Every site I look at tells a story. Not always a flattering one.
Not because the person who built it did anything wrong. Usually, they did exactly what they were told. They read a blog post. They watched a YouTube video. They hired someone who had Strong Opinions. And piece by piece, they added things to their site that were supposed to help.
Some of those things did help. A lot of them didn’t.
The internet has spent twenty years telling you what to put on your website. Very few people have been honest with you about what to take off. That’s what this post is for.
When I run an SEO scan or sit down to audit a client’s site, I see the same stuff over and over. Things that made sense to someone at some point, based on advice that was probably never written with a solopreneur in mind. I pull them out. Every time.
Here’s the list.
A Vague Homepage Heading
This one shows up on almost every site I look at, and it does more damage than people realize.
Your homepage H1 header is the most important sentence on your entire site. It answers the question every visitor asks the second they land: am I in the right place?
When the answer to that question is “Technology that empowers your future” or “Building better tomorrows together,” the visitor has no idea what you do. They hit the back button. The opportunity is gone.
I see this constantly on sites built by people who were told to lead with their brand voice instead of their value. The fix is simple: say what you do, who you do it for, and what happens when they work with you. Clear beats clever every single time.
A Homepage Slideshow
You couldn’t decide what your most important message was, so you put all of them in a rotating carousel and hoped for the best. I understand why. It feels like a compromise. Everyone on the team gets their thing on the homepage. Problem solved.
Except visitors don’t see it that way.
Here is what actually happens: they see the first slide. Sometimes the second. Almost never the third. Whatever you buried in slide four might as well not exist.
Pick your most important message. Put it front and center. Let it breathe. Everything else can live further down the page.
A Separate Testimonials Page
This one I find on nearly every site, and it’s the one that frustrates me most, because the fix is so simple.
Testimonials are some of the most persuasive content you have. A real person, with a real name, saying a real thing about working with you. That is powerful. So why are you hiding it on a page nobody visits?
I check analytics on every site I audit. The testimonials page is almost never in the top ten. Sometimes it’s not in the top thirty. Meanwhile, your service pages — the ones where visitors are actually deciding whether to hire you — have nothing but your own marketing claims supporting them.
Put your testimonials on the pages where decisions get made. Right next to the thing they’re confirming. That’s where they do their job.
Email Links Instead of a Contact Form
An email link feels simple. Click, open your mail client, type a message, send. But here’s what actually happens for a lot of visitors: their default mail client opens, it’s not set up, they close it, they move on.
Contact forms keep people on your site. They let you ask the right questions upfront. They track submissions. They save a backup if something goes wrong with delivery. They are easier to route, easier to manage, and harder to accidentally lose.
Pull the email links. Add a simple form with a thank-you page that tells people what happens next.
A Dead-End Thank-You Page
Speaking of thank-you pages: yours probably says something like “Thanks! We’ll be in touch.” And then nothing.
That page is your first interaction with someone who just raised their hand and said they want to hear from you. It’s a real moment. And most sites waste it completely.
Tell them what happens next. Tell them when to expect a reply. Give them a link to your best content, or an invitation to follow you somewhere useful, or a low-friction next step they can take while they wait. The conversation has just started. Don’t end it with a wall.
Generic Navigation Labels
Services. Solutions. Products. Offerings.
I see these on sites all the time, and every time I do, I know the visitor is already confused. Those words could describe ten thousand businesses. They don’t tell anyone what to click or what they’ll find when they get there.
Your navigation is a map. When the labels are specific — “WordPress support,” “content strategy,” “SEO scan” — visitors know where they are and where to go. When the labels are generic, you’ve handed them a map with no street names and wished them luck.
The fix here is worth an afternoon of your time. Rename your nav items to describe what the page actually does. That one change will make your site easier to use and easier for search engines to understand.
Stock Photos of Strangers
People connect with faces. That part is true, and it’s why so many sites lean on stock photography of people. The problem is the connection only works with real faces.
Stock photos of people register as fake almost immediately. Visitors have seen the same two people shaking hands in matching business casual on a hundred other sites. They scan past it. It’s not catastrophic, but it’s a missed opportunity on every page it appears.
You are the business. A decent photo taken on a phone will outperform any stock image, because it’s actually you. Show up.
Social Media Icons In Your Header
You worked hard to get someone to your website. Why are you immediately handing them a list of ways to leave?
Social icons in headers are exit doors dressed up in brand colors. They sit at the top of the visual hierarchy, which means they’re often one of the first things a visitor sees. And for some of those visitors, clicking one of those icons is the last thing they do on your site.
Put your social links in the footer. People who are looking for them will find them there. Everyone else will stay on the page you actually want them to read.
What This List Isn’t
None of this is about blame. Most people built their sites over time, taking advice from a lot of different places, without anyone stopping to ask whether all of it was actually working together. You did what made sense with what you had.
That’s exactly what an audit is for. I look at the whole picture, find what’s quietly working against you, and tell you what to do about it in plain language.
If you want to know what’s actually on yours, let’s find time to talk.
