Site Fixer: How to Fix Common SEO Issues on Your Website Without Touching Code

Running a site audit is one thing. Actually fixing everything it finds is another problem entirely.

Most site owners who run an audit end up with a list of 30, 50, sometimes 100+ issues — missing meta descriptions, absent canonical tags, OpenGraph tags that were never added, images without dimensions causing layout shift — and no practical way to fix them without opening every HTML file individually and editing them by hand.

That's the problem Site Fixer was built to solve. It's a PHP script included with the paid version of Tom's Site Auditor that turns your audit report into direct, applied fixes — with full preview, backups, and no guesswork.

What this guide covers: what Site Fixer does, who it's for, exactly how to use it step by step, what it fixes, and what to know about safety and security before you start.

See it in action

The video below shows Site Fixer running live — from uploading the script to scanning, previewing fixes, and applying them.

Demo video created with Guidde — the AI video documentation tool I use for all my product demos.

What problem does Site Fixer actually solve?

When Tom's Site Auditor crawls your website, it produces a detailed report of every SEO issue it finds across every page. That's the easy part. The hard part is that for a typical small business website — say 40 to 80 pages — you might be looking at dozens of missing canonical tags, OpenGraph tags that were never set up, meta descriptions that weren't written, and images missing their width and height attributes.

Fixing those manually means opening each HTML file in a text editor, finding the right spot in the <head>, adding the correct code, saving, and repeating. For someone comfortable with HTML that's tedious. For a small business owner who didn't build their own site, it's genuinely intimidating.

Site Fixer automates the safe, repetitive fixes. It crawls your site, identifies the same issues Tom's Site Auditor flags, shows you exactly what it wants to change before touching anything, and applies fixes with a single click — writing a backup of every file before it modifies it.

Who is it for?

Site Fixer is designed to be usable by people who aren't developers, but it does require basic comfort with uploading a file to a web server via FTP or cPanel. If you've ever uploaded a file to your hosting account before, you can use this tool.

It's particularly useful for:

  • Small business owners who had a website built for them and now manage it themselves
  • Bloggers and content creators running their own static or semi-static HTML sites
  • Freelance SEO professionals fixing common metadata issues for clients
  • Web developers who want a fast way to bulk-fix audit findings without writing custom scripts
  • Anyone who has run a Tom's Site Auditor report and wants to act on what it found

Technical requirement: Site Fixer is a PHP script and requires a web server running PHP 7.4 or later. This is standard on virtually all shared hosting plans (cPanel, Plesk, etc.). If your website is on shared hosting, you almost certainly meet this requirement without doing anything extra.

What Site Fixer detects and fixes

Site Fixer handles the issues that are safe to fix automatically — additive changes to the <head> section of your pages that can't break your site's appearance or functionality. It also flags issues that need your input before applying anything.

Missing OpenGraph tags

OpenGraph tags control how your pages appear when shared on social media — Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Slack, and most messaging apps all read these tags to generate the link preview card. Without them, shares of your pages look generic or pull the wrong image and title.

Site Fixer adds the full set: og:type, og:site_name, og:title, og:description, og:url, and og:image with proper width and height. It uses your existing page title and meta description as the source values, so no content needs to be written from scratch.

Missing canonical tags

A canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL is the "official" one — important for avoiding duplicate content issues, especially if your pages are accessible at multiple URLs (with and without trailing slashes, with and without www, etc.). Site Fixer adds the correct <link rel="canonical"> tag to any page that's missing one.

Missing meta descriptions

Meta descriptions are what often appear as the snippet under your page title in search results. Missing ones get replaced with whatever Google decides to pull from your page content — which is often not ideal.

For missing meta descriptions, Site Fixer generates a suggested description from the page's existing content and shows it to you for review. You can edit the suggestion before applying it. Nothing gets written until you approve it — this is never auto-applied.

Images missing width and height attributes

Images without explicit width and height attributes cause layout shift as the page loads — the browser doesn't know how much space to reserve, so content jumps around when images appear. This is a Core Web Vitals issue (Cumulative Layout Shift) that affects both user experience and search rankings.

Site Fixer reads the actual dimensions of each local image file and adds the correct width and height attributes automatically. No manual measurement required.

Title too short

Pages with very short or missing title tags are flagged and a suggested improvement is shown. Site Fixer will not auto-apply title changes — titles are too important to modify without your explicit approval, so this is flagged for your attention rather than fixed automatically.

Orphan pages

Orphan pages are pages that exist on your site but have no internal links pointing to them — search engines can struggle to discover and index them as a result. Rather than mass-editing dozens of pages to add links, Site Fixer takes a smarter approach: it generates a hub page containing links to all your orphan pages. You review the hub page, then add a link to it from your main navigation or another well-linked page. One change, not thirty.

How to use Site Fixer — step by step

The intended workflow is deliberate: upload, use, delete. Site Fixer is not meant to live on your server permanently. You upload it when you need it, make your fixes, then remove it.

Step 1 — Configure the script

Before uploading, open site-fixer.php in any text editor (Notepad works fine). Near the top of the file you'll find a configuration section. Set three things:

  • $ADMIN_TOKEN — change this to a password of your choice, at least 20 characters. This is what protects the tool from being accessed by anyone else.
  • $DEFAULT_OG_IMAGE_URL — the full URL to the image you want used for OpenGraph tags (typically your logo or a site banner). Example: https://yoursite.com/images/og-image.jpg
  • $HUB_PAGE_PATH — where the orphan links hub page should be written. Example: ./links.html

Step 2 — Upload to your server

Using your FTP client (such as FileZilla) or your hosting control panel's file manager, upload site-fixer.php to the root folder of your website — the same folder where your index.html lives.

Step 3 — Access via browser

In your browser, navigate to: https://yoursite.com/site-fixer.php?token=YOUR_TOKEN — replacing YOUR_TOKEN with the token you set in Step 1. The tool will authenticate you, store your session, and redirect to a clean URL. Your token won't appear in the address bar after that first visit.

Step 4 — Run the scan

Enter your website's base URL in the scan form and click Scan. Site Fixer will crawl your site page by page, analysing each one for the issues listed above. For a typical site of 50 pages this takes under a minute. The results appear as a list of pages with their detected issues shown per row.

Tip: start with a small Max Pages number (e.g. 20) on your first scan to make sure everything is working correctly before scanning your entire site.

Step 5 — Preview before applying anything

This is the most important step to understand: nothing is changed until you explicitly click Apply. For every fix, Site Fixer shows you a preview of exactly what it will add or change — you can see the before and after side by side. Review it, make sure it looks right, then decide whether to apply it.

For meta descriptions specifically, you'll see the suggested text in an editable box. Change it if needed before applying.

Step 6 — Apply fixes

You have two options. You can apply fixes page by page using the per-page buttons, which gives you maximum control. Or you can use the bulk fix button to apply all safe fixes (canonical tags, OpenGraph tags, and image dimensions) across every page in one operation.

Before writing any change, Site Fixer creates a timestamped backup of the original file: yourpage.bak_20260304_143022. If anything looks wrong after applying, your original is right there.

Step 7 — Delete the script

When you're done, delete site-fixer.php from your server. Don't leave it sitting there. It's protected by your token and session, but removing it when not in use is the right habit. It's designed to be a temporary tool, not a permanent installation.

Important: always delete site-fixer.php from your server after each use. The script can modify files on your website and should never be left accessible longer than necessary — even with the token protection in place.

What about safety?

Site Fixer was built with safety as a core constraint, not an afterthought. A few things worth knowing:

Backups before every write. Every file is backed up with a timestamp before any change is made. If you apply a fix and don't like the result, you can restore the original manually via FTP.

Atomic writes. Changes are written to a temporary file first, then renamed into place. This means you can't end up with a half-written, corrupted file if something goes wrong mid-write.

Dry-run by default. Scanning and previewing never touch your files. The only thing that modifies files is clicking Apply — and even then only for the specific page and fix you approved.

Only touches your own site. Site Fixer refuses to crawl or fetch from any domain other than the one it's installed on. It can't be redirected to another host.

Session-based authentication. Your token is used once to log in and is then stored in a secure session. It's never sent in API requests or stored in browser history after the initial login redirect.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to know PHP to use it?

No. You only need to edit two or three lines at the top of the file in a plain text editor to configure your token and OG image URL. Everything after that is done through the browser interface — no coding involved.

Will it work on my hosting?

If your hosting runs PHP 7.4 or later (which virtually all shared hosting has by default), yes. There are no databases, no framework dependencies, and no composer packages. It's a single self-contained file.

What if it can't write to my files?

If your HTML files aren't writable by the web server, Site Fixer will flag those pages as not fixable rather than throwing an error. You can fix file permissions via your hosting control panel's file manager — set them to 644. If you're unsure, your hosting support can help.

Can it break my site?

All fixes are additive — Site Fixer only adds missing tags to the <head> section or adds missing attributes to existing <img> tags. It never deletes content, never modifies your page's body, and never changes anything that would affect the visible appearance of your pages. And every file is backed up before any change is written.

Is it included with my Site Auditor purchase?

Yes. Site Fixer ships with the paid version of Tom's Site Auditor as part of the bundle. If you've already purchased, it's in your download package. If you're still on the trial, upgrading includes Site Fixer, the SEO Dashboard, and the full user guide PDF.

Recommended workflow: run Tom's Site Auditor to find issues → review the findings in the SEO Dashboard to understand what needs fixing → use Site Fixer to apply the safe bulk fixes directly on your server. The three tools are designed to work as a complete workflow.