How to find businesses with poor website SEO, and pick the ones worth pitching

To find businesses with poor website SEO, pick one trade in one area, build a shortlist with a few Google searches and the public lists of brand new sites, then spend five minutes on each site checking things anyone can see: whether Google has indexed it, its page title, its meta description, its image alt text and whether it loads over https. Keep the ones with a problem you can name and fix, and write to them about that one problem.

What does poor website SEO look like from the outside?

You cannot see a business's Search Console or analytics. You can see a surprising amount anyway, because most basic SEO problems sit in the page itself, where any browser can read them. These are the signals worth looking for, roughly in the order a search engine meets them.

You do not need all of these. Two or three on one site is a strong sign that nobody is looking after search, and that is the business you want: one that cares enough to have a website but has nobody running it.

Problems that look bad but often are not

Some things look like SEO failures and turn out fine. Check before you mention them.

• A low page count from site:. The operator gives a rough count, not an exact one. A small business with six pages is not a problem.
• Little text in the page source. Some sites are built with frameworks that add the text after the page loads. View the source and you see almost nothing; open the page normally and it is all there. Google can usually render these pages, so do not tell the owner their site is empty.
• A slow speed score on a phone test. Many small business sites score poorly on mobile tests. It is worth fixing, but it is a weak opening line because every site has it and the owner cannot see it themselves.
• No blog. A trade business does not need one to rank locally. Do not lead with it.

Where do you find businesses with weak SEO?

The aim is a shortlist of real, open businesses in your niche with sites that look neglected or unfinished. These sources work, and most cost nothing.

Google searches that surface weak sites

Google's own search operators let you hunt for the signals above directly. Combine them with a trade and a town.

Results vary by country and day, and Google does not show every match, so treat this as a way to build a list, not as proof. Every site on the list still gets the five minute check below.

Page two and three of local search

Search the way a customer would, for example "emergency electrician Manchester", and skip the first page. The businesses on pages two and three are real, often have good reviews, and are losing calls to the ones above them. Open each site and you will usually see why: a bare homepage, a title that says nothing, no page for the service you searched for.

Google Maps listings with good reviews and poor sites

In Google Maps, search a trade and a town and open each listing. A business with dozens of good reviews and a one page website, or no website link at all, has happy customers and nothing online to show for it. That gap is easy to explain to the owner because they already know their reviews are good.

Websites that went live this week

A brand new site is the clearest case of poor SEO that nobody has fixed yet, because nobody has had the chance. The title is often whatever the builder put there, the owner is still paying attention to the site, and they are unlikely to have an SEO person yet. Google can take a week or more to index a new site, so on a site a few days old, lead with the title or the description rather than indexing.

You can find these through the public certificate logs. Almost every site now runs on HTTPS, and the certificates for it are written to open logs under a system called Certificate Transparency. Searching those logs by hand at crt.sh is free, but most of what turns up is test servers, parked domains and subdomains of large companies, so expect a lot of sifting for each real business.

Vetted Leads reads the same logs and does that sifting for you. It keeps the real businesses and online stores, and for each one lists what its homepage is missing: no meta description, images with no alt text, no social preview image, no favicon, pages loading over plain http, or an old copyright year. Each email in the feed has been checked with the business's own mail server first. As of 21 October 2026 the feed holds 47,455 leads, 2,898 of them launched in the previous 24 hours. You can try it with 3 free contacts, once, plus the newest 50 leads each day, with no card. The find SEO clients page shows how SEO people use it.

Directories and trade association lists

Trade bodies and local directories list member businesses with links to their sites. Work down a list in your niche and open each link. Directories are slow, but the businesses on them are real and usually still trading, which saves you from writing to closed shops.

How do you check a site's SEO in five minutes?

You are not writing a full audit. You want to know whether the site has a real problem, and to have one specific, true sentence you can put in an email. Run the same checks in the same order every time and it gets fast.

Minute one: is it on Google?

Search site:theirdomain.com. If nothing appears, that is your headline. If pages appear, look at how the homepage shows up: the title and the two lines under it. That snippet is exactly what a searcher sees, so it is the easiest thing to show an owner.

Minute two: the title and description

Open the homepage and read the browser tab. Then view the page source (Ctrl+U in most browsers on Windows, Cmd+Option+U on a Mac in Chrome or Firefox) and search for title and name="description". Note what they say, or that the description is missing. A good title for a local business usually names the service and the town, such as "Boiler repair and plumbing in Leeds | Smith Plumbing". A bad one says "Home".

Minute three: images and headings

Right click the main image and choose Inspect. Look for alt="..." with real words in it. While you are there, check whether the page has one clear main heading that says what the business does. Plenty of sites use a logo or a slogan instead, which gives search engines nothing to work with.

Minute four: run a free report

Paste the address into Google's PageSpeed Insights. Besides speed, it has an SEO section that flags basic problems such as a missing title or meta description and links search engines cannot follow, and an accessibility section that flags images without alt text. It checks one page at a time, so run it on the homepage. Do not quote the score to the owner. Use the list of failed checks to confirm what you already saw.

Minute five: the human checks

Scroll the homepage once. Is the town or service area named anywhere? Is there a page for each main service? Is the copyright year current? Paste the link into a chat with yourself and see whether a preview image shows. Then decide: keep or skip.

Google's SEO Starter Guide explains most of these basics in plain language. It is worth reading once so you can explain each fix without exaggerating it, and worth linking in a proposal when an owner asks why something matters.

Which SEO problems are worth pitching?

Not every problem makes a good opening. The best ones are easy for the owner to see for themselves, cheap for you to fix, and tied to something they care about, which is customers finding them and calling.

Lead with one strong problem. Hold a medium one back for your follow-up, so the second email has something new in it.

Which businesses to skip

• Sites that are clearly managed. A recent blog, well written titles on every page and structured data in the source usually mean someone is already on it.
• Chains and franchises. Their sites are run centrally and the local owner cannot hire you.
• Businesses that look closed. No reviews in years, a disconnected phone number, a dead social account. Move on.
• Sites where every page is fine except speed. Hard to sell, and not what you are best placed to fix.

How do you keep track of what you find?

A spreadsheet is enough. One row per business, with these columns:

The example row is invented to show the layout. After a few weeks your sheet shows which niches and which problems get replies.

Finding the contact is often the slowest step. Look for an email on the contact page, check the footer and the Google Business Profile, and only use an address the business has published for enquiries. If you use a lead feed, prefer one that has already checked the email exists, so your first message does not bounce.

What should you say to a business with poor SEO?

Keep it short. Name something real about their business, point at one problem they can check, say what it costs them in plain words, and make the reply easy. Do not attach an audit, do not promise rankings and do not use jargon.

Sample email: the title that says Home

Subject: How Smith Plumbing shows up on Google

Hi Gareth,

I was going through plumbers in Leeds on Google and came across your site. The reviews on your Google listing are excellent.

When your homepage comes up in a search, the title just says "Home", and the text underneath is your opening hours. Someone searching for boiler repair in Leeds has no way to tell from that what you do or where.

I fix this kind of thing for trades businesses: page titles and descriptions that name your services and your area, and a separate page for your main jobs. It is a small fixed job, usually done within a week.

Would it help if I sent you the titles I would use? No cost for that part.

Priya

Why this works

• It opens with something true. The compliment about the reviews is real, and it shows a person looked.
• Gareth can check the problem himself by searching for his own business. Nothing in the email asks him to trust you.
• The cost is put in his terms. He reads that someone searching for boiler repair cannot tell what he does, which means more to him than "your on-page SEO is weak".
• The ask is small. Saying yes to a few titles takes one word, which is far easier than booking a call.

Follow the email rules that apply to you and the business. In the US, the CAN-SPAM Act covers business email: be honest about who you are, use a subject line that is not misleading, make clear the email is an ad, include a valid postal address and a way to opt out, and honour opt-outs. UK and EU rules can be stricter. Add the right footer before you send.

For more on wording and follow-ups, see the cold email template for web design, which uses the same one-problem approach, and how to get SEO clients when you are starting from zero for what to offer first and how to turn it into monthly work.

What mistakes waste time when prospecting for SEO clients?

• Reporting a problem you did not recheck. A new site may be indexed by the time your email lands, so search again right before you send.
• Overstating what a fix does. A missing meta description does not stop a page ranking. Say what it actually costs, which is control over the snippet.
• Leading with a score. "Your site scores 42" means nothing to an owner, and they will ask whose test it was.
• Checking too many things. Five minutes on a site is plenty, because you need one sentence, not a report.
• Spreading across niches. Writing to dentists one day and roofers the next means your examples never match the reader. Stay with one niche for a few weeks.
• Pitching sites that are already looked after. If the titles are good and there is fresh content, someone is on it.

How many sites should you check each day?

Pick a pace you can keep up every working day. A routine that fits into an hour:

1. 15 minutes: build the list. Twenty businesses from searches, Maps, directories or a feed of new launches.
2. 10 minutes: first pass. About 30 seconds each. Drop the closed, the chains and the clearly managed.
3. 25 minutes: five minute checks. On the best five.
4. 10 minutes: write. Three short emails about one problem each.

That is three careful emails a day, about 60 a month, each about a real problem on a real site. Log every one. The log will tell you more about what works in your niche than any article, this one included.

Where should you start today?

Pick one trade in one town. Run two or three of the searches above, add a few businesses from Google Maps, and do the five minute check on the best five. Send three emails about the clearest problem on each. If you would rather start with sites that launched this week, Vetted Leads lists them with their homepage gaps already noted, and you can try it free. The plans for more than that are on the pricing page.