The 10 Website Mistakes We See Most on Cairns Business Sites
After auditing hundreds of local sites, the same ten mistakes keep appearing. Ranked by damage done, each with the two-minute self-check.
After a decade of auditing and rebuilding Cairns business websites, the same ten mistakes appear over and over, and most owners have no idea, because a website fails silently. Ranked by damage done, each with a check you can run in two minutes.
The list, worst first
1. Invisible on the searches that matter
The site exists, Google just never shows it. Check: search “your trade cairns” incognito. Why it happens: no service pages, no structure, no signals. The SEO guide covers the fix.
2. The phone number takes work to find
Check: open your site on a phone, can you call in one tap from every page? Trades are phone businesses; this single fix has paid for entire rebuilds.
3. Slow enough that people leave first
Check: PageSpeed Insights, mobile score. Under 50 means visitors leave before the page paints. (Speed guide.)
4. A silently broken contact form
Check: submit your own form right now. Did it arrive? This one loses jobs for months before anyone notices, which is why our care plan monitors it.
5. Stock photos where proof should be
Models in hard hats convince no one. Real jobs, real team, real vehicles. (Photos that sell.)
6. One page trying to rank for everything
“Services: plumbing, gas, hot water, drains” on one page ranks for none of them. (The page structure.)
7. Suburb-spam pages
Twelve identical pages with the suburb swapped. Post-2026-updates Google, this is dead weight or worse. (The right way.)
8. No reviews anywhere on the site
You have 40 five-star Google reviews and the website shows none of them. Put proof where decisions happen. (Reviews guide.)
9. A domain someone else owns
The quiet catastrophe. Check: WHOIS your domain today. (The ownership guide.)
10. Built once, abandoned since
Plugins three years stale, “news” last updated 2022, prices from two rate rises ago. Google notices, and so do customers.
Score yourself
| Mistakes found | Verdict |
|---|---|
| 0-1 | Healthy. Keep the maintenance up. |
| 2-4 | Leaking jobs. Fix the cheap ones this week (2, 4, 8 are afternoon jobs). |
| 5+ | The site is working against you. A rebuild usually costs less than the leak. (Redesign guide.) |
Want the audit done properly, with numbers? Book a discovery call: we run every check above plus the ranking data, and give you the list in plain English, fix-it-yourself instructions included.