(This is the 14/10/2025 issue of my newsletter – subscribe here)
Hey hey!
SEOs are brilliant at shouting about big numbers – percentage increases in traffic and clicks, revenue streams of massive e-commerce sites, keywords found in the rankings.
But if you’re a small business website owner, the numbers don’t have to be huge to make a difference.
A small increase in visits to your site (say, from 5 clicks from Google a day to 70 a day) can make all the difference.
Celebrate the small wins, even if the people you see on LinkedIn are shouting about the big ones.
Here’s a client who took advantage of my SEO Sprint offer – 4 hours of my time, half an hour of his, job done.
The wins might look small, but when they’re incremental, they make a massive difference to your bottom line. So go do something small to your website today.
What you’ll find inside
1 | Why one-off SEO fixes aren’t the devil the industry makes them out to be
2 | Real examples of small SEO changes that made measurable differences
3 | Your free SEO tip: fix your 404s
4 | What I’m working on this week
Let’s dig in, shall we?
Free on-page SEO healthcheck
One-off SEO fixes that don’t require selling your soul to a retainer
Look, I know what the SEO industry bangs on about. “SEO is a marathon, not a sprint!” “You need ongoing monthly work!” “It takes 6-12 months to see results!”
And yeah, that’s all true for comprehensive SEO strategies. But sometimes – and hear me out here – sometimes you just need someone to step in and sort out one specific mess that’s holding your site back.
Times are bloody hard right now. Small businesses are watching every penny, and committing to a long-term SEO contract can feel terrifying when you’re not sure what next month’s cashflow looks like.
But that doesn’t mean you should just accept that your website’s a technical disaster or that your on-page SEO is complete rubbish.
Things I’ve done as one-off projects that made real differences, and that you can do too:
- Edited meta titles and H1s on a site that had been redesigned and had all the SEO components removed. Traffic came back within weeks.
- Added alt tags to over 200 images on a photography site. Site health improved, image search began to work for them, and enquiries and bookings followed.
- Restructured 50 blog posts to have proper H1s and H2s instead of the formatting nightmare they’d become. Rankings improved across the board.
- Fixed internal linking for 50+ pages that had “click here” or “read this” as their anchor text. Google started understanding what those pages were actually about and sending them relevant visitors.
- Sorted 1,100 internal 301 redirects that were absolutely destroying crawl budget. Site speed improved, rankings followed, money was made.
- Set up Google Search Console and Analytics properly for businesses who’d been flying blind. Can’t improve what you can’t measure.
- Set up SEMrush for an e-commerce site so it made sense and did some good, rather than just being an expensive dashboard nobody understood.
None of these required ongoing monthly retainers. They were specific problems with specific solutions, and they got sorted in a few hours of focused work.
When one-off fixes make sense
One-off SEO work isn’t right for every situation. If your entire site needs rebuilding from the ground up, or you’re in a highly competitive industry that needs constant content and technical work, then yeah, you probably need ongoing support.
But if you’ve got a specific problem that’s holding you back, or you know something’s broken but can’t quite figure out what, a focused block of time might be exactly what you need.
That’s why I offer my SEO Sprint service – dedicated blocks of 4, 8, 12, or 16 hours to tackle specific SEO problems. Book one-off or monthly, whatever suits your business. And if you stick with me for 3+ months, I’ll knock 10% off because I’m not completely heartless.
Your free SEO tip
Check your 404s in Google Search Console – Sort by impressions, not just errors. Fix the ones people are trying to find first – high-traffic 404s and internal broken links matter most.
Ignore the random spam attempts at /wp-admin-totally-not-suspicious-or-trying-to-hack-me.php.
New 404s will keep popping up (it’s normal, not a sign your site’s falling apart), so check monthly rather than obsessing daily.
Here’s how to prioritise which ones need fixing: https://nikki-pilkington.com/why-fixing-404-errors-isnt-a-one-time-job-and-what-to-do-to-make-your-life-easier/
And while we’re on the subject of 404s, stop redirecting them all to your homepage. Google hates it, your visitors hate it, and it makes you look silly. Here’s why: https://nikki-pilkington.com/should-you-redirect-404s-to-your-homepage-google-says-no/
What am I working on this week?
Alongside my usual SEO retainers, I have some interesting new stuff too:
- I’m writing a case study about the brilliant results my auction house client is seeing from their SEO content rewrite.
- I’m restructuring my SEO packages to make them clearer (and more flexible) for small businesses who need help but don’t want to commit to anything terrifying.
- Technical and On-Page SEO work for a new project management app client.
- Landing pages done properly for an events management company
Need help with any of the above? You know where to find me.
That’s it for now,
Always non-wanky, Nx
P.S. Seriously, celebrate those small wins. Going from 5 clicks a day to 70 might not sound impressive to someone managing enterprise websites, but if those 70 clicks bring you 3-4 quality enquiries, that’s bloody brilliant. Don’t let LinkedIn make you feel like your success doesn’t count.
