If your website traffic has plateaued — or worse, started to decline — the issue often isn’t your products or services. It’s small, fixable SEO mistakes that are quietly pushing your site down the search results.

Here are five of the most common issues we find when auditing client websites, and what to do about each one.

1. Slow Mobile Page Speed

More than 60% of search traffic now comes from mobile devices, and Google uses mobile page speed as a ranking factor. If your homepage takes more than three seconds to load on a phone, you’re likely losing both rankings and visitors. Compressing images, enabling caching, and minimising unused JavaScript are usually the quickest wins.

2. Missing or Duplicate Meta Descriptions

Every page should have a unique meta description that accurately describes its content and encourages a click. Duplicate or missing descriptions confuse search engines about which page to rank — and leave Google to generate its own (often unflattering) snippet from your page content.

3. No Schema Markup

Structured data (schema markup) helps search engines understand what your content actually is — a product, an article, a local business, an FAQ. Without it, you miss out on rich results like star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, and business information panels that can dramatically increase click-through rates.

4. Thin or Outdated Content

Pages with thin content — a paragraph or two with no real depth — rarely rank well for competitive terms. Equally, content that hasn’t been updated in years signals to search engines (and visitors) that your site may be outdated. Regularly refreshing key pages with up-to-date information, statistics, and examples keeps both algorithms and readers happy.

5. Ignoring Local SEO Signals

If you serve customers in a specific area, an incomplete or inconsistent Google Business Profile, missing location pages, or inconsistent business name, address, and phone details across the web can seriously hurt your local rankings. Local SEO is often the fastest way for service businesses to see a measurable increase in qualified leads.

Fixing These Issues

Most of these problems can be fixed without a full website rebuild — but they do require a proper technical audit to identify what’s actually holding your site back. If you’re not sure where your site stands, get in touch with our team for a free SEO review.