INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS
Notes from the street.
What is local SEO, and does my business need it?
Local SEO is mostly not about your website, which is the first surprise. It is the work of making a business findable to somebody a few streets away, and whether you need it depends on a question worth answering honestly before anyone sells you anything: how do your customers currently find you?
Read the full analysis →
How much should a small business spend on marketing?
The percentage-of-turnover rule was built for companies with marketing departments. Here is a more useful way to size a budget for a small business.
READ → Should I pay for Google Ads, or fix my ranking first?
Ads buy traffic today at a price that never falls. Ranking is slow and then free. Here is which suits which situation, and what has to be true first.
READ → Why has my Google Business Profile been suspended?
A suspension almost always follows a specific change you made. Here are the four usual causes, and how to get the profile back without making it worse.
READ → Why is my website not getting any enquiries?
There are only two causes: nobody arrives, or people arrive and leave. Telling them apart takes ten minutes and decides where the money should go.
READ → Can I offer a discount for a Google review?
Offering money off for a review is not banned in the UK. Concealing it is. On Google the disclosure route is shut anyway, so the answer is no.
READ → I get all my work by word of mouth. Do I need a website?
Sometimes the answer is no, and I say when. The rest of the time a website stops you quietly losing the recommendations you have earned.
READ → Why doesn't my business show up in the towns I actually work in?
A service area list tells customers where you work. It is not one of the three ranking factors Google publishes. What is documented, what is not.
READ → Am I being ripped off by my marketing agency?
Six questions to send the agency you already pay, and what a decent answer to each one sounds like. Includes what No. 11 charges.
READ → Nobody reads marketing emails, do they?
Mostly nobody reads them. The cheapest advertising your shop owns is sitting inside the card machine, and almost nobody has ever used it.
READ →
No published piece matches that search. If the question is about your own business, we would rather answer it directly than leave you looking: [email protected].
Where the thinking becomes a programme of work
Core starts from £850 a month and Growth from £1,450, with their included hours and the three-month minimum set out before you speak to anyone. Group is scoped to the estate it covers. A six-month term takes 15% off.