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What to fix first when your website is not producing enquiries

You own or run a business with a website that is not producing enquiries, and you have a long list of possible fixes: SEO, speed, copy, design, ads, tracking.

By Adnan GourijaHead of Search Marketing at Webtec · Reviewed 2026-10-17

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Decision · 14 min read

The route: 6 moves, in this order

  1. 1Remove crawl and index blockers
  2. 2Fix speed and the mobile experience
  3. 3Make the message clear above the fold
  4. 4Fix the conversion path
  5. 5Deepen content and internal links
  6. 6Build authority last

The short answer

Fix in this order: crawl and index blockers, speed and mobile experience, message clarity above the fold, the conversion path, content depth and internal links, then authority. Each tier makes the next one worth doing. A page Google cannot index cannot rank, and a message that confuses visitors wastes every visit you earn. Start at the symptom, find your tier, and do not skip down the list.

The rule

Fix the Floor First

Work from the point where visitors are lost earliest to the point where they are lost last. A fix at a later tier cannot recover what an earlier tier threw away. Never spend on tier N+1 while tier N has an unresolved blocker.

The order

6 moves. Do them in this order.

  1. 1

    Move 1 of 6

    Remove crawl and index blockers

    You are here when: Your key pages show no impressions in Search Console. They may also miss a search for your business name, or sit as not indexed in the Page indexing report.

    Why now

    Google Search works in three stages: it crawls pages, indexes them, then serves them in results.[1] A page that fails the first two stages cannot reach the third. Google also states that it does not guarantee it will crawl, index or serve any given page.[1] That makes indexation the only tier where the cost of a mistake is total: zero visibility, regardless of how good the page is. It comes first because every later fix depends on it.

    Do this

    • Open the Page indexing report in Search Console and list every money page that is not indexed, with the stated reason.[5]
    • Check each money page for a noindex meta tag or an X-Robots-Tag header, and remove it where it was left from a staging build.[4]
    • Read robots.txt and confirm it does not block the paths your service and product pages live on.
    • Confirm each money page returns a 200 status, has a self-referencing canonical, and is linked from at least one crawlable page.
    • Submit one clean XML sitemap that lists only live, indexable URLs.
    Done whenEvery page that should earn enquiries is indexed, returns a 200, and appears for a search of its exact title in quotes.
  2. 2

    Move 2 of 6

    Fix speed and the mobile experience

    You are here when: Your pages are indexed, but Core Web Vitals fail at the 75th percentile on mobile, or the site is hard to use on a phone.

    Why now

    Speed sits second because it governs how much of the traffic you already have survives to see a page at all. Google measures Core Web Vitals at the 75th percentile of page loads, separately for mobile and desktop, and a page passes only if it meets all three targets.[7] Google also indexes and ranks using the mobile version of your content, so a thin or broken mobile page is the version that counts.[6] We do not know the exact ranking weight of speed, and we will not pretend to. The user cost is enough to justify the order.

    Do this

    • Read the field data for your top landing pages, not just a lab score, and note which of LCP, INP and CLS fail on mobile.[7]
    • Compress and correctly size the hero image, which is the most common cause of a slow LCP.
    • Defer or remove third-party scripts that are not tied to revenue or measurement.
    • Give every image and embed explicit dimensions so the layout stops shifting.
    • Load each money page on a real mid-range phone and confirm the same primary content appears as on desktop.[6]
    Done whenYour top landing pages pass LCP at 2.5 seconds or less, INP at 200 milliseconds or less, and CLS at 0.1 or less on mobile.
  3. 3

    Move 3 of 6

    Make the message clear above the fold

    You are here when: Visitors arrive and leave quickly, impressions and clicks look healthy, but a stranger cannot say what you sell, for whom, and why you, within five seconds.

    Why now

    Attention is front-loaded and unforgiving. Nielsen Norman Group's analysis of more than 2 billion dwell times found the first 10 seconds are critical, because the probability of leaving is very high in that window.[8] Their eye-tracking work found users spent about 57 percent of viewing time above the fold in 2018.[10] So the top screen is where the sale is won or lost. Clear copy comes before conversion mechanics because a perfect form on a confusing page still gets ignored.

    Do this

    • Write the headline as a plain statement of what you do and who it is for, not a slogan.
    • Put one supporting line under it that names the outcome and the main proof point.
    • Show one primary action above the fold, labeled with the actual next step.
    • Run the five-second test: show the page to five people outside your industry, then ask what you sell.
    • Cut anything in the top screen that does not help a stranger decide.
    Done whenFour of five strangers describe your offer and audience correctly after five seconds, without scrolling.
  4. 4

    Move 4 of 6

    Fix the conversion path

    You are here when: People understand the offer and click through, but few reach the enquiry form, call button or checkout, and fewer finish it.

    Why now

    Once the message holds attention, friction is what remains. Baymard's analysis of 50 studies puts average cart abandonment at 70.22 percent, and among reasons given, 17 percent cite a long or complicated checkout and 18 percent cite a required account.[11] That is ecommerce, but the mechanism is the same for a lead form: every extra field and unclear step is a reason to stop. This tier sits after message clarity because friction fixes on a page nobody wants waste effort.

    Do this

    • Map the path from landing page to completed enquiry and count every click and field.
    • Remove every form field you do not use in the first reply.
    • Put the phone number, form or booking link where the visitor decides, not only in the footer.
    • State price, timing or what happens next near the action, so the click is not a leap.
    • Use conversion rate math to size the gain before you test, and CRO research methods to choose the evidence.
    Done whenYou can name the step with the largest drop-off, you have changed it, and tracked enquiries confirm the path completes end to end.
  5. 5

    Move 5 of 6

    Deepen content and internal links

    You are here when: The core pages work, but you rank for few queries beyond your brand, or buyers ask questions your site does not answer.

    Why now

    Content depth widens the funnel, so it only pays once the funnel is sound. Google says it primarily finds pages through links from pages it has already crawled, and that links connect users and search engines to other parts of your site.[2] Internal links are therefore how new pages get found and how authority moves to money pages. Adding articles before fixing tiers one to four feeds more traffic into a leaking system.

    Do this

    • List the questions buyers ask on sales calls and map each to a page that exists or must exist.
    • Give each page one clear purpose and one primary query, and merge pages that compete for the same one.
    • Link every new article to the service or product page that matches its intent, using descriptive anchor text.
    • Link back from money pages to the supporting guides a buyer would read.
    • Give each page a unique, clear, concise title that accurately describes it.[2]
    Done whenEvery money page has at least three descriptive internal links pointing to it, and every buyer question you hear has an answering page.
  6. 6

    Move 6 of 6

    Build authority last

    You are here when: Your site is indexed, fast, clear, converting and well covered, and you still sit behind competitors with stronger reputations.

    Why now

    Authority amplifies what already works. Links, mentions and reviews raise the ceiling on how far a good page can travel, but they do not repair a page that is blocked, slow or confusing. Google's Search Essentials separates technical requirements from key best practices, which signals that a minimum floor must exist before ranking effort counts.[3] Spend on authority first and you pay to send people to a weak experience.

    Do this

    • Identify the three sources your buyers already trust and earn a genuine mention from one.
    • Collect named, specific reviews and place them beside the relevant offer.
    • Publish original data, tools or frameworks that others in your field would cite.
    • Skip paid links and mass directory submissions: Google's spam policies exist because manipulation can lead to lower ranking or omission.[3]
    Done whenYou can point to new, relevant mentions or links that you earned, and each lands on a page that passes tiers one to five.

Decision finder

Which tier to work on, by symptom

Symptom

No impressions

What you see

Key pages absent from Search Console or the index.

First move

Tier 1: check noindex, robots.txt, status codes, sitemap and the Page indexing report.

Skip for now

New content, link building, copy rewrites, ads tweaks.

Evidence

Why this order and not another

The order follows the visitor's journey backward from the point of loss. A visitor must be able to find a page, load it, understand it, act on it, and trust you enough to do so. Each tier is a precondition for the next. If an earlier gate is closed, the work you do behind it has no audience.

Consider the arithmetic. If a page is not indexed, its traffic is zero, so a 50 percent lift in conversion is 50 percent of nothing. If traffic is healthy but 90 percent of visitors cannot tell what you sell, fixing the checkout touches the small share who stayed. Gains multiply down the funnel, and a zero anywhere makes the product zero.

Our rule is also about cost of error. Indexation errors cost everything and are usually cheap to fix: a stray noindex is one line. Authority work is expensive and slow, and it adds the least when everything above it is broken. We sequence by the ratio of damage prevented to effort spent.

Evidence

What the evidence supports and what it does not

Some of this order is documented fact and some is our judgment. The documented part is that Google crawls, indexes and then serves, and that it makes no guarantee at any stage.[1] It is also documented that a noindex rule only works if Google can crawl the page, which means a robots.txt block can leave a page in results you wanted removed, or a noindex hidden from the crawler.[4]

The mobile point is documented too. Google uses the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking, and asks that mobile pages carry the same primary content as desktop.[6] Compact layouts such as tabs or accordions are fine, but removing content is not. Many sites test only on a desktop monitor and miss this entirely.

The attention data is older and we say so. The dwell-time analysis is from 2011 and the reading study from 2008, with a small and highly literate sample of 25 users.[8][9] The 2018 eye-tracking study found attention above the fold had fallen from about 80 percent to about 57 percent, yet the top two screens still drew 74 percent of viewing time.[10] Behavior has moved, but the direction has not: the top of the page does the most work.

What we cannot say is how much any single fix will lift your enquiries. No source we opened gives a reliable lift for a given tier, and anyone quoting one without your data is guessing. Treat the order as a way to avoid waste, not a forecast.

Evidence

Hard cases and trade-offs

Some businesses cannot wait for a full sweep. If you run paid ads, tiers three and four matter now, because you are buying the traffic and losing it at the page. In that case run tier one as a quick check and move to message and path immediately. Paid traffic does not depend on indexation, so the ordering shifts, though the logic does not.

Brand-new sites invert the symptom. They show no impressions because Google has not discovered them, not because something is broken. Google notes that a sitemap is optional and that links from pages it already crawled are the main route to discovery.[2] Earn a few real links and submit the sitemap, then confirm in Search Console before assuming a fault.

Sites with a tracking gap need a pre-step. Without Search Console and a conversion event, you cannot tell whether a fix worked. Add measurement first, because every later tier needs a before and after. See what to measure first for the minimum set.

Finally, some fixes belong to more than one tier. A slow hero image hurts speed and weakens the first screen. Do the fix once, record it under the tier where it matters most, and move on. Do not let tier boundaries become an excuse for delay.

  • Running ads now: do a quick tier one check, then work tiers three and four first.
  • Brand-new site: confirm discovery before assuming a technical fault.
  • No tracking: add Search Console and one conversion event before anything else.
  • Overlapping fix: do it once and log it under the highest-impact tier.

Evidence

How to find your tier in under an hour

You can locate your tier without an agency. Start with Search Console: open the Page indexing report and look at the not-indexed table and its stated reasons.[5] Two labels deserve attention. Crawled but not indexed means Google saw the page and passed on it. Discovered but not indexed means it has not been crawled yet.[5]

Next, load your three most important pages on a phone over a normal connection, not office wifi. Note how long the first screen takes to appear and whether the layout jumps. Then read the top screen as a stranger: could you say what the business does, for whom, and what to do next?

Finish with the path. Count the steps from landing page to a sent enquiry. If you cannot find the symptom in this page's table, that is a signal for a proper audit. For a deeper walk-through of the technical tier, read the technical SEO audit, crawlability and indexation and Core Web Vitals.

Scroll through

6 mistakes that cost the most

  • 01

    Buying content before checking indexation

    Teams commission a dozen articles while key service pages carry a leftover noindex. The cost is months of spend with zero reach. Check the Page indexing report first, and fix blockers before writing anything new.

  • 02

    Chasing a perfect speed score

    A lab score of 100 is not the goal. The target is passing field data at the 75th percentile on mobile.[7] Past that, speed work competes with message and path fixes that usually earn more. Stop at passing.

  • 03

    Redesigning before clarifying the message

    A new design on top of an unclear headline gives a prettier confusing page. It costs a build budget and fixes nothing. Run the five-second test, rewrite the top screen, and only then judge whether design is the problem.

  • 04

    Adding traffic to a leaking page

    Increasing ad spend or publishing more content while the path loses most visitors just raises the bill per enquiry. Measure the drop-off at each step and repair the largest one before scaling input.

  • 05

    Treating a robots.txt block as a removal tool

    Blocking a URL in robots.txt does not remove it from results, and it hides any noindex from the crawler.[4] To remove a page, allow crawling and apply noindex. Otherwise the page lingers with no description.

  • 06

    Changing five things at once

    Fixing speed, copy and layout in one release makes it impossible to know what moved enquiries. Change one tier at a time, record the date, and compare enquiries before and after.

Worked example

The rule applied

A local services firm works down the tiers

1. The situation

Illustrative: a regional commercial cleaning company with 40 pages. Search Console shows 12 impressions a month for its main service page. The owner has quotes for a redesign, a blog package and a link campaign, and no way to compare them.

2. The decision

Tier one first. The Page indexing report shows the main service page marked noindex, left over from the build. The team removes the tag, checks robots.txt and resubmits the sitemap. Only after the page is indexed does it move to tier two and test the page on a phone, where a 3 MB hero image delays the first screen. It then rewrites the headline to state the service, the sectors and the area served, and cuts the form from nine fields to four.

3. What it shows

The logic, not a promised number: impressions cannot rise until the page is indexed, so the noindex fix goes first. Speed and message changes then affect a growing audience instead of a trickle. The redesign, blog and links are deferred until a month of data shows which tier still leaks. The owner spent almost nothing on the highest-impact fix and kept the budget for evidence-led work.

Questions people ask

  1. 01

    Should I fix SEO or conversion first?

    Fix indexation first, then conversion, then wider SEO. If key pages are not indexed, conversion work has no audience. If they are indexed and traffic arrives but enquiries do not, conversion is the constraint. Search Console tells you which: impressions and clicks present with no enquiries means conversion, while absent impressions means indexation. Wider SEO, such as new content and links, comes after both because it only adds volume to a funnel that already works.

  2. 02

    How do I know if my pages are indexed?

    Use the Page indexing report in Google Search Console, which lists indexed and not-indexed pages with reasons for each.[5] You can also paste a page address into the URL Inspection tool, or run a site: search for the address. Google's starter guide recommends the site: operator as a quick check.[2] Note that indexing is never guaranteed, so a clean sitemap does not prove a page will appear.[1]

  3. 03

    Is site speed really a priority for small business sites?

    Yes, but only up to passing. Google defines good thresholds of 2.5 seconds for LCP, 200 milliseconds for INP and 0.1 for CLS at the 75th percentile.[7] If you pass, move on to message and path. If you fail on mobile, fix it before design or content work. We cannot quote how much ranking you gain, but slow pages lose visitors during the critical first seconds.[8]

  4. 04

    Can I do these fixes in a different order?

    You can, but you will often pay twice. Work done at a later tier is wasted if an earlier tier is broken, such as rewriting copy on a page that is not indexed. The exception is paid traffic, where you can work on message and path immediately because ads do not depend on indexation. Parallel work is fine when separate people handle separate tiers, provided blockers are cleared first.

  5. 05

    How long before I see enquiries improve?

    It varies, and we do not have a reliable figure. Conversion changes on pages with existing traffic can show up within weeks if volume is enough to measure. Indexation fixes depend on when Google recrawls, which Google does not guarantee.[1] Authority and content depth take longest. Set a review date, record a baseline for impressions, clicks and enquiries, and judge each tier against its own metric.

  6. 06

    Do I need an agency to run this order?

    Not for the diagnosis. Tiers one and two can be checked in an hour with Search Console and a phone, and tier three needs only five strangers. An agency adds value on larger sites, in fixing complex technical blockers, and in running controlled tests. Whoever does the work, ask them which tier they are working on and what evidence says that tier is the constraint.

The evidence behind this page

Sources

Evidence freshness

11 sources, 7 dated in the last 3 years

Each bar counts sources by the date the source itself shows. 1 show no date.

08101214161820222426

Cite or share this page

Quote the rule or the order with credit and a link. Suggested citation:

Adnan Gourija (2026). What to fix first when your website is not producing enquiries. The Marketing Field Manual, Webtec. https://www.trywebtec.com/resources/field-manual/what-to-fix-first/

  1. 1Google Search Central: How Google Search worksLast updated 2025-12-18 UTC
  2. 2Google Search Central: SEO Starter GuideLast updated 2025-12-10 UTC
  3. 3Google Search Central: Google Search EssentialsLast updated 2025-12-10 UTC
  4. 4Google Search Central: Block Search indexing with noindexLast updated 2025-12-10 UTC
  5. 5Google Search Console Help: Page indexing reportNo date shown
  6. 6Google Search Central: Mobile-first indexing best practicesLast updated December 10, 2025 UTC
  7. 7web.dev: Web VitalsPublished May 4, 2020; last updated October 31, 2024
  8. 8Nielsen Norman Group: How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?September 11, 2011
  9. 9Nielsen Norman Group: How Little Do Users Read?May 5, 2008
  10. 10Nielsen Norman Group: Scrolling and AttentionApril 15, 2018
  11. 11Baymard Institute: Cart Abandonment Rate StatisticsLast updated September 22, 2025

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