https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/ Daily articles on websites, hosting, maintenance, and growing a business online. en-us Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/fonts-are-probably-slowing-down-your-site/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/fonts-are-probably-slowing-down-your-site/ Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Performance Typography is worth investing in and web fonts are one of the most common causes of slow first renders. Both things are true. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/webflow-for-marketing-teams-what-it-solves/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/webflow-for-marketing-teams-what-it-solves/ Mon, 14 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Platforms Webflow sits between a page builder and hand-written code. That position suits some teams exactly and frustrates others. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/retargeting-basics-and-what-the-pixel-actually-does/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/retargeting-basics-and-what-the-pixel-actually-does/ Sun, 13 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Marketing Retargeting is the cheapest paid advertising most businesses can run, and the easiest to run badly enough to irritate people. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/chatbots-helpful-or-harmful-on-a-small-business-site/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/chatbots-helpful-or-harmful-on-a-small-business-site/ Sat, 12 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI A chat widget can capture leads you would otherwise lose or annoy visitors into leaving. Which one it does comes down to a few settings. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/how-to-read-a-traffic-drop-without-panicking/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/how-to-read-a-traffic-drop-without-panicking/ Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Analytics Most alarming traffic declines are seasonality, a tracking bug, or one page. Work through the causes in order before rewriting anything. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/trust-signals-that-belong-above-the-fold/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/trust-signals-that-belong-above-the-fold/ Thu, 10 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Conversion A first-time visitor is deciding whether you are real before they decide whether you are good. A few specific elements answer that quickly. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/response-times-and-what-a-website-sla-actually-means/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/response-times-and-what-a-website-sla-actually-means/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Support Uptime percentages and response guarantees sound precise and often are not. Here is how to read the terms before you need them. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/getting-your-store-ready-for-holiday-traffic-spikes/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/getting-your-store-ready-for-holiday-traffic-spikes/ Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Ecommerce A traffic spike exposes every weakness at once. September is when you find them; November is when they cost you orders. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/keyword-research-on-a-small-budget/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/keyword-research-on-a-small-budget/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT SEO You can find the terms worth writing for using free tools and an hour, as long as you look for commercial intent instead of search volume. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/white-space-and-the-fear-of-an-empty-page/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/white-space-and-the-fear-of-an-empty-page/ Sun, 06 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Design Cramming more onto a page feels productive and reads as noise. Space is what tells a visitor where to look. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/staging-sites-what-they-are-for-and-when-to-use-one/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/staging-sites-what-they-are-for-and-when-to-use-one/ Sat, 05 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Hosting A staging site is a copy of your live site where mistakes are free. Most hosts include one, and most owners have never opened it. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/an-editorial-calendar-that-survives-busy-season/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/an-editorial-calendar-that-survives-busy-season/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Content Publishing stops the week work gets hard, which is exactly when it should not. The fix is structural: write ahead and lower the bar for maintenance. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/phishing-emails-that-target-website-owners/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/phishing-emails-that-target-website-owners/ Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Security Domain scams, fake copyright notices, and forged host alerts all rely on urgency. Knowing the five common formats makes them obvious. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-fall-audit-forms-emails-and-phone-numbers/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-fall-audit-forms-emails-and-phone-numbers/ Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Maintenance The most expensive website failures are silent ones, where the site looks fine and the leads never arrive. Three checks find nearly all of them. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/a-q4-website-timeline-that-starts-in-september/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/a-q4-website-timeline-that-starts-in-september/ Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT Business Everything you want live in November has to be decided in September. Here is the week-by-week order that keeps the fourth quarter calm. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/schema-markup-worth-adding-to-a-small-business-site/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/schema-markup-worth-adding-to-a-small-business-site/ Mon, 31 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT SEO Structured data is a small, boring investment that makes your pages easier for machines to read. Four types cover almost every small business. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/testimonials-that-actually-persuade/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/testimonials-that-actually-persuade/ Sun, 30 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Conversion Five-star quotes saying "great service" persuade nobody. Specific ones that name the doubt they overcame do most of your selling. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/website-builders-and-the-lock-in-question/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/website-builders-and-the-lock-in-question/ Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Platforms Every platform locks you in to some degree. What matters is which parts you could take with you if you had to leave tomorrow. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/planning-your-website-work-for-the-fourth-quarter/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/planning-your-website-work-for-the-fourth-quarter/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Business Q4 changes what your website is for. Deciding in August what you will and will not touch prevents the November scramble. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/core-web-vitals-in-plain-english/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/core-web-vitals-in-plain-english/ Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Performance Three metrics, three plain questions: how fast did it appear, does it respond, and does it hold still. Here is what fails each one. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/what-direct-traffic-is-hiding-in-your-analytics/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/what-direct-traffic-is-hiding-in-your-analytics/ Wed, 26 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Analytics A large direct traffic number rarely means people typed your URL. It usually means measurement is failing somewhere you can fix. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/ai-answers-are-changing-how-people-find-your-site/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/ai-answers-are-changing-how-people-find-your-site/ Tue, 25 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI When an assistant answers the question instead of listing links, some of your traffic disappears and some of it gets better. Here is how to adapt without panicking. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/landing-pages-for-ad-campaigns-stop-sending-traffic-to-the-homepage/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/landing-pages-for-ad-campaigns-stop-sending-traffic-to-the-homepage/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Marketing Paid traffic pointed at a homepage converts poorly because the homepage has to serve everyone. A campaign page only has to serve one person. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/product-photos-and-page-speed-getting-both/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/product-photos-and-page-speed-getting-both/ Sun, 23 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Ecommerce Shoppers want to zoom in on every detail and they also leave slow pages. Those goals conflict less than most stores assume. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/broken-links-redirects-and-404-hygiene/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/broken-links-redirects-and-404-hygiene/ Sat, 22 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Maintenance Broken links accumulate quietly with every edit and deletion. Cleaning them up is straightforward and recovers traffic you already paid for. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/your-site-is-down-what-to-do-in-the-first-fifteen-minutes/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/your-site-is-down-what-to-do-in-the-first-fifteen-minutes/ Fri, 21 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Support Outages get long when people act randomly. A short, ordered checklist keeps the response calm and usually finds the cause inside ten minutes. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/mobile-navigation-patterns-that-actually-work/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/mobile-navigation-patterns-that-actually-work/ Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Design The hamburger menu is fine. What is not fine is putting everything inside it and hoping visitors go looking. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/refreshing-old-posts-often-beats-writing-new-ones/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/refreshing-old-posts-often-beats-writing-new-ones/ Wed, 19 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Content An article ranking at position 11 is worth more attention than a new post starting from nothing. Updating is faster, cheaper, and more reliable. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-admin-account-audit-you-should-do-quarterly/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-admin-account-audit-you-should-do-quarterly/ Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Security Most sites accumulate administrator accounts and never remove them. Every extra one is a door you are not watching. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/local-seo-checklist-for-a-multi-location-business/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/local-seo-checklist-for-a-multi-location-business/ Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT SEO Two locations are more than twice the work of one, because everything that can be inconsistent now is. Here is the structure that holds up. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/website-budgets-what-it-costs-to-build-versus-run/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/website-budgets-what-it-costs-to-build-versus-run/ Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Business Businesses budget for the build and forget the run, which is why so many sites are two years old and falling apart. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/cdns-explained-for-people-who-do-not-care-about-cdns/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/cdns-explained-for-people-who-do-not-care-about-cdns/ Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Hosting A content delivery network is a simple idea buried in jargon. Whether you need one depends on where your visitors are and what your site does. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/pricing-pages-show-the-number/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/pricing-pages-show-the-number/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Conversion Hiding your prices does not protect you from competitors. It filters out the buyers who were ready and keeps the ones who want to negotiate. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/should-a-non-ecommerce-business-use-shopify/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/should-a-non-ecommerce-business-use-shopify/ Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Platforms Shopify is excellent at selling and mediocre at everything else. That trade is worth it for some service businesses and wrong for most. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/set-up-conversion-tracking-without-a-developer/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/set-up-conversion-tracking-without-a-developer/ Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Analytics Most small business sites measure traffic and not outcomes. Tracking the three actions that matter takes an afternoon and no code. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/plugin-updates-automatic-manual-or-staged/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/plugin-updates-automatic-manual-or-staged/ Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Maintenance Auto-updates prevent one kind of disaster and cause another. The right policy is different for security patches, minor releases, and major versions. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/use-ai-to-draft-not-to-publish/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/use-ai-to-draft-not-to-publish/ Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT AI The gap between an AI draft and a publishable page is small, specific, and entirely made of things only you know about your business. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/an-email-list-beats-a-social-following-for-most-businesses/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/an-email-list-beats-a-social-following-for-most-businesses/ Sun, 09 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Marketing You rent your social audience and you own your email list. That distinction decides more marketing outcomes than any content strategy. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/shipping-and-tax-surprises-at-checkout/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/shipping-and-tax-surprises-at-checkout/ Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Ecommerce The cost that appears at the last step is the leading cause of abandoned carts. Fixing it is a merchandising decision more than a technical one. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/image-weight-is-still-the-number-one-speed-problem/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/image-weight-is-still-the-number-one-speed-problem/ Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Performance After a decade of better tooling, oversized images remain the most common reason small business pages are slow, and the easiest thing to fix. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/writing-service-pages-that-rank-and-convert/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/writing-service-pages-that-rank-and-convert/ Thu, 06 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Content A service page has two audiences with different needs. Structuring it for both is a solved problem, and most pages solve for neither. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/what-to-send-your-web-team-so-a-fix-takes-minutes/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/what-to-send-your-web-team-so-a-fix-takes-minutes/ Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Support Most support delays are not technical. They are round trips spent establishing what you saw, where you saw it, and what you expected instead. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/stock-photos-versus-real-photos-on-a-business-website/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/stock-photos-versus-real-photos-on-a-business-website/ Tue, 04 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Design Stock photography is not the enemy. Using it where visitors expect proof of your actual work is, and the fix costs one afternoon with a phone. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/ssl-certificates-expiry-and-why-the-padlock-matters/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/ssl-certificates-expiry-and-why-the-padlock-matters/ Mon, 03 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Security An expired certificate turns your website into a full-page browser warning. Here is how renewal actually works and why it silently fails. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/internal-links-are-the-cheapest-seo-you-are-not-doing/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/internal-links-are-the-cheapest-seo-you-are-not-doing/ Sun, 02 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT SEO You control every internal link on your site, they cost nothing, and most small business sites have almost none outside the navigation. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-first-monday-website-review-ritual/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-first-monday-website-review-ritual/ Sat, 01 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT Business A website only improves when someone looks at it on purpose. Here is a 30-minute monthly review that fits between other work and actually changes decisions. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-mid-year-website-chores-nobody-does/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/the-mid-year-website-chores-nobody-does/ Fri, 31 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Maintenance Half the year is gone. These are the maintenance items that never make it onto a to-do list and cause the most trouble in the back half. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/migrating-platforms-without-losing-your-rankings/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/migrating-platforms-without-losing-your-rankings/ Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Platforms Most traffic lost in a redesign is lost to broken URLs, not to design. The mapping work is unglamorous and it is the entire job. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/how-to-hand-off-a-website-when-an-employee-leaves/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/how-to-hand-off-a-website-when-an-employee-leaves/ Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Business The person who ran your website is leaving. Here is the checklist that keeps the site, the domain, and the email working after their last day. https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/make-your-phone-number-the-easiest-thing-on-the-page/ https://awesomewebsiteguys.com/blog/make-your-phone-number-the-easiest-thing-on-the-page/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT Conversion For service businesses, the phone is still the highest-intent conversion. Most sites bury it, break it on mobile, or never measure it.