You don't need to be a developer to improve your SEO. These five fixes take less than a day combined and can measurably improve your Google visibility.
Your website probably has zero security headers. Most small business sites don't. This tells Google (and your visitors' browsers) that your site hasn't taken basic security precautions.
What to do: Ask your developer or hosting provider to add these headers to your server config:
If you're on WordPress with nginx, it's 6 lines in a config file. If you're on shared hosting, your provider's support team can usually do it.
Impact: Trust signal for Google. Security best practice. Takes your security score from 0 to 100%.
Open your website, right-click any image, and select "Inspect." Look for `alt=""` or no alt attribute at all. If you see that, Google can't understand what the image shows.
We recently audited a local swimming school. 73% of their images had empty alt text. That's 266 images Google was completely blind to.
What to do: Go through every image on your key pages and add descriptive alt text.
On WordPress: edit the image in the Media Library and fill in the "Alternative Text" field.
Impact: Helps Google Image Search, improves accessibility (UK Equality Act compliance), and gives Google context about your content.
Go to pagespeed.web.dev and enter your URL. Look at the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) number. If it's over 2.5 seconds, you have a problem.
The most common cause is oversized images. A single unoptimised hero image can add 5-10 seconds to your load time.
What to do:
Impact: Google has confirmed page speed is a ranking factor. Every second matters.
If you have a physical location and haven't claimed your Google Business Profile, do it now. It's free and it's the single most impactful thing you can do for local visibility.
What to do: 1. Go to business.google.com 2. Search for your business 3. Claim and verify it 4. Fill in EVERYTHING: hours, description, services, photos, attributes
Then ask 5 happy customers to leave a review this week. Send them a direct link (you can generate one from your Business Profile dashboard).
Impact: Massive for local search. The difference between being in the map pack and being invisible.
Think about what your customers search for before they find you. Then write a genuinely helpful blog post answering that question.
For a plumber: "How to fix a dripping tap (and when to call a plumber)" For a swimming school: "What to expect at your first baby swimming lesson" For a salon: "How often should you get a haircut? A stylist's honest answer"
What to do:
Impact: Each well-targeted blog post is a new opportunity to rank on Google. Over time, this compounds.
These five fixes address the most common issues we find in SEO audits. But they're just the start.
For a complete picture of your website's SEO health -- including Google Maps analysis, AI search readiness, and a prioritised action plan specific to your site -- get a full audit.
*Find all your quick wins (and what to do after them). [Get your SEO audit](https://rankwise.ai) -- from GBP 29.*
*Find all your quick wins (and what to do after them). [Get your SEO audit](https://seorankmasters.com) -- from GBP 29.*
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