Notes from the studio.
Plain-English guides on what’s changing in search, what makes websites perform and how to choose the right systems.
Small business website builder: the honest decision framework
We build bespoke websites for a living, so we're the last people a builder roundup would expect to say this: for many small businesses, a builder is the right call. Here's how to tell whether you're one of them — with the real numbers.
How does Google rank reviews? What actually moves map-pack positions
Google has never published a full list of local ranking factors, and most advice on this comes from firms selling review software. Here's what we actually see move map-pack positions.
Does structured data help SEO? Three verdicts, no waffle
Structured data won't push you up the rankings, but it can win you the click. Three verdicts you can repeat to anyone selling you a schema package.
The Best Structured Data Plugin for WordPress: An Honest Answer With No Affiliate Links
The honest answer to "what's the best structured data plugin for WordPress?" is usually "the one you already have." Here's how to check, configure it properly, and test it in fifteen minutes.
Google spam update September 2026: were you hit, and what to do
Two spam updates in six weeks, and the second is due to finish around 8 October. Here's a fifteen-minute check for whether your site was hit — and an honest triage list if it was.
Does Perplexity use ChatGPT? Partly — and why that's not the point
Perplexity pays to use models from OpenAI and Anthropic — but the model is the smallest part of the story. What decides whether an assistant recommends your business is whether its crawler can reach your site, not whose brain it borrows.
How to get recommended by ChatGPT: the checklist we run for clients
Assistants recommend businesses they can retrieve and quote, not the ones with the loudest marketing. Here's the five-step checklist we run for clients — including the monthly test most advice skips.
Small business website builder or bespoke? The honest five-year maths
Nearly every roundup we've read on "best website builder" earns commission on signups, so its comparison stops where the money does. We sell the alternative — so here's the full five-year arithmetic, the trade-offs both sides skip, and a ten-minute test you can run before you spend anything.
How Google finds your pages: crawling and indexing, explained
Your site can be brilliant and still invisible. Here's how Google actually discovers, reads and stores pages — and where things go wrong.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained: why your emails land in spam
Three DNS records decide whether your email is trusted. If you've never set them up deliberately, half your outgoing mail is fighting a spam filter.
Security headers explained: what they do and how to get an A grade
Security headers are free, take an hour to configure, and close entire categories of attack. Most sites score badly on them. Here's what each one does.
Core Web Vitals in plain English: what LCP, INP and CLS mean for your site
Three measurements Google uses to judge how your site feels to real visitors. What they mean, how to check them, and how to fix them.
Structured data: how pages win extra space in Google's results
Some listings show stars, FAQs and prices while their neighbours show a plain blue link. The difference is structured data — and it's fully under your control.
Google Business Profile in 2026: a practical optimisation checklist
The free listing that decides whether you appear in the map pack. Here’s what genuinely moves the needle, and what’s a waste of time.
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