Find it
Name the actual fault.
Not a score out of a hundred and not a wall of jargon. The specific thing, on the specific page, so you can see it for yourself.
The usual suspects
Seven things that are quietly broken on most local business websites.
None of these announce themselves. The site still loads, nothing looks obviously wrong, and nobody complains. That is exactly why they go unfixed for years. Here is the list I work through, so you can check your own before you call anybody, including me.
Go and look
Check these on your own site.
Open your website on your phone, on mobile data, standing outside your building. That is the situation most of your customers are actually in. Then work down this list.
- Can somebody call you in one tap? If your phone number is plain text instead of a link, they have to memorize it or copy it by hand, and a good share of people simply will not. This is the most common and most expensive fault I find, and it takes minutes to fix.
- Do your hours agree everywhere? Your website, your Google Business Profile, and your structured data all need to say the same thing. When they disagree, Google often trusts the wrong one, and somebody drives over to a locked door.
- How slow is it on mobile data? Not on your shop wifi. In a car, on a bad signal. That is where people look you up, and that is where a heavy site loses them.
- Is there anything fake still on the page? Placeholder emails, example phone numbers, filler text left over from a template. I find these on live business sites constantly. My own site had a fictional number sitting on it until recently, so this is not a cheap shot.
- Are pages you deleted still live? Depending on your host, removing a page from your site does not always remove it from the internet. Old prices and outdated details keep serving, Google keeps indexing them, and they compete with your real pages.
- What happens when somebody shares your link? Post it into Facebook or a group chat and see whether a proper preview card appears or a broken grey box. If your preview image is the wrong shape, you get the grey box.
- Can Google actually index it? Server errors, redirect chains, missing canonical tags, and pages quietly excluded from search. Google Search Console reports all of this for free, and most owners have never opened it.
Why it matters
None of this shows up as a complaint.
A customer who cannot tap your number does not email to tell you. They call the next shop. A site with the wrong hours on Google does not throw an error, it just quietly sends people somewhere else. That is what makes these faults expensive: the damage is invisible from the inside, and the site looks perfectly fine from your desk.
Weigh it
Decide if it is worth fixing.
Some of what turns up does not matter much, and I will say so rather than pad a list. Other things are costing you calls this week.
Fix it
Or hand it to someone who can.
Plenty of this you or your current web person can do in an afternoon. Some of it is real work. Either way you should know which is which.
Questions
The ones I get asked.
My site is only a couple of years old. Is it still worth checking?
Yes. Most of these have nothing to do with age. Wrong hours, an untappable number, and a broken share preview happen on brand new sites just as often, usually because whoever built it never checked it from a phone.
Will you tell me I need a rebuild?
Only if you do. A fair share of what I look at comes back as a handful of small fixes, and I say that. Telling somebody they need a rebuild when they do not is how you get one job and no referrals.
Can I hand this list to my current web person?
Yes, and that is partly why it is written this way. Anybody competent can act on it. If they fix it, good. That is a better outcome than you paying me to do it twice.
What actually happens on the call?
We go through what you have, I tell you what I would change and roughly what it would cost, and you decide. No deck and no proposal until you ask for one. It usually takes twenty minutes.
Do you only work with businesses in Macomb County?
Mostly. Being local is a real part of the value: I can stop in, see the place, and sit down with you. Further out works, it just becomes phone calls and email.
Next step
Found something on the list?
Give me a call and we will go through it. If it turns out to be nothing, I will tell you that too, and it will not have cost you anything but twenty minutes.