Look, I’m gonna be straight with you – on-page SEO issues are like termites in your business. You might not see them right away but trust me they’re eating away at your rankings while you sleep.
## The Big Ones That Kill Your Rankings
**Missing or terrible title tags** – this is like having a shop with no sign out front. How’s anyone supposed to know what you do? I see this all the time with local businesses. They’ll have “Home” or “Welcome” as their title tag. Come on.
Your title tags need to tell Google (and actual humans) what the page is about. Period.
## Content That Makes Google Yawn
Thin content is everywhere. And I mean everywhere. You know what I’m talking about – those pages with like 150 words that say absolutely nothing. Google sees right through this stuff.
Here’s what happens:
– Google crawls your page
– Sees there’s nothing of value
– Decides your competitors deserve the traffic instead
– Your phone stops ringing
Not good right?
## The Duplicate Content Disaster
This one drives me nuts. Businesses copy-paste the same description across 50 different service pages. Or worse they copy from their competitors thinking nobody will notice.
**Google notices. Google always notices.**
And when they do? Your pages fight each other for rankings. It’s like having your own employees compete against each other instead of working together. Makes no sense.
## Speed Kills (Or Lack of It)
Your website takes 8 seconds to load?
Congratulations you just lost 90% of your visitors. People are impatient. Especially on mobile. If your site loads like it’s 1999 you’re gonna have problems.
I tested a plumbing website last week – 12 second load time. TWELVE SECONDS. You know how much business that’s costing them?
## Meta Descriptions That Don’t Sell
Or no meta descriptions at all which is even worse.
Your meta description is free advertising space in Google. It’s literally your chance to convince someone to click on your result instead of the other 9 on the page. And people leave it blank or stuff it with keywords like it’s 2005.
Write something that makes people want to click. Tell them why they should choose you.
## Mobile Experience That Makes People Cry
Over half your visitors are on phones. Maybe more. And if they have to pinch and zoom and scroll sideways just to read your menu? They’re gone.
To your competitor. Who bothered to make their site work on mobile.
It’s not optional anymore folks.
## The URL Mess
URLs like:
`yoursite.com/page?id=483726&session=8374`
Versus:
`yoursite.com/plumbing-services-sydney`
Which one do you think Google prefers? Which one do you think actual humans prefer?
Clean URLs aren’t just for looks. They help Google understand your content structure. They help users know where they are on your site. They even get more clicks in search results.
## Images Without ALT Text
This is such low hanging fruit I can’t believe businesses still miss it.
Every image needs ALT text. Not just for SEO but for people who can’t see your images. Screen readers need this stuff. Google needs this stuff.
Plus you might actually rank in image search and get traffic that way. Why leave money on the table?
## Here’s What You Do Next
Stop reading articles and start fixing these issues. Seriously. Pick one thing from this list and fix it today.
Your title tags? Fix them.
Your load speed? Get on it.
Your mobile experience? Test it right now on your phone.
Because while you’re sitting there thinking about maybe possibly getting around to fixing these issues someday…
Your competitors are taking action. And taking your customers.
Don’t let that happen.
**Get to work.**
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