Many small businesses assume they need thousands of pounds to spend on marketing before they can compete, but that’s not necessarily true. If you’re prepared to put the time in rather than just throwing money at the problem, you can make quite a bit of progress. The first thing to understand is that consistency matters more than budget. You’re better off doing one or two things properly and regularly than trying to do everything at once and giving up after a few weeks. Pick the marketing channels where your actual customers are and focus on those rather than spreading yourself too thin. Google My Business is probably the most overlooked…

It can be quite alarming when you check your rankings one day and find that your website has dropped significantly for phrases you used to rank well for. Before you panic though, there are a few things you should check. Firstly, make sure you’re checking your rankings properly using private browsing or proper ranking software. Sometimes your own search history can skew the results and make you think you’ve dropped when actually you haven’t. If your rankings have genuinely dropped, it may be that Google has done an update. They’re constantly updating their algorithm and sometimes this affects sites negatively even if they haven’t done anything wrong. You may find…

There’s been a lot of talk recently about AI content and whether Google can detect it and penalise sites for using it. If you’ve been using AI to help with your content creation, you might be wondering if you need to worry about this. The truth is that Google has said it’s not specifically looking to penalise AI content, but it is looking for quality content that’s helpful to users. If your AI-generated content is thin, repetitive or doesn’t actually answer people’s questions properly, then yes, you might have problems. What matters more is whether your content sounds natural and provides real value. If you’re just churning out generic articles…

If you’re running a local business, you may find it frustrating that you’re not showing up on Google when people search for your services in your area. The thing is, most local businesses make the same mistakes when it comes to their online presence and don’t even realise they’re doing it. It may be that you’ve heard about Google My Business but you haven’t really done much with it beyond claiming the listing. This is where a lot of local businesses fall down because they don’t realise how important it is. If you’re not keeping it updated, adding photos regularly and responding to reviews, then you’re basically handing an advantage…

If you have a website then you will know how important it is to try and get it to show up on the search engines for your main phrases. IF you are in an industry that is quite niche, and you have quite specific products or services then you may find this easier than someone who is trying to target more generic phrases. So can you get your website to rank for these more generic phrases? This depends on a number of thing one of which is the authority your site already has. If your site already ranks well for a number of phrases, is updated regularly and has been…