Since 2010, we’ve been focused on cracking the ever-changing SEO code, yet we still see the same SEO gaps that small and midsize business (SMB) websites overlook. Here are 14 SEO gaps your SMB website may be missing.
Overlooked SEO Gap #1: Optimization.
One common SEO gap we see is SMB website owners and designers who believe that optimizing websites for search engines is optional.
“I’ll worry about SEO after I get my website up,” they say.
This is a huge gap. We consider it one of 10 absurd SEO lies.
We say, “If you build it, they won’t come.”
In other words, you must drive traffic to your website.
Design, Copywriting, and SEO
Website design and SEO are intrinsically interwoven. Whether you are an enterprise organization or an SMB, the time to consider SEO is when designing or redesigning your website.
Retrofitting a poorly optimized website for SEO can be extremely time-consuming and more costly.
Yes, a well-optimized website may initially cost a bit more. This is because it takes more time to incorporate myriad website best practices that Google and other search engines evaluate—SEO details that go into building an SEO-optimized website.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO stands for search engine optimization. SEO involves hundreds (maybe even thousands) of factors that enable search engines to find your website and rank it for free on search engine results pages (SERPs). In simple terms, when someone “Googles,” your business listing is shown.
“Don’t wait until your website is live before considering SEO.
If you build it [without SEO],
they won’t come. Retrofitting a poorly optimized website for SEO can be more costly.”
Overlooked SEO Gap #2: Words.
Many SMB websites focus on adding a plethora of photographs. Website owners surmise that people don’t read websites. Yes, people tend to scan websites rather than read them.
But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t include written content. Instead, it means website users must be able to scan your content easily.
Plus, people will actually read website content sections that interest them. If they’re searching online (i.e., “Googling”), they’re highly interested at that moment.
A good website designer will ensure that your content is structured to facilitate scanning and reading.
Both Google and Google with AI (and other search engines) prefer properly structured website content, especially words, that helps them understand what the page is about.
“It’s not about you.”
A Rose Is a Rose
Businesses have used many similar terms to describe prospective customers:
- Target market
- Intended audience
- Market segment
- Customer base
- Persona or buyer persona
- Prospect
Overlooked SEO Gap #3: User intent.
It’s not about you.
Too many companies focus their website on what they want to tell customers rather than on what customers want to hear.
They want to discuss their new “Flibbertigibbit.” They plaster their pages with information about the Flibbertigibbit. Unless the Flibbertigibbit has incredible brand recognition, their website content will be lost in the search engine ozone.
Are people “Googling” the word “Flibbertigibbit?” If so, Google and other search engines will display your Flibbertigibbit content prominently. If not, you’ve wasted an opportunity—and your website investment!
Instead, always consider your customers’ point of view and what they need and want. What are they looking for online? Include this relevant content on your website.
Yes, discuss the Flibbertigibbet, but not as prominently as you might like. Instead, focus on what the product (or service) is, what customers search for, and what they want to know.
Overlooked SEO Gap #4: Customer Language.
Again, it’s not just about you and your SMB. Consider what phrases prospective customers will type into search engine browsers when they are looking for your product or service.
Avoid jargon or industry lingo.
SMB owners often prefer their industry-specific language, also known as jargon, over commonly understood terms.
This lingo can be problematic, and business owners may need to get out of their own way.
Tunes vs. Songs or Music
Yes, as a musician, you may play an instrument for which your music is referred to as “tunes” among other like-minded musicians. But if you’re customer base consists of everyday consumers, use the word “songs” or “music” in your content if you want business.
Portraits vs. Pictures
Similarly, as a photographer, you may take “portraits.” However, your customers may be searching for phrases such as “family picture” or “headshots.”
“You may need to get out of your own way.”
“Ask yourself: Do I want to be right? Or do I want to get business?”
Apply keyword research.
This is why a good web design team has an SEO specialist who researches real data to identify keyword phrases people type into (or speak to) search engines.
Are search engines smart enough to know synonyms? These days? Yes, absolutely. However, search engines are more likely to drive traffic that closely matches the customers’ phrasing.
As an SMB owner who wants to use the precise industry term, you may need to ask yourself, “Do I want to be right? Or do I want to get business?”
Overlooked SEO Gap #5: Relevance.
SMB website owners sometimes have misguided expectations.
- Opting for the keyword phrase with the most traffic or clicks.
- Looking for the highest volume of traffic.
- Wanting to go viral.
Instead, do not necessarily use keyword phrases with the highest number of clicks. Additionally, avoid using keywords solely to generate traffic or to go viral.
For the most part, you don’t want the MOST traffic but the most RELEVANT traffic to your SMB website. Relevant traffic are website visitors who are prospects or customers.
Avoid wildly popular keyword phrases.
Keyword research is both an art and a science.
Competing with Behemoths
Competition for keyword phrases with tens of thousands of clicks is fierce. Therefore, these phrases are unlikely to result in a SERP that prominently showcases your SMB website.
Instead, the SERPs often list expert references or widely recognized authorities, such as Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, Amazon, Mayo Clinic, or other popular or authoritative brands.
Buried in the SERPs
If your SMB website ranks for this popular phrase, your listing will likely be buried deep within the SERPs, where it won’t be seen.
A good SEO expert will help you find phrases that will help you get relevant CLICKS to your website.
You don’t want traffic.
You don’t need thousands of people coming to your SMB website; you only need the right people. Marketers call this RELEVANT traffic.
Relevant traffic consists of individuals who are interested in purchasing your products or services.
Machine learning caveat
This fact is nuanced slightly with machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence (AI) used by search engines. Search engines, such as Google, will more frequently display popular website pages, i.e., those that have been clicked on and read by others.
Traffic for your business
In the end, however, you are looking for BUSINESS, i.e., RELEVANT website visitors who will buy your products or services.
Why going viral could be irrelevant.
Although going viral could be a nice ego boost, it’s irrelevant for most SMBs.
A notable exception would be solopreneurs who are social media influencers. If you’re an influencer, going viral is indeed a relevant goal. More subscribers could land you more sponsorships.
Goals of websites
However, for most SMBs, you want people to do one (or several) of the following:
- Fill out a contact form
- Send an email
- Call your company
- Make a purchase
- Schedule a meeting
Business Goals
These actions either complete the buyers’ journey (resulting in a purchase) or bring website visitors further along in the buying process (e.g., learning about you, requesting more information, scheduling a meeting, speaking with a sales representative, etc.). That’s RELEVANCE.
Overlooked SEO Gap #6: Logical URLs.
Over the past five years or so, we’ve seen significant improvement in this area. Still, many SMB websites don’t ensure that they follow these best practices for URLs. They have unique URLs (as they should), but SMBs’ URLs should also be:
Descriptive.
We often see SMB websites with page URLs that don’t mimic top page headings nor match meta (behind-the-scenes) title tags.
Brief.
We sometimes see extremely long URLs.
Logical.
We’ve seen many unrecognizable word abbreviations on SMB sites.
Easy to understand (for humans and search robots).
Separated with hyphens between the words.
We still see underscores or words that run together.
All lowercase.
Yes, all lowercase is preferable—even if the marketing or branding team has clever word phrase ideas. (Spoiler alert: if it prevents or slows people trying to get to your website, or dilutes the value of your page, it’s not genius.)
The URLs you choose to name your SMB website pages should make sense to your website visitors–and to search engines.
Important:
Do NOT change your URL structure on existing pages.
This may tank your website. URL renaming must be done strategically.
Overlooked SEO Gap #7: Simple language.
Use simple language on your SMB website page. This will help facilitate voice search, AI search, and human understanding, particularly if you have a consumer website.
Voice search.
Data suggest that 58% of consumers use voice search to find local businesses.
Therefore, Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Copilot matter. (As of 2025, Copilot is the name of Microsoft’s AI voice search chatbot, previously known as Cortana [starting in 2014] and Bing Chat [beginning in early 2023].)
AI in search.
Search engines utilize a type of AI called natural language processing to help them understand the content of a website page. Using simple language helps AI decode the page’s meaning.
Human understanding.
Sadly, half of U.S. adults read at a level below that of a seventh-grade student.
Don’t write at the high school or college level (unless you’re writing a website exclusively for rocket scientists or physician specialists).
Keep your language simple, clear, and concise for both people and AI chatbots.
Overlooked SEO Gap #8: Structured Page Headings.
SMB owners and web designers often fail to get this right.
Best practices for structured page headings.
Search engines have long recommended structured headings. Moreover, a predictable heading structure and content flow enable modern AI search to understand your content.
Site pages should have an H1 (the main heading). All of the subheadings under the main headings are H2s. If there are additional headings under an H2, these are H3s.
These headings should include keyword phrases that focus on user intent (as described in #3 above).
Structured heading gaps we see.
Here are some of the problems we see on SMB (and enterprise) websites:
- Headings are used as design elements (based on font type, size, or color), randomly choosing an H1 or H6.
- Headings are used out of sequence.
- Headings don’t provide clues about the page’s content.
- Headings are lengthy and cumbersome.
Instead, your headings should form an outline—a hierarchical structure that both humans and search robots can understand.
Remember your high school English teacher telling you how to outline your research paper? Apply your teacher’s advice here.
Overlooked SEO Gap #9: Healthy Core Web Vitals.
Core Web Vitals (CWVs) are essential for both website users and AI.
It consists of three metrics that indicate the health of your website based on real-world data about how humans interact with it.
CWVs Consist of Three Measures
These three measures are:
Largest contentful paint (LCP).
LCP roughly translates to a fast website loading time, ensuring that all initial content is visible upon loading.
Cumulative layout shift (CLS).
CLS measures how much your website moves or jumps after it starts to load.
Interaction to next paint (INP).
INP assesses how quickly the website responds when visitors take an action, such as clicking a button or typing into a form.
Research indicates that goldfish have longer attention spans than humans.
Why poor scores hurt your website.
Poor CWVs will negatively impact your business in three ways.
- A bad user experience is annoying and reflects negatively on your business or organization.
- Search engines will deem your website sickly and show it less often.
- Impatient people will quickly abandon your website and visit competitors. That’s because people are more impatient than ever. Research indicates that goldfish have longer attention spans than humans. You have just eight seconds to grab someone’s attention span. If you’re targeting goldfish, you have nine seconds. 🙂
Overlooked SEO Gap #10: Image Optimization.
We still see SMB websites that fail to optimize their images according to best practices.
They miss SEO opportunities when it comes to:
- Naming their image files
- Choosing image resolution
- Choosing image file sizes (not dimensions but KBs)
- Forgoing alt tag opportunities
Here are a few specific examples:
Image file name gaps.
This is one of the most common gaps. For example, the file name for the CEO’s headshot reads “IMG14698.jpg” or (my personal favorite) “face.jpg.” (Yes, I’ve seen this. Ahhh! The CEO with the face—that one!) A better naming convention would be “mary-smith-ceo.jpg”.
Image resolution gaps.
High-resolution images, such as those used for print publications, will appear crisp and sharp. They will never be blurry. However, they will load exceedingly s – l -o- w-l- y, spoiling your users’ experience and your CWVs. Avoid print-ready images on your website. They are unnecessary and will only serve to bloat your website.
Image file size gaps.
In this case, we’re not referring to the dimensions of the images but their “weight”, which can result from high-resolution photos. However, it may simply be that you could use a smaller image size for the design layout you have.
This is also a prevalent problem on SMB websites. We’ve seen images as large as 5MBs. An optimal file size will depend on many factors, including the image dimensions (i.e., length in pixels by width in pixels). A few KBs (for a favicon) to 100KBs (for a header image) is often sufficient.
Alt tag gaps
These can be easily missed. A good SEO plugin will help you identify images without alt tags. Optimize alt tags as described by Google.
Overlooked SEO Gap #11: Unique, Quality Content.
Throw out the fluff. And don’t simply regurgitate or rephrase existing website content. Be one of a kind.
Quantity, aka spammy content.
A very outdated SEO practice was to have a multitude of website pages, each focusing on a different keyword and including little depth on the topic.
This practice has been obsolete for more than a decade, yet we still see some websites cluttered with these types of pages.
Quality, aka helpful content.
Instead, include quality content—not quantity.
Google refers to quality content as “helpful content.” It offers a website self-assessment tool to help you determine if your content is helpful content.
Overlooked SEO Gap #12: Relevant Links Between Pages.
You can help your SMB website pages be crawled by Google and other search engines (an essential part of ranking on SERPs) by linking between your pages where appropriate.
These are called internal links.
When created correctly, the words used in the link provide search engines with an indication of what the new page will be about. It also indicates that you deem the new page to be valuable.
For example, a blog about SEO could link to your SEO services page or a page that describes your unique SEO process.
Note how the two URLs above give you (and search engines) an idea of what the new page will be about.
Don’t “click”!
Unfortunately, we still see many SMB websites that use the word “click” or “click here” to go to the next page. This is problematic because:
- It doesn’t provide hints at what the new page will offer.
- It’s trite.
Can you imagine how many pages have the word “click” in their links!
Don’t overlink.
At the same time, you don’t want to overuse links. For example, link to the same URL only once per page. Also, ensure that the link directs users to the expected page.
However, we rarely see overuse of links on most SMB websites. Instead, these sites are missing internal links.
Overlooked SEO Gap #13: Metadata Opportunities.
Metadata is the information that users see on the search results page. Among others, these include:
- URL structure
- Image alt tags
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
We already discussed the URL structure and image alt tags in Gaps #6 and #10.
However, we also see problematic gaps in title tags and meta descriptions on SMB websites—even though these are longstanding SEO practices that have remained largely unchanged for the past decade or longer.
These common metadata SEO gaps include:
- Duplicate title tags.
- Less relevant title tags.
- Structuring your company name differently on separate pages.
- Not including the location in the title tag for local businesses.
- Rarely, empty meta descriptions.
Metadata provides search engines with clues about your website page content; URLs, title tags, and meta descriptions are also shown in SERPs.
Unique title tags.
Each page should have a unique title tag. Avoid duplication. Additionally, don’t rely on the default title tag for your entire website. This often tricks SEO assessment tools, which may mistakenly give you a green light if any tag is present, regardless of its relevance.
Relevant title tags.
Ensure you’re using the most relevant title tag. This often may match your keyword focus and your main page heading. Many SMB web designers haphazardly fill these in without much strategic thought.
Consistent naming convention.
Be consistent. Include your business name in the title tag for every website page. You can place the tag first or last, but include the identical phrasing of your company name in the same order on every page.
Compelling.
If your meta description is empty, Google will use the first 150 characters of your page content (or a selection of its choice). This could be a lost opportunity.
Although not a direct SEO factor, a compelling meta description will encourage humans to click on your website listing. If many people click on your search listing and stay on your website (ideally at least 60 seconds), this can enhance your SEO.
Overlooked SEO Gap #14: Optimized Google Business Profile.
Google Business Profile (GBP), previously known as Google My Business (GMB), helps SMBs get found for services in their service area.
Not only will it help you get found on Google, but it can also link to your website.
Be sure to optimize your Google Business Profile.
Five years ago, website owners often didn’t know that GBP existed. Now, we find that most seem to be aware of it. However, the gap is found in not completing their profiles.
Summary
SMB website owners and designers often overlook key opportunities to enhance their websites and garner more business. We outlined 14 SEO gaps our agency frequently sees.
If you don’t have a website…
The most cost-effective way to optimize a site is to do it before and during the development (or even redesign) phase. Afterward, it will just take some monitoring by an expert to maintain and elevate your status.
If you do have a website…
With an existing website, the first step we take is an SEO Audit. We assess how well your website is applying SEO best practices, both on the website’s front end (what users see) and the back end (what’s behind the scenes).
We’ll then recommend changes that will have the most significant impact for the least amount of budget.
Contact us to enhance your SEO today.
Nancy Burgess
