The advice I give clients, free.

Before you build anything: the 10-minute checklist

Most website projects go sideways before a single pixel is drawn, because nobody answered these questions first:

1. What is the one action a visitor should take? Call you, book online, buy, request a quote. Pick one. Everything on the homepage should push toward it.
2. Who is the visitor? "Everyone" is not an answer. A site for busy homeowners reads differently than one for procurement managers.
3. Why you, in one sentence? If you can't say it, your website can't either. "Family-run, same-week installs, 200+ local reviews" beats three paragraphs of mission statement.
4. What proof do you have? Reviews, photos of real work, recognizable client names, years in business. Proof converts; adjectives don't.
5. Who owns your domain and hosting? Check right now. If a past developer registered it under their account, fixing that is job one.

Tools that are actually worth your time

You don't need a 40-item toollist. These cover 95% of what a small business needs:

• Google Business Profile — the highest-ROI free marketing asset for any local business. Claim it, fill in every field, add photos monthly, answer every review.
• Google Search Console — free, shows exactly what searches bring people to your site and which pages Google has indexed. If your site isn't in it, you're flying blind.
• PageSpeed Insights — paste your URL, get a speed score. Under 70 on mobile means you're losing visitors before the page loads.
• Canva — fine for quick social posts. Not fine for your logo or brand identity (that's how you end up looking like three competitors).
• A password manager — your domain, hosting and email logins are business assets. Treat them like the keys to the building.

AI tools: what's real and what's hype

AI genuinely changed what small budgets can buy, but the output quality depends entirely on the judgment of the person driving. The honest summary:

• Great for: first drafts of copy, generating custom imagery instead of stock photos, resizing/cleaning images, answering routine customer questions on your site, summarizing reviews and feedback.
• Risky without oversight: publishing AI text verbatim (it drifts generic fast, and search engines reward content with real experience behind it), legal/medical/financial claims, anything involving your prices or guarantees.
• The tell: if your website copy could be pasted onto a competitor's site without anyone noticing, it isn't doing its job, AI-written or not.

Local SEO in five moves

For local businesses, ranking is less mysterious than the industry pretends:

1. Complete your Google Business Profile and keep it active (posts, photos, Q&A).
2. Get reviews consistently — a steady trickle beats a one-time burst. Reply to all of them.
3. Make sure your name, address and phone number are identical everywhere they appear online.
4. Have a page on your site for each main service and each main area you serve — written for humans, not stuffed with keywords.
5. Be patient. Local SEO compounds over months, not days. Anyone promising "#1 in 30 days" is selling you something.

Plain-English glossary

• Domain — your address on the internet (wheatdigital.com). Renewed yearly. Always register it under your own account.
• Hosting — the computer your website files live on. You rent it monthly or yearly.
• SSL — the padlock in the browser bar. Non-negotiable; browsers shame sites without it.
• SEO — making your site easy for search engines to understand and worth ranking. Mostly: clear structure, fast pages, content that genuinely answers what people search for.
• Conversion — a visitor doing the thing you wanted (calling, booking, buying). The only metric that pays the bills.
• Responsive design — the site rearranging itself to look right on phones. Over half your visitors are on one.
• CMS — software (like WordPress) that lets you edit your own content without touching code.

Want a second opinion?

If you have a website and you're not sure why it isn't pulling its weight, send me the link. I'll give you an honest read on what's working and what isn't. Free, no strings. Get in touch here.