The small business website SEO checklist: 20 checks you can do in an afternoon

A roofing company has a good-looking website. Ask the owner how many enquiries it brings, and the answer is “hardly any”.

A quick check shows why. Half the pages aren’t in Google at all. The rest share the same title. On a phone, the contact button sits under a cookie banner.

None of these problems are hard to fix. They just need someone to look. This checklist is the same order we follow in our SEO and website optimisation service.

Why start with a checklist?

SEO advice is often vague. “Create great content.” “Build authority.” Useful, but hard to act on.

A checklist turns it into jobs you can tick off. Most small business sites lose more from a few basic problems than from anything advanced.

Work through the sections in order. Each one depends on the one before.

Part 1: can Google find your pages?

1. Search site:yourdomain.com on Google. If key pages are missing, start here.
2. Set up Google Search Console. It is free and shows which pages are indexed and why others aren’t.
3. Submit your sitemap. A sitemap is a list of your pages for search engines, usually at /sitemap.xml.
4. Check robots.txt. This small file tells crawlers what they may visit. Make sure it doesn’t block your main pages.
5. Look for “noindex” by mistake. Some themes add it to pages while a site is being built, and nobody removes it.

Part 2: does each page say clearly what it is?

1. One page per service. “Boiler repair” and “boiler installation” deserve their own pages.
2. A unique title on every page, about 50 to 60 characters, with the service and the place if you work locally.
3. A meta description that says what the page offers in one or two sentences.
4. One main heading (H1) that matches what a customer would search.
5. Answer the obvious questions on the page: what it costs to start, how long it takes, the area you cover.

Part 3: is it fast and easy on a phone?

1. Test on your own phone. Can you find the phone number and the main button within five seconds?
2. Check Core Web Vitals in Search Console or PageSpeed Insights. They measure loading, response and layout stability.
3. Compress images. Large photos are the most common cause of slow pages.
4. Remove what you don’t use. Old plugins, sliders and pop-ups slow every page.

Part 4: does it earn trust?

1. Show a real person. A name, a photo and a short story beat a stock image.
2. Make contact easy: phone, WhatsApp or email, visible on every page.
3. Add your business details consistently: name, address or service area, phone.
4. Use HTTPS. The padlock in the browser. Most hosts include it free.

Part 5: is anything broken?

1. Fix broken links. Both links between your pages and links to other sites.
2. Redirect old pages. If a page moved, send visitors and Google to the new address with a 301 redirect.

What can you safely ignore?

Some advice wastes small businesses’ time:

• Exact keyword density. Write naturally for people.
• Hundreds of directory listings. A handful of good, accurate ones is enough.
• Meta keywords. Google doesn’t use them.
• Changing everything at once. Make one change, then measure.

A simple next step

Do checks 1, 2 and 11 today. They take twenty minutes and tell you where the real problem is.

A healthy site is also the base for appearing in AI answers, which we cover in how to show up in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT answers. Many of these checks can run by themselves, as 10 tasks a small business can automate this month shows.

Want me to run the checklist on your site? Book a free video call.

Sources

• Google Search Central: SEO starter guide
• Google Search Central: Understanding Core Web Vitals
• Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content

This guide was drafted with AI assistance, then reviewed, fact-checked and edited by MD Al Amin.

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