https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog Plain-English notes on getting found on Google and by the AI assistants, by Morgan Loughton, Forest Row. en-GB Tue, 27 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/platform-or-built-for-you https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/platform-or-built-for-you Tue, 27 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT Building the thing Choose by what the site has to do and by who is going to change it. For most small businesses a site built from scratch is now both the cheapest and the quickest. Go to Wix when you genuinely want to rearrange pages yourself, and to Shopify when the shop is big or complicated enough to need it. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/google-ai-summary-old-pages https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/google-ai-summary-old-pages Mon, 19 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT Getting found If Google starts summarising your business in its own words, it will use whatever your website says, including pages you forgot about years ago. Spend an hour finding every page with old services, old prices, old hours or an old area, and either update it or take it down. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/website-builders-got-more-expensive https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/website-builders-got-more-expensive Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT Running a small business Shopify raised its main plans by an average of 33% in 2023, and in 2025 Wix moved people onto plans costing up to 61% more. Wix also lists its prices without VAT. On Wix Core or Squarespace Core, building a site yourself now costs more over five years than having one built here. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/noindex-hiding-a-website https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/noindex-hiding-a-website Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:00:00 GMT Getting found Search your own site’s code for "noindex". If it appears, Google has been instructed to leave every page out of search. It is usually left switched on by accident after a site is built behind a holding page. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/four-years-of-invoices https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/four-years-of-invoices Tue, 29 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT Running a small business Across four years the median invoice is about £51 and only one has ever exceeded £950. More than half the revenue comes from small monthly amounts from long standing clients. The steady work pays the bills and the large projects are the exception. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/what-400-buys https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/what-400-buys Fri, 25 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT Building the thing At £400 you are buying a small, hand built site where the money goes on writing, structure and being findable rather than on bespoke design. It is the right answer for most small businesses and the wrong one if you need a system rather than a website. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/google-business-profile-half-empty https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/google-business-profile-half-empty Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT Getting found Complete every field on your Google Business Profile: all applicable categories, every service with a description, real hours including bank holidays, your service area, and your own photographs. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and for local search it usually matters more than the website. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/page-one-no-calls https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/page-one-no-calls Fri, 18 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT Getting found Check your click through rate in Search Console. High impressions with few clicks is a wording problem, not a ranking problem, and rewriting the title and description of a handful of pages usually fixes it in weeks rather than months. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/named-by-chatgpt https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/named-by-chatgpt Tue, 15 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT Getting found AI assistants read structured data, your Google Business Profile and plain factual text. Put your services, area, prices and hours in machine readable form on your own site, keep your Google listing complete, and write pages that answer questions directly. https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/161-broken-pages https://www.ferriscreative.co.uk/blog/161-broken-pages Tue, 08 Sep 2026 08:00:00 GMT Getting found When a website is rebuilt, every old address that is not pointed at a new one becomes a dead end, and the rankings attached to it are lost. Check Search Console for pages with impressions and no clicks, then redirect each one to its closest living equivalent.