A website marketing checklist for small businesses

Anna Wood, Social Media Marketing Lead, Blue Heron Digital Services

Quick answer

A website that brings in business does four things well: it loads fast, it is easy for search engines to understand, it tells visitors exactly what to do next, and it lets you measure what happens. Use the checklist below to review your homepage, or enter one page in our free Website Marketing Grader for an estimated score on speed, SEO basics, calls to action, and tracking.

Run the free Website Marketing Grader

Why your homepage deserves a regular checkup

Websites drift. A plugin update slows the page down. A new photo pushes the phone number below the fold. Someone changes the page title, and the description in search results no longer matches what you do. None of this is dramatic, and that is the problem: nobody notices until the phone gets quieter.

A short review every few months, and after any redesign, catches most of it. You do not need to be technical. You need a phone, a laptop, and about thirty minutes.

The website marketing checklist

Start with your homepage, then repeat for your most important service or contact page.

1. Speed and stability

Visitors leave slow pages, especially on a phone. Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool tests any public page and reports on loading and stability.

What to look at:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): how long the main content takes to appear. Google's web.dev guidance says a good experience is within 2.5 seconds.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP): how quickly the page responds to taps and clicks. The same guidance sets the good mark at 200 milliseconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): how much the page jumps around while loading. Aim for 0.1 or less.

PageSpeed Insights notes that its lab test is a simulated load, and field data comes from real visitors, so the two can differ. Use the numbers to spot trends, not as a final grade.

Common fixes: shrink oversized images, remove plugins or widgets you no longer use, and avoid large auto-playing videos at the top of the page.

2. Search basics

Search engines need clear signals about what each page is about. Google's SEO Starter Guide covers these in plain language.

Page title: Each page has a unique, descriptive title that names what you do. Google's documentation recommends titles that are descriptive and concise.
Meta description: A short summary of the page. Google may show it in search results, so write it for people, not keywords.
One main heading: The top heading on the page says what you offer, in the words customers use.
Readable text: Your services and the area or type of customer you serve are written in text on the page, not only inside images.
Crawling allowed: Your robots.txt file is not blocking pages you want found. If you have never heard of robots.txt, ask whoever built your site to confirm.

3. Calls to action

A call to action is the one thing you want a visitor to do next.

Can a visitor see what you do and how to contact you without scrolling on a phone?
Is there one clear main button, such as Call, Book, or Get a Quote, rather than five competing ones?
Does the phone number work as a tap-to-call link on mobile?
Does the contact form actually arrive in an inbox someone checks? Send yourself a test.
Is the same next step repeated near the bottom of the page for people who scroll?

4. Tracking

If you cannot measure it, you cannot tell what is working.

Is an analytics tool installed on the page?
If you run ads, is the ad platform's tracking set up so you can see which clicks turn into calls or form fills?
Do you look at the numbers at least once a month, and write down one number you want to move?

You do not need every tool. One analytics setup you actually check beats three you never open.

How to decide what to fix first

Broken things first. A contact form that goes nowhere or a phone number that does not dial is losing business today.
Then the call to action. Make the next step obvious on a phone.
Then speed. Large images are the usual culprit and the easiest fix.
Then search basics and tracking. These pay off over weeks and months, not days.

What the free Website Marketing Grader shows

Our Website Marketing Grader runs the same kind of review on one page.

What you enter: one public web address and your work email. Your name and company are optional. You confirm you are allowed to ask about that site and agree to the privacy notice and terms.

How it works:

It uses the free Google PageSpeed Insights API and the HTML of the page you entered.
It looks at that one address only. It does not crawl the rest of your site.
If your robots.txt file disallows the page, it stops.
Blue Heron is an independent service with no affiliation with Google.

What you get: an estimated score for speed, SEO basics, calls to action, and tracking, based on that page only. It is not a ranking promise. The detailed fix list is part of our paid Marketing Growth Plan, and you or your web person make any changes.

How to run the grader

Go to the Website Marketing Grader.
Enter the page you want graded. Your homepage is a good start.
Enter your work email, plus your name and company if you like.
Check the box, then select Grade the website.

Want a broader view that also covers email setup, social media, and your Google Business Profile? Try the Marketing Checkup, or read our guide on how to run a small business marketing checkup.

Your website marketing checklist

Main content appears within about 2.5 seconds on a phone
Page responds quickly to taps and does not jump around while loading
Images are sized for the web, and unused plugins are removed
Each page has a unique, descriptive title and a meta description written for people
One main heading says what you do, in customer words
Services and who you serve are written as text, not only in images
robots.txt is not blocking pages you want found
One clear call to action visible without scrolling on a phone
Tap-to-call phone number and a tested contact form
Analytics installed, ad tracking set up if you run ads, and numbers checked monthly

Want a closer look?

If you would like help reading your grade, Book a Free Audit. We will walk through the estimate and which fixes are worth doing first. You stay in control of every change.

Or email support@blueheronds.com.