SEO consultant in Cali, Colombia, has a consultant page for each city (Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Pereira). He also offers a free SEO return calculator.

That tells me two things: his architecture targets local searches, and he gives away something useful to capture leads.

Step 2. Research what your customers search for on Google and in AI

Now find out which words your customers use to search, on Google and in assistants like ChatGPT or Claude. The words tell you which product they want, which rung of your value ladder they're on and what language your page needs to reach them.

A tool like Dinorank or Google's Keyword Planner gives you the volume of each search. Write down the tool and the date: the numbers change.

Step 3. Make a keyword map: one URL, one keyword, one intent

With those searches, make a map: every URL you plan to create gets a single primary keyword and a single search intent. Intent is what the person wants to achieve: learn, compare or hire. Secondary keywords go along with the primary one; they never replace it.

You do this mainly to avoid cannibalization: two of your pages competing for the same search. What tends to happen is that Google alternates between them, and neither settles into a good position.

Neil Patel puts it plainly in his guide to keyword cannibalization: "Prevent keyword cannibalization going forward with a keyword map that assigns one primary keyword and intent per URL."

One nuance: it isn't cannibalization if the two pages answer different intents. That's why the map assigns a keyword and an intent, not just a keyword.

Here's how the map for this site is built, for example. I keep it in a spreadsheet, "Estudio SEO", with one tab for keywords and another for competitors:

Tap to enlarge ↗

The map also decides the internal linking: each page links to the one the reader needs next. For example, the article on how much a website costs links to the design page, because people comparing prices often want to hire next.

Step 4. Write in your customers' words

Your customers aren't looking for "a website": they're looking for how to get more clients or sell better. That's why I don't lead with a website; I lead with a client acquisition channel. Sell the solution, not the process.

Isra Bravo, one of the Spanish-language copywriters I recommend most, put it this way in an interview with ¡HOLA!: "Saber mostrar claramente los beneficios para la persona que te lee o escucha." In English: being able to clearly show the benefits to whoever is reading or listening (my translation).

If you already sell on Instagram and doubt a website would bring you more clients, first read whether you need a website for your business.

Learning a little copywriting never hurts. The core idea is to write the way your customers talk when they describe their problem, in very plain language. If you read Spanish, start with El libro de copywriting, by Isra Bravo (Alienta, 2023).

Step 5. Choose your AI and design (my shortcut)

Explore which AI tools suit your project. I use Claude, and this is my shortcut, step by step:

• 1 · Competitor analysis. I open my competitor's website with the Claude extension for Chrome, connected to Google Sheets. I ask for an SEO analysis that ends in a sheet with the keywords it probably already uses.

• 2 · A map for my business. In Claude, I ask it to adapt that map to my business, with what I know about it and a bit of creativity. A new sheet comes out.

• 3 · Design. I take that sheet to Claude Design and keep talking until I have an artifact (a clickable mockup) I like.

• 4 · Build plan. I take the artifact to Claude Code and ask for a detailed plan to build the site, always with a to-do list.

If you want to try it: Claude in Chrome, Claude with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides (in beta as of Oct 6, 2026) and Claude Design.

If you use another tool (Lovable, Base44), the order works the same: first the map, then the design. What does change is how each one hands the page to Google; you measure that in step 7.

Step 6. Ask for a build plan and choose hosting

This is the step where you do your homework. I ask Claude Code to look up SEO experts and analyze my competitors to improve the plan. I also ask it to research the content management system (CMS), hosting and web security before deciding.

One thing the plan can't leave out: every page has to reach Google with its text already written in the HTML. That's called prerendering or server-side rendering, and Google's JavaScript guide still recommends it.

If you don't ask for it, the AI can build a page that Google receives empty. This is the spec I use:

I want every URL on my site to be published with its HTML already generated (prerendering), not just JavaScript.
1. At build time, generate one HTML file per route, with its <title>, meta description, canonical, a single <h1> and all the visible text.
2. If a route has no generated HTML, the build must fail.
3. A made-up URL must return 404, not the home page with a 200.
Before you change anything, tell me which files you'll touch and wait for my "yes".
When you're done, test it with two cases that should give different results:
- a real route, which must carry its headline in the HTML;
- a made-up route, which must return 404.
Show me the output of both tests. Don't assume anything you haven't checked.

Open the hosting account with your email, not the email of whoever builds the site. That way the site is yours from day one.

Step 7. Connect Search Console and check the technical side

Add your site to Google Search Console, submit the sitemap and check that Google receives the text. To do that, open "View page source" and look for your headline. Then use Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights and the Ahrefs extension to look for technical errors or broken links.

In the same pass, link the site to your social profiles and to your Google Business Profile. If something doesn't add up, the guide to fixing an AI-built site Google can't read has the five symptoms and the fix for each.

Open this page: [your page address].
Tell me the H1, the H2s and the first paragraph you see.
Here is a fragment of “View page source” for the same page: [the text from “<h1” to “</h1>” and the paragraph after it; or write “no <h1> appeared”].
Compare the two and tell me whether the text I see on screen is also in the code.

Rules for this review:
1. Quote the exact text you found. Don't paraphrase it.
2. If something can't be seen from the browser, write “not verifiable from the browser.” Don't assume.
3. Give me a table: element · what you found · fine / review / missing · why it matters in one sentence.
4. Don't make up traffic, visits or rankings. Don't promise anything will rank higher on Google.
5. If you can't open an address yourself, say so in the first line and work only with what I pasted. Don't describe a page you didn't see.

Step 8. Measure and adjust

Install Google Analytics 4 and check every month, with Search Console, which searches arrive, which are missing and which pages get no visits. Those measurements tell you what to adjust: a title, a section, a new link.

I wrote this while studying philosophy, thinking about theater, and it holds for a website too. Artists keep reshaping their work according to what the experience on stage invites them to reflect on (my translation).

Which YouTube videos help with the mechanics?

To see how each tool works, these videos explain it better than any text. They're in Spanish, recent, and each shows a different method: take from each what works for you. Use them for steps 5 and 6; for steps 1 to 4, come back to this guide.

• To design with Claude: "Cómo crear páginas web increíbles utilizando Claude", by Adrián Sáenz (Jul 18, 2026, in Spanish). Made for people who don't code.

• To build with Claude Code: "Crea una landing espectacular con Claude Code", by midudev (Oct 9, 2026, in Spanish). It's more technical (Astro and animations) and sponsored.

• For the map and site architecture: "5 pasos para posicionar #1 en Google con Claude (SEO en 2026)", by Dani Llamazares (Apr 27, 2026, in Spanish). It covers keywords, competitors and site architecture; its title promises a top spot no one can guarantee.

• For internal linking: DinoRANK's internal linking course, part 1 (Feb 24, 2025, in Spanish). A good introduction.

Views as shown on YouTube on Oct 18, 2026: Adrián Sáenz, 171,818 views (on a channel with 4.1 million subscribers); midudev, 278,236 (1.04 million); Dani Llamazares, 48,453 (109,000). DinoRANK's channel has 11,300 subscribers.

Can you build a website with AI for free?

Publishing it can be free, because Cloudflare Pages has a free plan and Search Console and Google Analytics 4 cost nothing. Building it with Claude Code isn't, because most of its surfaces require a Claude subscription or an Anthropic Console account. You pay for the domain separately, every year.

Lovable and Base44 have their own plans; I didn't review them for this guide, so check their pricing pages. What holds for any of them: free or paid, the step 7 check is the same.

Does Google care that the page was built with AI?

Not for being built with AI. Google's documentation on AI-generated content asks that it meet its spam policies and Search Essentials, like any other page. What it can penalize is something else, and that's on the same page.

What can break its scaled content abuse policy is generating many pages without adding value. That's why AI writes drafts, and I decide which search each page answers and what facts it carries.

If a fact about your business isn't confirmed, the page doesn't say it. No made-up client numbers, reviews or years of experience.

Would you rather I build it?

If you'd rather I build it, SEO website design follows these eight steps, at a fixed price and in your name. And if you've already built it and something doesn't add up, the free diagnostic starts with step 7.

Frequently asked questions