The Straight-Talking Web Blog

How to Keep Your Website Safe, Fast and Google-Friendly (Without Being a Techie) Running a small business is hard enough without having to worry about whether your website’s up to scratch. But here’s the truth: If your website isn’t secure, speedy and Google-friendly – it could be quietly costing you business. You don’t need to […]

How Long Should It Take to Build a Website? A Plain-English Timeline You’ve decided your business needs a new website. Maybe it’s a redesign. Maybe it’s your first proper online presence. You’re ready to go. But then you ask: “How long will it take?” And you get a very unsatisfying answer: “Well… it depends.” Let’s […]

DIY Website Builders vs WordPress: When It’s Time to Move Up a Level You’ve had your website for a while. Maybe you built it yourself on Wix, Squarespace, or GoDaddy Builder. It got the job done. It looked decent enough. It was cheap. But now… it’s not keeping up. Maybe it’s slow. Maybe it looks […]

The Real Reason Your Website Doesn’t Show Up on Google (And How to Fix It) You’ve typed your business name into Google. You’ve searched for your service in your town. And still… nothing. Your website’s live, you paid good money for it, and yet it’s like Google doesn’t even know it exists. If that sounds […]

Why Web Design Costs More Than You Expected (And What You’re Really Paying For) If you’ve ever asked for a quote for a new website and thought, “Blimey – that’s a bit more than I was expecting,” you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common reactions I get from small businesses in Hampshire and […]

Where Is Your Website Actually Hosted? Why It Matters More Than You Think If you run a small business in Hampshire or Surrey, there’s a good chance someone built you a website a few years ago, sent you a login, and that was that. Maybe you get an invoice once a year for “hosting”, or […]

What was the impact of Mobilegeddon? I first heard the term “mobilegeddon” coined back in March last year. Almost as soon as it was uttered, it got marketers all in a flap. But would it be as catastrophic as the name oh-so-subtly implied? This is the quote, from Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, that started the […]

 Despite all of the fuss around content marketing in the past couple of years, I’ve noticed that a huge misconception still remains – people are still under the impression that content marketing = blogging and this just isn’t true. In reality, blogging is only one part of a wider content marketing strategy, which can help […]

Ask any brand what position they want to be in on Google’s search result pages, and they’re obviously going to say “number one”. Why wouldn’t they? Ranking in the top positions of Google’s SERPs puts you in the most powerful position, as users are likely to see you before your competitors and choose to click […]

How successful are your email marketing campaigns? Are they raking in thousands of conversions and leads, or is there room for improvement? Email can be a tricky marketing medium – we’re all trained to delete or ignore promotional emails this days – so I bet your answer is the latter. Well, it’s your lucky day! […]

Let’s be honest: content marketing can be expensive. And it can involve a lot of effort. But if you were to ask my opinion, as a marketing professional who has been working in this industry for many years, if it’s worthwhile? My answer would be unequivocally “yes”. So, if you’re going to be spending significant […]

Optimisation is almost a science. No, more than that – it’s almost magic, and those who are good at it are wizards. Why? Because they can take an average landing page, and transform it into something which results in shedloads of conversions and therefore makes you a tonne of cash. And isn’t that what we […]

I’ve noticed one glaringly obvious fact recently: a lot of people have got PPC CRO (click-through rate optimisation) all wrong. So many businesses waste time making incremental copy changes to their PPC ads and expecting their click-through rates to go soaring.  But they never do. Why? Because copy changes actually have little to no effect […]

No matter how much we’d like to think so, none of us are completely logical or rational creatures. We are all, to some extent, governed by our emotions and a number of cognitive biases which affect our black and white decision making processes. Yes, even you! One of the most important is the anchoring effect, […]

I never cease to be amazed by how much SEO has changed in recent years. In the past, SEO used to be all about optimising pages using keywords and links. It was decided by the powers that be (Google) that links were more important than the quality of the content on that page. Of course, […]

From my experience as a marketer, your sales funnel is one of the most important and lethal weapons in your arsenal – yet so many businesses still don’t use it properly. In fact, a lot aren’t even sure what it is! Let me help. A conversion funnel is essentially the process of acquiring new leads […]