Small Business Marketing
Six SEO Mistakes Worth Fixing Before You Buy More Tools
Google does not hate your business. But your website may make it difficult for search engines to understand your pages and for customers to use them.
Before buying another SEO subscription, check these six problems.
1. Important pages cannot be indexed
An accidental noindex instruction can keep a service page out of search. A broken URL or failed server response can cause a different problem. Use Search Console's URL inspection to investigate a specific page rather than guessing from its absence in a quick search.
Noindex controls indexing. Nofollow concerns links. They are not interchangeable housekeeping labels for pages you consider unimportant.
2. Your service pages say very little
“Quality service at competitive prices” could describe almost anybody. Explain what you do, who it suits, where you work, what the process involves and what affects the price. Add genuine evidence where you have it.
That gives a customer something to decide on. Repeating a keyword does not.
3. Visitors hit a dead end
Check broken internal links, outdated contact details and forms that fail. When replacing a valuable page, plan the destination for its existing URL. A redesign is not a reason to abandon useful links.
4. The page is hard to use
Try it on a real phone. Can you read the service details, dismiss overlays and complete the form? Use performance tools to investigate problems, but do not confuse a perfect lab score with a healthy business.
5. You are manufacturing authority
Buying ranking links, producing piles of near-identical location pages or publishing bulk content mainly to manipulate search can create trouble under Google's spam policies. Write pages because they serve a real need.
6. Your technical instructions contradict your content
A canonical suggests the preferred version of similar content; it is not a command to ignore everything else. Structured data should accurately describe what people can see. Have a qualified person review these settings before changing them across the site.
For Google's AI search features, the company says established SEO practices still apply; there is no special additional optimization requirement. See its AI search guidance.
Start with one important page and fix the clearest obstacle. If you need help deciding whether search is even your biggest constraint, The Dive is a useful starting point.
Related reading
A Small Business Website Audit You Can Actually Use
Local Listings, Voice Search and AI: Get the Basics Right