Articles

SEO & GEO

Practical writing on SEO, Generative Engine Optimisation and AI-powered search: what is changing, what it means and what to do about it.

Topic All articles Coaching & Strategy Graphic Design SEO & GEO Web Design & Development WordPress

Should I Learn SEO?

Should I learn SEO? It is a question people ask from very different starting points. A small business owner wondering whether to handle their own search visibility. A marketing professional considering whether to add SEO to their skill set—a career changer exploring whether SEO is worth pursuing as a specialism. A developer wanting to understand […]

21 July 2026 · 10 min read

Can SEO Be Replaced by AI?

Can SEO be replaced by AI? Where the previous articles in this series asked whether SEO is dead and whether it will eventually be replaced, this article addresses the more precise technical question: can AI actually do what SEO does, and if so, which parts? The distinction matters because the answer is not a simple […]

17 July 2026 · 9 min read

Will AI replace SEO?

Will AI replace SEO? It is a question being asked with increasing urgency across the industry, and the honest answer requires separating two things that are often conflated: whether AI is changing how search works, and whether AI is making the discipline of search optimisation obsolete. The first is clearly true. AI has already significantly […]

15 July 2026 · 9 min read

Why SEO Is Dead

“Why SEO is dead” is one of the most-searched phrases in the entire SEO industry. It has been searched for, written about, debated, and dismissed every year for the better part of two decades. And every year, without exception, SEO has remained a significant, measurable driver of traffic and business for organisations that take it […]

13 July 2026 · 10 min read

Should Your SEO Title and H1 Match?

It is a question that comes up regularly among business owners and developers working on SEO: should the title tag and the H1 heading on a page be the same, or should they differ? The answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no, and understanding the reasoning behind it will help you make […]

6 July 2026 · 10 min read

Image Optimisation Explained: Why Your Photos Could Be Slowing You Down

Images are almost always the largest files on a webpage. A single unoptimised photograph uploaded straight from a camera or phone can be several megabytes in size, which means it takes far longer to download than everything else on the page combined. Most visitors never notice this consciously. They simply experience the page as slow, […]

6 July 2026 · 10 min read

Can I Do SEO on My Own?

Can I do SEO on my own? Yes, more of it than most people assume, and with better results than most people expect, provided you approach it in the right order with the right tools and realistic expectations about where the limits are. This article is a practical guide, not an evaluative one. It does […]

3 July 2026 · 13 min read

Are SEO Services Worth It?

Are SEO services worth it? It is a fair question, and one that deserves a straight answer rather than the carefully worded non-answer most SEO providers give when asked directly. The honest answer is: it depends. But not in a vague or evasive way. It depends on specific, identifiable things that you can evaluate for […]

2 July 2026 · 7 min read

Google Lighthouse Explained: What It Is, What It Measures and How to Use It

If you have worked through the audit checklist on this blog, you will have come across references to Google PageSpeed Insights and performance scores throughout. Both are built on the same underlying tool: Google Lighthouse. Lighthouse is one of the most useful, freely available tools for understanding how well a website is genuinely performing, not […]

1 July 2026 · 9 min read

Is Your Website Doing Enough? A Plain-English Audit Checklist for Small Businesses

Most small business websites do some things well and others not at all. The difficulty is that the gaps are rarely obvious from a simple look at the site. A website can appear perfectly reasonable, load without errors and contain accurate information, while quietly underperforming in ways that are costing the business real enquiries and […]

30 June 2026 · 8 min read

Why Small and Medium Businesses Actually Have an Advantage in AI Search

There is a common assumption that AI search visibility, like most things digital, is primarily a game for larger businesses with larger budgets. That the businesses best placed to be cited by Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and ChatGPT Search are those with the largest content teams, the most backlinks and the strongest domain authority. That […]

24 June 2026 · 8 min read

What a Perfect 100/100 Core Web Vitals Score Actually Means (and How I Achieved It on My Own Site)

I recently achieved a 100/100 Google Core Web Vitals score on markexcell.co.uk on both mobile and desktop. I am sharing this not simply as a boast, but because a perfect score across both is genuinely uncommon, and because the process of getting there illustrates exactly the kind of technical and design thinking covered in the […]

22 June 2026 · 7 min read

Does Good Web Design Actually Help Your SEO and GEO? The Technical Foundations That Matter

It is easy to think of design and search strategy as two separate jobs handled by two separate people. One makes the website look good, the other makes it findable. In practice, that division does not really hold up, because a large part of what makes a website findable, both to traditional search engines and […]

19 June 2026 · 7 min read

How to Optimise Your Website for AI Answer Engines: A Practical Checklist

Understanding what Generative Engine Optimisation is and why it matters is one thing. Knowing exactly what to change on your own website is another. This article moves from theory to practice, with a clear, actionable checklist you can work through regardless of your business’s size or type. None of this requires a complete rebuild of […]

18 June 2026 · 7 min read

SEO vs GEO: What’s the Difference, and Do You Need Both?

If you read our last article on Generative Engine Optimisation, you may be left with a fair question. Where does GEO leave traditional SEO? Is one replacing the other, do they compete for the same budget, or do they need to sit side by side? This article answers that directly. We will look at what […]

17 June 2026 · 6 min read

What is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Why Does It Matter for Your Business?

Search has changed. Not gradually, and not in a way that gives businesses much time to adjust. AI-powered answer engines are now a significant part of how people find information online, and the rules for getting found have shifted in ways that traditional SEO simply does not account for. Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is […]

16 June 2026 · 9 min read