Beyond the Website: Building Digital Trust in an AI-First World
Discover how to build digital trust beyond your website. Authentic, accessible content builds authority across social media, AI summaries, and off-page presence.
Business Advice – Plan, Execute, Measure, Adjust, Succeed!
I’m passionate about training small business owners, schools, and nonprofits, to be active participants in their online marketing efforts. I’ve seen too many business owners victimised by snake oil salespeople, promising much and doing little. And I’ve seen too many business owners left with a bad taste in their mouths, resigned to their helplessness. That has to change. The time for that change is now. My advice here is free too!
Comparison of B2B and B2C SEO Strategies
Comparing B2B and B2C SEO strategies using practical examples from the logistics (B2B) and homeopathy (B2C) sectors.
Why Small Biz Still Needs Social Media
Discover why social media remains essential for small businesses. Get a simple step-by-step guide to start social media marketing for your business.
Building Websites with AI: What You Need to Know
In this article, Bridget Willard and I look at the benefits and drawbacks of AI-powered website builders and see how they compare to WordPress and static sites.
Navigating AI-Driven SEO
Stay ahead in SEO with actionable tips for optimizing JavaScript-heavy websites, enhancing accessibility, and boosting visibility in AI-driven search.
Are We There Yet? Understanding the SEO Journey
How long does SEO take? Discover the key factors that influence SEO timelines, and learn what to expect for ranking improvements.
Local SEO: Boosting Online Visibility for Small Businesses and Non-Profits
Local SEO helps businesses stand out in their community, attract nearby customers, and compete effectively against larger companies in local search results. Find out more!
The Evolution of Brand Promise: From Fantasy to Reality
Brands are important, but today, the importance of experience is replacing the importance of brands. How does this impact your SEO and Social Media?
SEO and Accessibility: The Importance for Online Shops
Discover how making your eCommerce site accessible not only broadens your customer base but also improves user experience, leading to higher conversion rates.
Bing SEO: An Essential Guide for Your Small Business, Nonprofit, or School
Are you getting all the web traffic you deserve? Don’t ignore Bing. Google is great, but another 10% of the search engine market share exists. Find out more!
How You Can Conduct a Free Website SEO Audit
An SEO audit looks for errors that prevent your site from being found. If you would like to improve your website, you should conduct an audit. Here’s how!
Local SEO for Brick-and-Mortar Businesses in the E-commerce Age
Discover the power of local SEO. Boost your online visibility, increase local traffic, and drive growth. Local SEO gives small businesses a big reach!
Google Shuts Down Free Websites
What Do You Need to Do? The free websites generated through the Google Business Profile have been shut down. Find out more!
Accessibility and SEO: A Powerful Duo for Your Online Marketing Success
Whether you’re a small business owner or a student building your online marketing toolkit, understanding accessibility and SEO is a powerful move.
People Don’t Want Content – They Want Stories
From religion to politics to coffee – we connect with the stories behind the product. If you want to connect with people, you need good storytelling.
What is a Landing Page, Why is it Important, and Why it Isn’t Your Homepage
A landing page is the most important page on your website for lead generation and sales. Do you have one?
The Monty Hall Problem and Other SEO Logic Traps: Behind Which Door is Your Keyword?
Monty Hall Paradox? Logical thinking in SEO = ditching gut feelings & embracing data. Analyse, research, and prioritise. Build a sustainable strategy based on facts, not fads.
The End of Page 1 Ranking: Google Continuous Scrolling and SEO
Once just for mobile search, Google’s Endless Scrolling has now arrived on desktop. How does this effect your SEO?
Lead Generation and Recruitment Made Easy with Social Media
Looking for leads? Through the relationships built online, actual business follows. Why? Because it’s where people are. Best of all, Social Media is free.
Home Digital Care: The Intersection of Compassion and Technology for Senior Services
Visualize a community centre that serves as a hub for a digital revolution—a place where seniors can visit to receive assistance and where digital care workers zip out on mopeds to aid those who can’t.
How Do I Take Photos For My eCommerce Store Listings?
Don’t bog down your online shop with photos that are too large. Find out how to keep your site fast and lean!
Using Assistive AI to Build a Simple Website
You can use AI to assist you with a lot of your small business work. Just be sure to use AI as a tool, and not as a replacement for your own skills and talents.
How to Optimise Your Website for Voice Search
Want to be found locally? Use Google Business Profile and local keywords. Want to be found over Voice Search? Take a more conversational tone.
Hungry for Some SEO Tips? Here’s an SEO Appetizer for Your Business
SEO is a lot like the seasoning in a dish: you can serve your dishes without any salt and pepper, but your guests will be happier if you add some!
How Your Small Business Can Use AI for Big SEO Wins
Your small business can use AI for more than just automating repetitive tasks or analyzing customer data. You can also leverage AI in your SEO activities.
How to Super Size Your Freelance Niche
In a crowded and competitive online space, getting business can be hard. You can throw a lot of money at the problem, or you can work smarter. Leverage yourself and your network. Repurpose what’s in front of you. Don’t just think outside of the box, step outside of it.
Tips and Tricks from Two Decades of Freelance Experience
So you want to be a freelancer? Here is some advice from twenty years as a freelance caterer, web designer, teacher, and writer on two continents.
Cater a Wedding for 100 People Without Using a Food Processor or Build a Website Using Only HTML and CSS
Learning how a tool works is just as important as using it. Building a website with page builders doesn’t offer you the “why” and “how” that writing HTML does. Find out more!
Improve Your Website With Only 4 Essential Elements
Your website should contain many things, but there are 4 things it shouldn’t lack. Read about the importance of content, speed, security, and accessibility.
9 Benefits of a Multilingual Marketing Approach for Your Business
Here are 9 tips for a multilingual marketing approach. Reach people in their location and in their language.
What Does Hygiene and Sustainability Have to Do with Marketing?
Clean marketing allows things to go from A to B faster, easier, effectively and more efficiently. There is less friction. Speeds wins. You win!
WordPress and the Rise of Full Site Editing
WordPress is perfect whether you are a beginner or a professional. Use it for your cat’s blog or your online shop. With the Full Site Editor you can design in WordPress even easier!
8 Ways to Promote Your Small Business Online for Free
Forget contracting an agency. Do you have a website? Do you have access to email and social media? Then you can promote your business, yourself, for free.
Working as a Senior in Our Digital Economy
The term “senior” means different things to people. Usually it means someone with more experience. Older workers have more experience but a more difficult time finding work. Why is that? Perhaps freelancing is the answer.
How to Plan, Structure, Write, and Market Your Own Book while Dealing with Writer’s Block
How Can You Plan, Write, and Market a Book While Dealing with Writer’s Block? This is not going to be the final word on the subject. More like a pre-penultimate teaser article. With revisions. Writer’s block is a myth. The real problem is often that you don’t take writing a book seriously enough. Don’t despair. You aren’t alone.
Why Marketing Hygiene is so Important to Your Clients and Your Processes
Marketing Hygiene is the process of maintaining the freshness and function of your marketing tools, processes, and strategies to preserve the overall health and wellbeing of your business.
Your Online Marketing Hygiene includes your Social Media, Website, Online Shop, Email, Search, and Controlling assets and tactics.
Are Cookies Going Away in 2023?
Google announced that it will phase out 3rd party cookies in the Chrome browser. It also does not plan to build any similar tracking devices. Their plan is for this to happen in 2023. This change will affect anyone advertising with Google Ads, as 3rd party cookies are important for retargeting us when we move from one website to another.
Fight the Home Office Blues with these 3 Cooking and Eating Tips
Do you cook? You either love it or hate it. We consume 35 tons of food in our lifetime. That’s a lot of cooking. Let’s enjoy it! These three tips should inspire you to make the best of the Home Office months. I even include a special exercise tip!
Online Marketing is important not only for your business, or your nonprofit. It’s also important for your school.
How do you first generate interest in your school and the programs you’re offering? You make sure you’re well covered in social media. You make sure you’re well covered for search engine optimization. Once you’ve got people’s attention, they’re going to go onto your website.
DigiBlogChat: Nonprofits and GivingTuesday
Carol Stephan invited Bridget Willard and I to participate in her Twitter #DigiBlogChat on Tuesday, November 2nd. Pretty exciting! It’s now the second time I’ve done this. The topic was Giving – especially GivingTuesday with questions by Carol, Bridget, and myself.
Who’s Afraid of Digital Thinking? A Conversation from the Center of the Universe
I was fortunate enough to talk with Rob Cairns this month about my book “Digital Thinking: Websites, Online Marketing, and more”. Check out this excerpt or listen to the podcast.
7 plus Reasons You May NOT Want to Be Self-Employed
Perhaps, just perhaps, being your own boss is not for you. It isn’t for everybody, and that’s okay!
4 Online Marketing Tips for Your Nonprofit
What are four important things nonprofits need to think about when it comes to their online marketing? Bridget Willard and I talk about them!
Branding and Design. Keep it Simple and Consistent
Rhonda Negard from Fat Dog Creatives joins Bridget Willard and I to talk about Design and Branding for Small Businesses. In a nutshell? Keep it Simple and Consistent!
The Sweet Aroma of (Marketing) Empathy
When we start a business, we look at the big picture. We often lose that one-to-one customer empathy, which directly affects how well our business performs.
Why I Want Clients to Leave Me
Last week I lost a client. When we met they had a small WordPress website and nothing more. Now they manage their own website, Google Ads, and Social Media. They are even really good at SEO. They don’t need me anymore. Well, perhaps if they get stuck they will email me. Do you know what? I feel great!
Yes, Your Small Business or Nonprofit Can Get Results from Google Ads on a Tiny Budget
Your small business isn’t too small to take advantage of small-budget ad buys with Google. This article explores some of your options and how we can help.
Two Hands-On Learnings for Small Businesses and Non-Profits
More weekly insights from marketing practitioners who work with small businesses, non-profits, and schools, with some real hands-on advice!
The 5 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Website for Free
We want to help our friends who are small businesses, like navigating through the blah, blah, blah, big agencies and all of their jargon that makes them feel very expensive and important. Let’s talk about some of the things that small business owners can do right now, themselves without hiring a big SEO company!
Home Office – The Good Life?
Your kitchen is now your Home Office? So many of us are now working remotely. Working from home can be a blessing and a curse. Check out some of my advice.
eCommerce is Not an Online Shop
An important characteristic of eCommerce is that it is not really a distinct sector. When we talk about eCommerce, the concept that usually comes to mind is of course online shopping. eCommerce means enabling all of an organisation’s operations. It is not enough to just set up an online shop.
The Internet is Not Free
CERN announced, on 30 April 1993, that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone. Free is a relative term. The Internet has been valued at around 1 Trillion dollars a year. By most standards, a Trillion dollars is a bit north of “Free”.
Agile, Design Thinking, Mindfulness – Embracing Small to Win Big
Failing in order to succeed, becoming people-focused, delivering value. We’re talking about moving out of the express lane and going Agile and Mindful.
What is this Design Thinking Anyway?
Too often websites are defined by the internal users. Use Design Thinking to think out of the box and include external users too.
Building a Website: the Client Worksheet
Creating a plan for your website ensures nothing gets left out. Think about who the website is for, and what they will use it for.
(Understanding) Digital (as Part of a Complete) Strategy
Digital is about finding the best way of achieving goals, promoting your brand and services, through electronic connected media.