Hey hey!

Oh, it’s been a week!

Some of you know my amazing daughter Leigh has been pregnant with my second grandchild – well, with typical Leigh drama, she was rushed into hospital last Thursday and baby Remi arrived in a flurry of a ten strong team of doctors, an emergency c-section, and a whole lot of worry as she was whisked off to Special Care.

(This is the 25/11/2025 issue of my newsletter – subscribe here)

I’m delighted to say that Mum and baby are both on the mend, but it was a worrying few days for everyone. Add in to that my first granddaughter, Raya, who is a typically inquisitive and boisterous 3 year old, a Nanny (me!) who thought she was quite a young grandparent but realises most days she’s not, and a transfer to a more specialist hospital over an hour away – and the usual client workload with one person down – suffice to say, I’m exhausted!

Thank you to everyone who sent good wishes. Thank you to my clients who have been very understanding of my 3am emails. And thank you to the very special friends among you (you know who you are!) for holding my hand, listening to my worries and rants, and generally being all-round angels.

What you’ll find inside

1 | The questions clients are asking that you’re not answering

2 | For copywriters: Why those SEO questions are an opportunity

3 | Your free SEO tip: Check your backlinks aren’t broken

4 | What I’m working on this week

Let’s dig in, shall we?

Thoughts this week: Pay attention to what clients keep asking for

I’ve written a whole blog post about this because I think it’s important – those questions prospects keep asking that you brush off with “sorry, I don’t offer that” are actually showing you exactly what people need.

Whether it’s my VA Erin Erin Buck learning video editing because I kept asking, or me adding copywriting to my SEO services because clients kept asking me to write the content I was saying they needed – these repeated questions aren’t annoying, they’re opportunities.

It’s not a huge post, but I felt it needed to be a blog post, not just a newsletter item – go have a read and see what you might be missing to make more money in your business.

And for copywriters specifically:

If clients keep asking “can you help with SEO?” that’s not them being awkward. They’re telling you they’d rather pay one person who can write AND optimise than juggle two people who might contradict each other.

That’s exactly why I created Ascend – a 6-month programme for copywriters who want to add proper SEO services and land ongoing retainer work.

Programme starts 12th January. Applications close 12th December. SEO Mentoring for Copywriters – Ascend is this way.

Your free SEO tip – Check your backlinks aren’t broken

When other websites link to you, that can be good for SEO, and can send you extra traffic. But only if those links actually work.

Use Ahrefs’ free backlink checker (https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker) to see if your backlinks are working for you.

Look at what pages people are linking to.

Check for:

Links pointing to pages that no longer exist (404 errors)
Links to old URLs that redirect somewhere else
Outdated business information in the link text
Links to a blog post when they should really link to your service page

Worth checking because:

If someone clicks a link to your site and gets a 404, you’ve lost that visitor. And you’re losing any SEO benefit (the dreaded “link juice” – horrible term but accurate) from that backlink.

How to fix it:

If it’s your page that’s broken: set up a proper 301 redirect to the correct page. Your web developer can do this, or if you’re on WordPress there are plugins that help. Contact the site owner and ask them to link to the proper URL, not the redirect (the redirect is there as a short term fix).

If it’s their link that’s wrong: contact them politely and ask them to update it. Give them the correct URL to use. Most people are happy to fix it – they don’t want broken links on their site either.

If you’ve changed business information: reach out and ask them to update the outdated details.

This is one of those boring maintenance tasks that nobody thinks about, but it’s free traffic and SEO benefit you’re currently losing.

Worth 30 minutes to check and fix, I reckon.

What am I working on this week?

Because work doesn’t stop, even for a new baby:

Client retainers (mostly done at odd hours between hospital visits)
Keyword research for a B2B company expanding into a new service area
Local SEO cleanup for a business with three different addresses across the internet
Ascend discovery calls with some brilliant copywriters
Trying to remember what sleep feels like

Need help with any of the above? You know where I am.

That’s it for this week,

Always non-wanky,

P.S. In the time it took to put this newsletter together, we’ve found out that Leigh and Remi are being sent back to our local hospital as she is doing so well, and she could be home in the next couple of weeks – so I’m stoked!