Five SEO mistakes small service businesses make (and how to fix them)
Zac Spowart
· 5 min read
Last reviewed
The five SEO mistakes we see most often on coach, consultant and small practice websites, with a practical fix for each one you can start on today.
Most small business websites don't fail at SEO because the owner did something wrong. They fail because nobody told them what mattered. These are the five mistakes we see most often, and what to do instead.
1. One page trying to do everything
A single “Services” page listing six offers gives Google six weak signals instead of one strong one. Each service that you want to be found for deserves its own page, with its own title, a clear description and an obvious next step.
2. Redesigning without redirects
A new website is exciting. But if your page addresses change and the old ones aren't redirected, the trust those pages built with Google can vanish overnight. Before any rebuild, list every existing page and map it to its new home. On one recent migration we carried over 218 articles this way, each with its own redirect.
3. Beautiful, slow pages
Full-screen videos and huge photos look great on a studio monitor and crawl on a phone. Compress images, serve modern formats and remove scripts you no longer use. Speed is one of the few things fully within your control.
4. Writing for peers instead of clients
Professionals tend to describe their work in their field's language. Clients search in their own words. A therapist might write “evidence-based modalities” while a client searches “help with anxiety near me.” Use both, but lead with theirs.
5. Set and forget
SEO isn't a one-time setting. Search Console tells you which searches you appear for and where pages have problems, and it is free. Fifteen minutes a month looking at it, plus one useful new page or update, beats an expensive burst of activity once a year.
The common thread
Every one of these is fixable, and none of them needs a big budget. If you'd like to know which ones apply to your site, request a free audit. We'll send back a short, prioritized list in plain English.