Your website can look great to a customer and still say very little to Google. Search engines do not see your colours or your photos. They read the words, the headline in the browser tab, the main heading and how fast the page arrives. When those are missing, Google shows the business down the road instead.
How your pages are built is the second part of Website Health in Marketbase. Most of what holds it back can be fixed without touching your design.
In this article
- 1. What "on-page" means, in plain words
- 2. The checks we run on your home page
- 3. Four faults we see on New Zealand business websites
- 4. What to do today, this week and this month
What on-page means
If the basics are about whether your site opens and whose address it sits on, on-page is about what is on the page once it opens. Think of a shop again. The basics check the building. On-page checks whether the sign says what you sell and the shelves are labelled.
Most of it is invisible when you look at your own site. The headline in search results, the short description under it and the main heading are set behind the scenes, and Google reads them every time it visits.
Key point
You do not need to become a writer or an SEO expert. You need a home page that says what you do, where you do it, and arrives quickly on a phone.
What we check on your home page
We read your home page, because it is the page most customers land on, and run a set of checks on it. Each is set against the other businesses in your trade and city. They fall into three groups.
What shows in search results
The clickable blue line in a Google result is your page's headline, and the two lines under it are its description. We check that both exist, that they are a length Google shows in full, and that they match what is actually on the page. A headline that says "Home" tells a stranger scanning ten results nothing about what you sell.
What is on the page
We check that the page opens with a clear main heading, carries enough written text for Google to judge it, and has more words than code holding them up. We look at how easy the writing is to read, and whether your page addresses are words rather than strings of code. We also check that your content sits on the page itself rather than inside an embedded window, and that your own small icon shows in the browser tab.
How fast it arrives
Speed is the third group: how long your home page takes to arrive, how heavy it is, and whether files hold it up before anything can show. We also look for links on your site that still point at the insecure version of a page. On a phone away from wifi, a slow page loses the person to the next result.
Tip
See your own headline right now. Open your website and read the text in the browser tab. If it says "Home", "Welcome" or your web developer's name, that is the line a stranger sees in search results.
Four faults we see on NZ business websites
These come up week after week. Most are an hour's work for whoever looks after your site.
1. A headline that says nothing
Your headline should read as service, town, name: "Emergency Plumber Christchurch | Smith Plumbing". Keep it to around 50 to 60 characters so Google does not cut it off. Give every page its own, not the same line copied across the site.
2. A logo, a slider and three sentences
Many home pages carry almost no writing. That leaves Google little to judge you on, and leaves a visitor with no answer to their question. Write down what you say on the phone when someone rings: what you do, where you go, how soon you can come and what happens next.
3. Photos straight off the phone
Photos straight from a modern phone run to several megabytes each. Put three on a home page and it crawls on mobile data. Resize images before they go up, and ask your web person to check that nothing holds the page up before it starts to draw.
4. Built years ago and never touched
A site a mate built in 2019 often has no description, no main heading and photos nobody resized. It still works for people who type the address in. It is close to invisible to anyone searching for what you do.
Picture this
A physiotherapy clinic in Tauranga has a professional-looking website. Its free Marketbase report shows the home page headline says "Home" and there is no description at all. Most clinics in its market have both.
The owner's web developer rewrites the headline as "Physiotherapy Tauranga | Bayside Physio", adds a two-sentence description and resizes the home page photos. It takes under an hour.
When the market is next checked, those checks move from the report's opportunities to its strengths.
Improve how your pages are built
10 minutes today
- Read your home page's browser tab text and note whether it says what you do
- Google your business name and read the two lines under your website
- Open your site on your phone with wifi off and count the seconds
An hour this week
- Rewrite your home page headline as service, town, name
- Write a two-sentence description that says what you do and where
- Ask your web person to resize any image over 500KB
Ongoing this month
- Give each service its own page, with its own headline and description
- Check every page opens with one clear main heading
Where Marketbase comes in
Your free Marketbase report already has these checks on your home page, set against every business in your trade and town, beside the other three parts of Website Health. Find your business by name to see what is working and what could move first. Sort it yourself, or hand it to us and we'll do it for you.