Small Business Digital
The Annual Digital Review Every Small Business Should Do
1 August 2025
A digital presence that is set up and left alone degrades over time. Phone numbers change. Staff leave and email addresses stop working. Business hours change and the website still shows the old ones. Services are added or dropped and the website does not reflect it. A review that was accurate in 2022 mentions a product you no longer sell.
These things erode trust and cost enquiries, and they accumulate silently because nobody is looking. An annual review of every digital touchpoint takes two to three hours and catches everything that has drifted out of date over the previous twelve months.
Here is the checklist.
Google Business Profile
Log into your Google Business Profile and check every field.
Name, address, phone number: Is everything exactly as it should be? Is the phone number the right one? Is it formatted consistently with how it appears on your website?
Hours: Are your business hours and holiday hours correct? Google displays these to people searching for you. If your profile says you are open when you are not, or closed when you are, it affects both the impression you make and your local ranking.
Photos: When were photos last added? Google rewards profiles with recent photos. Add at least three to five new photos of completed work annually, more often if possible.
Services: Does the services list reflect what you actually offer? Add anything new. Remove anything discontinued.
Reviews: Read all reviews received in the past year. Have you responded to all of them, positive and negative? A business that responds to reviews consistently ranks better and builds more trust than one that ignores them.
Your website
Contact information: Is every phone number, email address, and contact form working correctly? Submit your own contact form and check that it arrives.
Content accuracy: Read every page. Is everything accurate? Services, areas covered, pricing references, staff, qualifications, certifications. Anything outdated needs updating.
Links: Click every link on the site. Broken internal links and external links to services or organisations that have moved are common on sites that have not been reviewed recently.
Mobile display: Pull up every page on a mobile phone. Does it display correctly? Is the phone number tappable? Does the text read without zooming?
Speed: Run the homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights. A site that loads slowly on mobile loses visitors and ranks lower in local search.
Directory listings
Search for your business name on Google, Golden Pages, Yelp, Facebook, and any trade directories relevant to your sector. For each listing you find:
Is the name, address, phone number, and website identical to your Google Business Profile? Maps listing accuracy depends on this consistency. Inconsistencies between listings suppress local search ranking. Correct any discrepancies you find.
Social media
If you have a Facebook page or other social presence, review it. When was the last post? Is the contact information correct? Is anything outdated?
A Facebook page that has not been updated in two years and shows incorrect information is worse than no page. Either update it or remove the outdated information.
What to do with what you find
Make a list of everything that needs updating. Prioritise by impact: contact information and hours before everything else, content accuracy next, photos and social media last.
If you use a managed website maintenance service, send the list to them. If you manage it yourself, block two hours and work through it systematically.
The review costs a morning once a year. The alternative is a digital presence that quietly works against you.
Maebh Collins manages website and digital presence maintenance for small and micro businesses across Ireland.
Maebh Collins is a Chartered Accountant (FCA, ICAEW), Big 4 trained, with twenty years of experience building and running international businesses. She specialises in finance transformation, ecommerce operations, and digital strategy.