Your website still matters in the age of AI
Digital marketing is always chasing the next big thing.
SEO. Social media. Blogging. Video. TikTok. AI.
There’s always something new and shiny – something for marketers to pin their hopes on, and for the gurus to sell.
I’ve seen this cycle play out again and again over the 25+ years I’ve worked in SEO and digital marketing.
It’s human nature. We crave novelty. We’re wired for FOMO. New platforms and tactics promise easy wins, and the buzz becomes contagious.
But the pattern is predictable. The hype fades. The tool finds its proper place. The early wins vanish, and the shiny new thing is absorbed into the broader marketing mix.
AI is the latest – and possibly the biggest – of these toys.
Search has been evolving for decades, but AI isn’t just another step. It could be a true revolution in how information is ranked and returned. A big deal. Maybe the biggest shift in my career.
And, like all revolutions, it’s messy, misunderstood, and wildly overhyped.
This article explores how, amid all this AI-driven change, the humble website may be the oldest tool in digital marketing that matters most.
AI is great/AI is trash
First of all, it is useful to consider the dialogue around AI.
We seem to primarily see two polarized opinions.
The AI maximalists
“AI will change the world overnight! It will do your marketing, write your content, run your ads, build your site, handle your sales… all automatically. You can basically sit on a beach sipping margaritas.”
This narrative appeals to the hope of shortcuts, the dream of easy wins, and the deep desire for solutions without effort. We all feel this – it is impossible not to.
Humans are wired to seek the path of least resistance.
It’s a survival mechanism, and we all need our businesses and marketing to survive (and we all really want to sit on that beach sipping a cold drink).
This is a compelling but naive narrative and one most often pushed by those who have something AI-related to sell.
The AI skeptics
This camp says, “AI is useless! It’s generic, it’s low-quality, it’s wrong, it’s a threat, it’s dangerous, it’s just a fad.”
As with the AI maximilists, when we look at the more verbose members of the skeptic group, many are protecting something – their own expertise, their own tools, their own products, or their existing market position.
Ignoring AI altogether is just as risky as seeing AI as the one marketing tool to rule them all.
The boring realists
I sit somewhere here in this dull, centrist, realistic camp.
The tiresome, uninteresting reality is somewhere in the middle.
AI is a tool, a powerful one. It does not replace strategy, creativity, or judgment.
It’s an intelligent assistant rather than a do-everything-so-you-can-sit-on-a-beach-drinking-cocktails tool.
The brands and businesses that win will be those that combine smart human thinking with smart tools, not those that fall for hype or cling to the past.
Look at AI, integrate it where sensible, don’t throw your existing, working marketing babies out with the bathwater.
The SEO and AI paradox
Like everything in SEO and digital marketing, the AI vultures swooped in hard and fast.
Early AI usage has been to flood the web with cheap, fast, generic content – much of it produced without much thought, research, or originality.
This creates an interesting paradox. If AI is based on what is out there. And what is out there is based on AI.
Then is this a doom spiral toward genericism? Is this inevitable output? Or will the creative human spirit shine through? I tend to believe so.
After the rush of people chasing easy wins – or trying to cash in on AI hype – we’ll reach a point where AI simply becomes part of the everyday marketing toolkit.
It will be integrated into everything. Just business as usual.
From a Google and an SEO perspective, this plays just fine.
Google has always been clear on what it values:
- “Helpful, original, people-first content that demonstrates real experience, expertise, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T).”
The loop of AI content built on more AI content creates a paradox – one that opens the door for fresh, original thinking.
There’s real opportunity here for those willing to create something genuinely new.
The humble website and the age of AI search
So, how does your website fit into all of this?
There’s a lot going on.
Search volume appears to be up. Clicks are down. Website traffic is dropping. AI Overviews are on the rise – and improving in quality (sorry, naysayers).
The environment is shifting. People are still shopping, scrolling, searching, and streaming – but how they do it is changing.
Research, in particular, is leaning heavily toward generative AI.
It’s a bit chaotic out there.
But one trend showing up in several smaller studies is worth noting: while AI Overviews seem to reduce clicks and undermine the value of content marketing (at least in terms of traffic), homepage visits are up – by around 10% in some reports.
What do we do about it? How do we adapt?
First, understand that problems are just opportunities in disguise.
In marketing – and in life – I try to see problems as the fog that surrounds opportunity.
Yes, the environment is changing. But there’s little value in complaining about it.
Better to play the ball where it lies and adapt. Adapt and flourish.
With that mindset, two clear opportunities emerge.
Create cool stuff
Create new and truly valuable things, whether that is content, tools, or whatever you can imagine in this brave new world.
Do cool new stuff. Own the topic. Bring new things to the table.
From an SEO perspective, maybe we have heard that advice somewhere before?
“Helpful, original, people-first content that demonstrates real experience, expertise, and trustworthiness”
Sure, you may not get as many clicks as you may have to those articles, but if in an AI world, where the AI is absolutely starved of new, interesting information, be that information.
If we consider that now, many of what would have historically been links to your website will now end up being mentions (or possibly links) within an AI result.
People will still use search engines. We just need to think strategically about SEO and plan our search approach more carefully than ever before.
Do new cool things. Write about them. Talk about them. Feed the monster.
Adapt your website
The way we research is changing.
Many early adopters now use tools like ChatGPT for research – I’m one of them.
But even beyond that group, take my wife as an example: a proud resistor of change, the last person I know to get a mobile phone.
She’s never touched ChatGPT, but she uses Google, so she’s using AI without even realizing it.
This shift is likely driving more homepage traffic via branded search or referrals, while deeper page visits decline.
A quick look at most analytics profiles will confirm it: more users are coming through the front door.
- Branded searches.
- Direct traffic.
- Navigational lookups.
- Referral clicks.
- Social click-throughs.
The nutshell here is that more and more, people are finding you by name and arriving at your homepage.
This is risky for sites that were not always built with this in mind.
The attention span of web users is lower than ever. You have seconds for them to understand that they are in the right place and what to do next.
And what they do next depends entirely on how well you’ve planned their journey.
- Can they find what’s relevant to them?
- Can they navigate easily to your services, products, insights, or offers?
This is where so many websites drop the ball.
If you are used to your various customer segments landing on the page or section of your site that matters to them, think again.
The user journey funnel is changing.
As AI continues to shift how people research, your website needs to evolve too, making it easy for visitors to land, orient themselves, and find what they need without friction.
Website UX and navigation are key
Your website isn’t just a digital brochure.
People are lazy, and other options are always only a click or a question away.
Your site must help diverse audiences with different goals and needs find their way to the right content, the right offer, the right next step with zero friction.
That means:
- Knowing your audience.
- Understanding how they browse and buy.
- Designing clear pathways from entry points (often the homepage) to conversion points.
This isn’t just about UX, CX, SEO (or GEO or any of the other weird and wonderful acronyms).
This is your website as the very beating heart of your marketing.
Those user journeys are the lifeblood of your marketing as we are catapulted forward into this new age.
You need to consider carefully crafted user journeys as the key driver of website engagement, conversion, and success.
In a marketing world obsessed with the latest shiny thing, this brings the focus back to the original tool in the web marketer’s kit, dating all the way back to 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee kicked it all off: the humble website.
It’s a return to the beginning (a bit like Black Sabbath in my hometown of Birmingham).
And it calls for a fresh approach to website planning.
Maybe even a little magic.
ALCHEMY: A planning blueprint for websites in the age of AI
ALCHEMY is the seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination – bringing everything together to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
The ALCHEMY website planning framework is a structured approach to building websites that work for today and the AI-powered tomorrow.
It follows seven purposeful steps, starting with your audience and grounded in how things actually work.
These steps lead to a plan designed to make your next website a standout success.
A: Audience research
Define your segments and personas. Understand their pain points, motivations, and decision journeys.
L: Learning
Audit your current site, your traffic sources, and your competitors. Know what works and what doesn’t.
C: Clarify aim
Set specific, hierarchical goals. “A better website” isn’t a goal. “Increase leads from branded searches by 20%” is. Set clear, measurable goals.
H: Hierarchy
Map your site structure to reflect user journeys, especially how people move from the homepage to key content.
E: Essential features
Identify what’s necessary, and avoid distractions or bloat.
M: Mapping
Detail each page’s purpose, content, and features, focusing on flow and navigation.
Every page has a stated goal and ensures that every page of the site is clear on its job and contributes to the primary objective.
Y: Yield
Compile it all into a clear, actionable website plan that you can use to complete the job and manage the project.
Structuring your site for success
This process is designed to help you create an architectural blueprint for your website that is informed by the needs of your audience segments and the changing way that people are now researching and engaging online.
This creates a well-researched and clearly articulated plan that builds on audience and marketing intelligence to specify a site that will get results.
The plan is not directly concerned with technology – that can come later – this is an architectural blueprint that is technology agnostic but will also highlight the best tool for the job.
Each step carefully builds on the one before it.
As the actual build of sites inevitably becomes ever more abstracted by AI tools, the importance of careful planning grows by the day.
Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
The heart of your marketing
We’re in a time of major change, but people haven’t changed all that much.
Your customers are still your customers. We just have new tools, and those tools shape how we research and buy.
Search didn’t kill commerce. PPC didn’t kill SEO. Social didn’t kill search. And AI won’t kill social or search either.
That said, AI is changing how we research and make decisions, and managing this shift can be challenging.
Amid the chaos, your website remains a stable port in the storm – one area you fully control.
Yet most websites underperform even in stable times. With traffic patterns shifting, now is the time to rethink your site.
What you don’t want to do is chase the shiniest AI website tool or developer. Before choosing any platform or partner, you need to stop, think strategically, and make a proper plan.
To build a site that works for SEO, AI, and a changing traffic landscape, you need to define your audience segments and design around how today’s users behave – especially the AI-augmented ones.
Following the ALCHEMY website planning steps will help you do just that – put user needs first and position your site for success in an AI-driven world.
