The errors we find in almost every Waikato audit — and what to do about each.
The free asset that drives the map pack, sitting half-finished with no categories and a 2019 photo. Fix this first.
They drive rankings and they drive the decision. Most businesses simply never ask. A text with a link, after good work. That's it.
It says "Hamilton" and nothing else. So you're invisible in Cambridge, Morrinsville and Te Awamutu — towns you'd happily drive to.
The opposite failure. Swapping the town name into an identical template is a doorway-page pattern and Google treats it as spam. One genuinely useful page per area beats twenty thin ones.
One page listing eight services ranks for none of them.
Local searches are urgent and mobile. Four seconds to first paint means you lost them before they saw your offer.
Ranking for a high-volume term that never converts isn't a win. "Plumber Rototuna" beats "plumbing" every time.
If you can't say where last month's enquiries came from, you're allocating budget by feel.
Both are penalisable. Fake reviews are also a Fair Trading Act issue in New Zealand. The short-term gain isn't worth the long-term wreckage.
Almost none of these are technical. Most Hamilton SEO failure is a business not clearly telling Google — and customers — what it does and where it does it.
Get a free audit and we'll tell you which of these is costing you the most.
Get a free, no-obligation SEO audit. We'll show you exactly where you rank now, who's beating you, and what it would take to overtake them.