Week of 9/23/26

AI has made it incredibly easy to add custom code to a website. Describe what you want, paste in the code, and suddenly you have a new section or feature.

The problem can come later. We’re starting to see small business websites where AI-generated changes work in the moment but make the site harder to maintain. Content gets hard-coded, theme settings stop controlling things, and simple updates become more complicated for the next person who has to work on the site.

We use AI all the time, and it can be incredibly useful. But it still helps to understand the fundamentals of the platform you’re working in. Before adding custom code, it’s worth checking whether the platform already has a simpler way to do what you need. ●

Week of 9/16/26

We’ll often hear, “I want to talk about SEO,” or “I need help with Google Analytics.” Those are useful tools, but they are usually only one part of the bigger question: how visible is your business on Google?

That can include your website, Google Business Profile, search results, reviews, paid ads, product listings, and whether your tracking is actually telling you anything useful.

A practical place to start is to look at where your business is showing up on Google, where it isn’t visibile, and what you can improve upon. ●

Week of 9/9/26

We’ve had a few conversations lately with business owners who are feeling frustrated with where things are. Sales are slower than they hoped, marketing doesn’t seem to be working, or the business just isn’t where they thought it would be by now.

It’s easy to focus on what isn’t working and lose sight of what is still there. These are people who know their businesses, have developed real skills, and are doing good work for their clients and customers. When you start feeling this way, it can help to keep moving forward one step at a time. Make a list of things you can do, talk to peers or mentors, or get an outside perspective when you need one. Sometimes that is enough to help you reset and find some momentum again. ●

Week of 9/2/26

Google Ads can be hard to understand from the outside. We hear that from clients who know they probably need it for their business, but the account itself feels confusing, frustrating, or too easy to mess up.

For some, the hesitation comes from bad advice they received before. For others, it is the cost or commitment of hiring a full agency. In this case, the client had stopped working on it, even though they knew it still mattered, and later said they could not have done it without help.

That is a good reminder that support does not always have to mean handing everything over. Sometimes a little guidance, a second set of eyes, or a steady co-pilot is enough to keep the work moving without draining the budget. ●

Week of 8/26/26

Lately, almost every platform we work in has an AI suggestion. QuickBooks wants to help categorize transactions. Google wants to automate bidding. Squarespace wants to rewrite metadata. The list keeps growing.

Some of those suggestions are useful. Some conflict with what another platform recommends. Some are just wrong for the specific business or situation. AI can be a helpful tool, but it still needs context, and it does not always understand the consequences of the change it is recommending.

Use the suggestion as a starting point, not an instruction. Before you click accept, understand what is changing, why it is being recommended, and whether it actually makes sense for what you are trying to accomplish. ●

Week of 8/19/26

There is an old saying: when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

That comes up a lot with websites. If the person giving advice is a WordPress developer, the answer may be WordPress. If they build in another platform, that platform may start to look like the obvious fix. That does not mean the advice is bad, but it may be shaped by the tools they know best.

Before rebuilding or changing platforms, it helps to get a more objective look at what is actually wrong. Sometimes the issue is the platform. Sometimes it is the strategy, structure, content, images, SEO, or maintenance. ●

Week of 8/12/26

Selling on multiple channels can look simple from the outside. List the same products on Shopify, Etsy, Faire, or another marketplace and reach more customers.

In practice, each platform has its own description requirements, product fields, categories, image standards, and data structure. Information that works well on one channel may need to be rewritten or reorganized for another.

Multichannel selling is not just adding more places to sell. It also means maintaining multiple versions of the same product information. ●

Week of 8/5/26

Vendor offboarding is not that different from employee offboarding. When the relationship ends, access should be reviewed and removed from websites, social media, email platforms, advertising accounts, analytics, payment systems, and other business tools.

Without a clear process, old vendors and former employees can remain connected for years. Then leadership changes, passwords are lost, recovery emails belong to people who are gone, and the next person has to untangle accounts created several transitions ago.

Good offboarding starts with knowing what accounts exist, who owns them, and who currently has access. ●

Week of 7/29/26

Selling platforms can make it easier to list products, process orders, or handle fulfillment. They provide useful infrastructure without requiring a business to build everything from scratch.

The tradeoff is that you are working inside someone else’s system. You may have limited control over the layout, customer experience, analytics, and search data. It can also be harder to set up accurate conversion tracking for Google Ads when the sale happens on a third-party platform.

A platform can be an important sales channel. It is still different from owning the place where the customer experience and data come together. ●

Week of 7/22/26

Owning your website and digital accounts does not mean doing all the work yourself. Vendors, agencies, and employees may need broad access to manage the website, run advertising, or review analytics. The business should still remain the permanent point of control.

It is worth reviewing that access periodically. Remove people who no longer need it, confirm that recovery information belongs to the business, and make sure more than one trusted person knows where the accounts are located.

Ownership stays with the business. Access changes as the work changes. ●

Week of 7/15/26

Business owners are sometimes asked when they want to sell their company. A common answer is five years.

A year later, the answer is often still five years.

A five-year goal only means something if it changes the work being done today. Clear financials, documented systems, stronger management, and less dependence on the owner all take time to build. The future of the business is shaped by what gets worked on now. ●

Week of 7/8/26

We ran into another account access situation recently. A client invested a significant amount in a new website, only to discover they didn't have access to the platform. Now they're being asked to pay a substantial monthly fee, but it isn't clear what they're paying for. Hosting? Maintenance? Something else?

If you're investing in a new website, ask a few questions before the project begins. What platform is it being built on? Who owns the domain? Who will have the primary login? What happens if you decide to work with someone else? The answers should be clear before any work starts.

Read our blog and download the website ownership checklist. ●

Week of 7/1/26

We talked with two service businesses recently, almost back to back. One was leaving Wix for Squarespace and the other was leaving Squarespace for Wix.

It made us wonder how often the platform gets blamed when the real issues may be somewhere else. The SEO, page layout, images, calls to action, mobile experience, or basic site function may need work, but that does not always mean the whole site needs to move.

Sometimes a new platform is the right decision. Other times, the better first step is to look closely at what is already there and see what can be improved before rebuilding everything. ●

Week of 6/24/26

We saw another paid search issue this week where the campaigns were working against each other.

The same keywords were showing up in multiple campaigns at the same time, including the brand name. That can create confusion inside the account. Instead of having a clear structure, the campaigns may end up competing for the same searches, which can push costs up and make performance harder to read.

A Google Ads account should make it easier to understand what is driving results, not harder. When campaigns overlap too much, the first step is usually cleaning up the structure before making bigger decisions. ●

Week of 6/17/26

We still see unsolicited sales calls come in around website services, SEO, ads, and other marketing work. Some are normal prospecting. Others make big promises before they understand the business, the market, or what is already in place.

Be especially cautious when someone offers to “grow the business” in exchange for a commission split. That kind of arrangement can sound simple, but it often skips over the harder questions: who controls the work, how results are tracked, what happens to leads, and whether the plan actually fits the business. If the wrong person gets access or starts making poor decisions, the damage can be difficult to recover from.

If you need help with SEO, ads, your website, or another service, it is usually better to start the search yourself. Talk to a few companies, ask clear questions, and make sure the approach makes sense before giving anyone access or control. ●

Week of 6/10/26

Another Google Ads observation this week. We see a lot of different issues with paid search, and one of the simplest ones is easy to overlook.

Google Ads is often talked about in terms of budgets, bids, and settings. Those things matter, but they are not what a customer sees first. A search ad still has to earn the click, and that usually starts with making the right keywords visible in the ad copy.

If someone searches for a specific service, product, or problem, the ad should make it clear that the business is relevant to that search. Good ad copy does not need to be clever or lead with broad claims like satisfaction guaranteed. It needs to be clear, specific, and connected to what the customer is already looking for. ●

Week of 6/3/26

We’ve seen Google Ads accounts where the first move is to turn on every automation and accept whatever recommendations Google puts in front of the advertiser.

That should raise a flag. Automation can be useful, but it still needs context. A good Google Ads conversation should include questions about goals, average order value, revenue, margins, daily budget, conversion tracking, and what actually counts as a good lead or sale.

If someone is only clicking through recommendations without asking how the business works, that is not strategy. It is account management without enough information. ●

Week of 5/27/26

People often say, “I need SEO,” when they are really talking about a broader marketing problem. They might mean their website is not converting, their Google Business Profile is weak, they need leads faster, or they are not showing up in the places customers are searching.

SEO has become a catch-all word. People use it the way some people say Coke for soda or Kleenex for tissue. But SEO is only one part of a digital marketing strategy. Organic search, paid ads, local visibility, website content, and tracking are related, but they are not the same thing.

Each area has its own requirements. Hiring an SEO company may help with one part of the problem, but it may miss other pieces that affect whether people can find you, trust you, and contact you. ●

Week of 5/20/26

A common pattern we see is a business owner trying to manage Google Ads on their own. Sometimes they have enough knowledge to get started, but not enough time to keep checking the account, questioning the recommendations, or knowing which changes are worth making.

The harder cases are the accounts that have been left on autopilot. A few broad recommendations get applied, automation takes over, and the spend keeps moving without much thought behind it. That does not always mean the account is broken, but it usually means someone needs to slow down and look at what is actually happening.

You do not always need a full agency setup and management. For many small business owners, a few hours of practical advice can help bring clarity to your Google Ads account and spend. From there, you can make the decision to manage yourself with guidance or hand it off to an expert. ●

Week of 5/13/26

We ran into another passwords and access situation recently. A client needed website changes made, but didn’t have access to their own website, hosting account, or domain login information. Everything had been set up through a third party years earlier, and turns out they never had the credentials in their possession.

Fortunately, we were able to recover everything and get the accounts back under the client’s control. But situations like this can become catastrophic if the wrong person controls your core digital assets and suddenly becomes unreachable.

Your website, domain, hosting, analytics, and business profiles should ultimately belong to you. We’ve talked about this before, but want to really emphasize the point that vendors and employees can be given access, but ownership and primary control should stay with the business. ●