The 10 WordPress Mistakes That Hurt Local SEO
We audit a lot of WordPress sites for Devon businesses. The same ten problems come up again and again, and most of them are easy to fix once you know to look. Here is the list, in roughly the order they hurt local rankings.
1. The homepage targets nothing
A homepage with an H1 that says "Welcome to our website" — or worse, just the company name — is invisible to local search. The first H1 should name what you do and where. "Plumber in Newton Abbot" beats "Welcome" every single time. We have moved Devon trade businesses from page three to page one with this single change.
2. Plugin bloat killing speed
Every plugin adds CSS, JavaScript and database queries. Sites we audit routinely have 30 to 40 plugins running, of which maybe ten are essential. Slow sites drop in local rankings because Google's mobile-first index treats Core Web Vitals as a real signal. Audit your plugins, delete the dormant ones, replace bloated ones with leaner alternatives.
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Contact Here3. No Local Business schema
WordPress does not generate Local Business schema by default. Without it, Google has to guess where your business operates. With it — name, address, phone, opening hours marked up correctly — you give Google what it needs to put you in the local pack. Yoast and RankMath both support this in their free tiers; you just have to fill in the fields.
4. Address inconsistency across the web
Your WordPress site says "Unit 4, Penn Inn Estate". Your Google Business Profile says "Penn Inn Industrial Estate, Unit 4". Your Facebook page says "Penn Inn, Newton Abbot". Google reads all three. NAP — name, address, phone — must match exactly across every listing or you bleed authority. Pick one canonical version and align everything to it.
5. Pretty pictures, terrible alt text
Image alt text is a free local-SEO signal that almost nobody fills in. A photo on your homepage labelled IMG_4783.jpg with no alt text tells Google nothing. The same image with alt="Newton Abbot kitchen fitter installing oak units in a Bovey Tracey home" tells Google what you do, where, and what the picture shows. Multiply by 50 images.
6. Blog posts with no town names
A Devon accountant publishing "Five Year-End Tax Tips" is publishing the same post as 10,000 other accountants. The same post titled "Five Year-End Tax Tips for Newton Abbot Sole Traders" is something only you can rank for. Town names, neighbourhood names, sector names — Devon sole traders, Teignmouth landlords, Dartmoor smallholders — give you the long-tail terms that actually convert.
7. Pages that all link to the homepage and nowhere else
Internal linking signals what matters. If every page on your site links to home and nothing else, Google sees a flat structure with no priorities. Service pages should link to relevant blog posts. Blog posts should link to service pages and to other related posts. Location pages should link to relevant case studies. Three to five internal links per page, weaving the site together.
8. The contact page hidden three clicks deep
A surprising number of Devon business sites have a contact page in the main menu but no phone number on the homepage at all. Click-to-call on mobile is one of the highest-converting features any local business can have, and it costs nothing to add. Phone in the header, phone in the footer, phone on every service page.
9. Reviews never embedded on the site
Your Google reviews are doing work on your Business Profile. They could also be doing work on your website. Embedded reviews — pulled in via a plugin or shortcode — add fresh content, real customer language and trust signals to your service pages. Yes, Google can see them. Yes, it helps.
10. No Google Business Profile link from the site
Your website should link to your Google Business Profile. Your Business Profile should link to your website. The two reinforce each other. Most WordPress sites we audit have neither link, leaving Google to make the connection on its own.
Fixing the lot
These are not deep technical issues. Most can be fixed in an afternoon by anyone who knows where the settings live. If you would rather we just did it, our £300 a month retainer covers the lot — local SEO, technical fixes, monthly content. Drop us an email or send the URL through and we will run the audit in a day.