Plain-English guides.
Short, honest answers to the questions small businesses ask before they hire me — how to get found on Google, and what’s actually worth doing. No jargon.
Local SEO · Guide
Do you need a website, or just a Google Business Profile?
For most local businesses the honest answer is: both. They do different jobs. A Google Business Profile gets you found on Google and Maps; a website is the place you actually own, where you tell your full story and turn a visitor into an enquiry. Here's how they fit together, and which to sort first if you can only do one for now.
Read the guide →Local business · Guide
Do you need a website if you've got a Facebook page?
Short version: keep the Facebook page — but don't let it be your whole presence online. A page is great for staying in front of people who already follow you. It's a poor substitute for a website, though, because you don't own it and it barely shows up when someone googles what you do. The two do different jobs; here's how to get the best of both.
Read the guide →Local SEO · Guide
Why isn't my business showing up on Google Maps?
Almost always it's not that Google doesn't like you — it's that your Google Business Profile is quietly working against you. An unclaimed listing, the wrong category, mismatched details, or a profile that looks abandoned are the usual culprits, and they're all fixable. Here's what actually keeps a business off the map, and what's worth sorting first.
Read the guide →Technical SEO · Guide
Why isn't my website showing up on Google?
This is a different problem from your Google Business Profile not showing up on Maps — this is about the website itself not appearing in Google's results at all. Almost always it's one of a handful of things: Google hasn't crawled it yet, something's accidentally telling Google not to index it, or there's nothing else on the web pointing to it. Here's how to work out which, and what to fix first.
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