A plain-English guide to the 10 most common technical SEO problems on small business WordPress sites

I have audited a few hundred small business websites over the years, and since TinyRank started running its own audits I have been able to see the same patterns at a bigger scale. The same ten problems come up on almost every WordPress site. None of them are exotic. All of them are fixable.

This guide is written for the business owner or agency account manager, not the developer. For each problem I will say what it is, why it matters, and what the fix looks like.

1. Old http links on an https site

What it is. Your site has a padlock and loads on https. But inside your pages, dozens of links still point to the old http addresses. They work, because the server redirects them, but every click takes a detour.

Why it matters. Google sees two versions of your site arguing about which is real, and visitors get a slower page. Browsers can also warn about mixed content when images or scripts load over http.

The fix. Find every http link in your content and change it to https. On the six sites we ran TinyRank on first, this was the single most common fix, 34 of 105.

2. Duplicate titles and descriptions

What it is. Several pages share the same title, or the same description, or both. Very common on service pages that were copied from a template: Plumber Dublin, Plumber Dublin, Plumber Dublin.

Why it matters. The title is what Google shows as the blue link. If five pages have the same one, Google has to guess which to show and usually picks badly, or shows none of them.

The fix. Each page gets a title and description that says what that page, specifically, is about. The plumber's three service pages become Boiler repair, Bathroom plumbing and Emergency call-outs.

3. Broken internal links

What it is. A link on your site points to a page that no longer exists. You deleted a service, renamed a post, changed a URL during a redesign.

Why it matters. A visitor hits a dead end and often leaves. Google follows the link, finds nothing, and the authority that link carried goes nowhere.

The fix. Point the link at the right live page, or remove it. If the old address used to get traffic, add a redirect from the old address to the new one as well.

4. Titles that are too long

What it is. Google shows about 60 characters of a title. Yours is 90, so it is cut off with three dots in the middle of the important word.

Why it matters. The part that gets cut is usually the part that would have made someone click.

The fix. Shorten it. Keep the words someone would search for and the business name. Drop the slogan.

5. Missing image descriptions (alt text)

What it is. Every image can carry a short text description. On most small business sites, most images have none, or have the filename, like IMG_4471.jpg.

Why it matters. Screen readers use alt text for visitors who cannot see the image. Google Images uses it to understand the photo. A photo of a kitchen extension with no description is invisible to both.

The fix. Write one short sentence describing what is in the picture. Kitchen extension with grey units and an island, Rathmines. Not a list of keywords.

6. Thin service and location pages

What it is. A page with a heading, two sentences and a phone number. Often there are ten of them, one per town, all nearly identical.

Why it matters. Google does not see enough to understand what the page is for, or anything that makes it different from the other nine, so none of them do well.

The fix. This is the one fix on this list that is not mechanical. Someone has to decide what each page should say about that service or that area. TinyRank drafts it and asks the agency to approve, because writing about a business is a judgement call, not a technical fix.

7. Missing meta descriptions

What it is. The description is the two lines of grey text under the blue link in Google. When a page has none, Google writes its own from whatever text it finds, which is often the cookie banner.

Why it matters. It is your one chance to say, in plain words, why someone should click. Leaving it blank hands that to a machine.

The fix. Write one or two sentences for each page that say what is on it and who it is for. Fewer than 160 characters.

8. No local business schema

What it is. Schema is a small block of structured information in the page code that tells Google, in a format it reads reliably, what kind of business you are, where you are, when you are open and how to call you.

Why it matters. It helps Google connect your website to your Google Business Profile and show the right details in local results. Most small business sites have none.

The fix. Add LocalBusiness schema to the site with the business name, address, phone, opening hours and the same details that appear on your Google Business Profile. The details must match exactly.

9. Pages that should not be indexed, and pages that should be

What it is. Two opposite problems. Thank-you pages, tag archives and author pages that Google indexes and nobody wants to see. And, less often but worse, a real page or sometimes the whole site set to noindex by accident during a redesign.

Why it matters. Junk pages dilute the site. A noindexed real page is simply gone from Google for as long as nobody notices.

The fix. Hide the junk from Google and make sure every real page is indexable. A regular audit catches the accidental noindex quickly, which is one reason TinyRank re-audits every 30 days.

10. Outdated plugins

What it is. WordPress sites run on plugins, and plugins need updates. Most small business sites have several that are months or years out of date.

Why it matters. Security, mostly. Out-of-date plugins are the usual way small sites get hacked, and a hacked site stops ranking very quickly. Old plugins also break slowly, which shows up as broken forms and slow pages.

The fix. Update them, carefully, one at a time, checking the site still loads after each. TinyRank does this and switches a plugin back off if the site stops loading after the update. It never updates WordPress core itself, because that is a bigger change and belongs to a person.

What is not on this list

Site speed is not on it. Not because it does not matter, but because the fix is usually hosting, theme or image compression, which are bigger decisions than the ten above. Backlinks and content strategy are not on it because they are not technical problems. Everything above can be fixed inside WordPress, and most of it can be fixed in a day.

If you run an agency and would rather not fix these by hand across every client, that is what TinyRank does, seven changes a day, logged with the old and new value.