This is where I keep the free guides, checklists and reference pages on this site. They are written for UK small business owners and in-house marketers who want to do some of their own SEO or advertising, whether that means checking a website before a relaunch or setting up a first Google Ads campaign. Everything here is free to read and use.
Doing part of the work yourself is a sensible way to begin. Once you understand how Google decides what to show, and you have checked the basics on your own site, you can judge any proposal you are sent, from me or from anyone else, and pay for outside help only where you actually need it.
What you will find here
The resources come in four kinds. Picking the right kind first saves you reading a long guide when a short check would have answered the question.
Which one to start with
Start from the job in front of you rather than from the name of a channel. The table pairs common situations with the page I would open first.
| Your situation | Start with |
|---|---|
| Search is new to you and you want to understand it before deciding whether to do it yourself | The SEO guide for UK small businesses |
| Your website gets few visits from Google and you want to know why | The SEO audit checklist, starting with whether Google can reach and index your pages |
| You serve customers in a particular town, city or London borough, and competitors appear in Google Maps when you do not | The local SEO checklist, which includes your Google Business Profile |
| You are launching a new website or rebuilding the one you have | The website launch SEO checklist, worked through before the new site goes live rather than after |
| You are about to spend money on Google Ads for the first time | The Google Ads guide, then the Google Ads checklist before your first campaign runs |
| You want to try advertising on Facebook or Instagram | The Meta Ads guide, then the matching checklist before launch |
| You are paying for clicks that land on a page and leave without enquiring | The landing page checklist |
Everything else in the section, including the content brief template and the UK statistics, is listed below with a short summary of what each page is for.
How to get the most from them
A checklist only pays off if you act on what it finds and can tell afterwards whether the change helped. Four habits make that possible.
- Set up the free Google accounts before you change anything. Google Search Console shows which of your pages Google has indexed and the searches they appear for. Google Analytics 4 shows what visitors do once they arrive. With both running first, you have a record of where you started.
- Fix what stops pages being found before polishing anything. A page Google cannot reach, or has been told not to index, will not rank however well it is written. That is why I always check access and indexing before looking at wording.
- Change one thing at a time and note the date. A spreadsheet with the date, the page and the change is enough. When your figures move a few weeks later, it tells you which change to keep and which to undo.
- Judge SEO over months and ads over enough clicks. Google can take days or weeks to recrawl a changed page, so a quiet first fortnight tells you very little. Ad changes show sooner, but a handful of clicks is too few to say one version beats another.
Tracking is the one area where UK law changes the steps. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) set the rules on cookies and similar technologies, UK GDPR applies to the personal data they collect, and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) publishes guidance on both. If you follow any step that adds Google Analytics, the Meta pixel or another tag, sort out consent at the same time. Afterwards, expect your reports to show fewer visits than really happened, because visitors who decline are not recorded in the same way.
When to bring in help
A guide is written for the usual case. It cannot see your site, your account history or your competitors, so treat each one as a way to understand the work and catch common faults, not as a diagnosis of your business. The site disclaimer sets out the limits of the guides and tools in full.
These are the points where I would stop working alone and get a second opinion:
- You have worked through the SEO audit checklist, fixed what it found, and important pages are still missing from Google weeks later.
- You are about to change platform or URL structure on a site that already brings in enquiries from search, where one missed redirect can lose a page that ranks.
- Your ad spend is rising and you cannot trace enquiries or sales back to it, which usually means conversion tracking is missing or counting the wrong action.
- You know what needs doing and simply do not have the hours to do it.
If one of those sounds familiar, send me your website for a free SEO audit. I will look at it myself and tell you what I would fix first, and you are free to do the work yourself afterwards.