5 SEO Mistakes That Are Costing You Traffic

A solicitor in Dublin hired me to figure out why his website was invisible on Google. He had been paying an agency $100/month for "SEO services" for over a year. When I looked under the hood, his site had none of the basics in place. No page titles. No descriptions. Blog posts with no headings. The agency had been sending him monthly reports full of graphs that meant nothing.

He cancelled the agency, I fixed five things in a weekend, and his site went from page 4 to page 1 for his main search term within three months. Here are those five things.

1. Your Pages Have No Proper Titles or Descriptions

Every page on your website has a title and description that show up in Google search results. They are the first thing a potential customer reads before deciding whether to click.

Most business websites I audit either have the same generic title on every page ("Home - Company Name") or no description at all. Google then picks random text from your page, which usually looks terrible.

How to check: Google your business name. Look at what shows up under the blue link. If it says something generic or irrelevant, your titles and descriptions need work.

How to fix: Each page should have a unique title (under 60 characters) that includes what that page is about. The description (under 155 characters) should tell someone why they should click. Think of it as a mini-advert for each page.

Example:

2. Your Website Is Slow (And You Do Not Realise It)

Speed matters more than most people think. Google has confirmed it is a ranking factor, and visitors leave if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load. On phones — where most people browse — slow sites are even more painful.

The usual culprits: massive images that have not been compressed, cheap hosting, and too many fancy plugins or scripts running in the background.

How to check: Go to PageSpeed Insights and enter your website address. If your score is below 50 on mobile, you have a problem.

How to fix:

A real estate agency in Belgrade had a mobile speed score of 22. Their homepage had a 15MB background video that autoplayed. We replaced it with a compressed image and their score jumped to 78. Their contact form submissions went up 35% the following month — same traffic, just faster loading.

If your site is slow and you are not sure where to start, I offer free website audits.

3. Your Site Does Not Work Properly on Phones

Over 60% of web browsing happens on mobile devices. If your website is hard to use on a phone — tiny text, buttons too close together, content spilling off screen — Google pushes you down in search results and visitors leave.

How to check: Open your website on your phone. Can you read everything without zooming? Can you tap buttons easily? Does the menu work? Try filling out your contact form on your phone — is it frustrating?

How to fix: If your site was built before 2018, it might not be mobile-friendly at all and needs a rebuild. If it is newer but still awkward on phones, a developer can usually fix the layout issues without rebuilding everything. This is standard work — any decent web developer should include mobile responsiveness as a given, not an add-on.

4. You Have No Content Strategy (Just a Dead Blog)

I see this constantly: a business launches a website with a "Blog" section, publishes 2-3 posts in the first month, then never touches it again. A blog with posts from 2022 and nothing since actually hurts you — it signals to Google (and visitors) that nobody is home.

Content is how you show up for the questions your customers are searching. An accountant who writes "How much does it cost to register a company in Ireland" will attract people who are actively looking for that answer — and those people are potential clients.

The fix is simple but requires consistency:

You do not need to be a great writer. You need to be helpful. Write like you are explaining something to a client over a coffee.

No time to write? That is exactly why I built an automated blog system for my own site. If you want something similar for yours, let me know.

5. Nobody Links to Your Website

Google treats links from other websites like votes of confidence. If respected websites link to yours, Google assumes you are trustworthy and ranks you higher. If nobody links to you, Google has no reason to trust you over your competitors.

Most small businesses have zero external links pointing to their site. Meanwhile, their competitors might have 20-30 from local directories, industry associations, or press mentions.

Easy wins you can do this week:

This is not about gaming the system. It is about making sure Google can verify that your business exists and is legitimate.

The Bottom Line

These five mistakes are not complicated to fix, but ignoring them means your competitors — who probably have these basics covered — will keep showing up above you on Google.

Start with your page titles and descriptions. That alone can make a noticeable difference within weeks. Then work through the rest at your own pace.

If you want someone to look at your specific site and tell you exactly what needs fixing, book a free audit call. I will screen-share your site, show you the problems, and tell you how to fix them — whether you hire me or do it yourself.