How to get your deck building business into AI answers

Someone in Waukesha types "who should I hire to build a deck" into ChatGPT instead of Google. It gives them two or three names. If your deck building business isn't one of them, you never even knew you missed the chance.

AI answers work differently than search rankings

Google search shows you a list of links. The person picks. AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews try to answer the question right away. They often name specific businesses. The AI is judging who to recommend. It bases that on what it can find about you online.

This shift is still new. Most contractors haven't adjusted anything for it. That's actually an opening, since so few competitors have bothered yet.

• AI tools name specific businesses directly in their answers
• The AI is choosing based on clear, findable information about you
• Almost no contractors have adjusted their site for this yet

What the AI actually reads

These tools pull from your website, your Google Business Profile, and review sites. They favor content that's clear and plain. They skip over content that's vague or full of ad talk. Say a page reads "we build custom decks in Delafield and Lake Country using pressure-treated and composite materials." That gives an AI something real to work with. A page that just says "quality craftsmanship since 1995" doesn't.

Plain, clear words win here. Say what you do. Say where you do it. Say what a job takes. That beats a page full of ad talk, every time.

• Clear, specific service descriptions beat vague marketing copy
• Your Google Business Profile details feed directly into these answers
• Reviews with real detail help the AI understand what you're actually good at

Making your site readable to AI tools

Write your service pages the way you'd explain your work to a neighbor. Not the way an ad agency would. Say what materials you use. Say what areas you cover. Say roughly what a project involves. Skip filler phrases that sound nice but say nothing real.

• Name your service area towns directly: Delafield, Oconomowoc, Hartland, Pewaukee
• Describe your services in plain terms, not vague slogans
• Keep your Google Business Profile complete and accurate, since AI tools pull from it too

Checking where you currently stand

You can test this yourself. Open ChatGPT or a similar tool. Ask a question a potential customer might ask, like "who's a good deck builder near Oconomowoc." See if you show up. If not, see who does and what their sites look like.

Our AI visibility tool runs a version of this check for you. It shows where your business currently stands in AI-generated answers, without you testing a dozen prompts by hand.

A realistic example

Say a deck builder in Pewaukee rewrites his three main service pages. He gets specific about materials, towns served, and typical job size. He fills out every field on his Google Business Profile. A couple months later, he tests the same AI prompts. His business starts appearing where it didn't before. There's no promise of a spot or a set timeline. But clear, plain words give these tools more to work with, every time.

This isn't instead of Google, it's in addition

Nothing here replaces the work of ranking well in regular Google search or keeping your reviews strong. AI visibility runs alongside those efforts. It feeds off the same clear, honest information about your business. Get the basics right and both channels benefit.

Think of it as one more reason to fix the basics you might have been putting off anyway. A vague homepage. A half-empty Google Business Profile. Reviews that never got asked for. Every one of those fixes helps you in regular search too. There's no wasted effort chasing AI visibility on its own.