🤓 New from Google and a 5-minute website win

Hi, happy Tuesday!

I’ll be honest – I scheduled last week’s email before Christmas (and spent last week feeling very smug with myself that I’d bothered to do that and had one less thing to do in the first week back). So that means this is the first time I’m really saying “Happy New Year”!

I hope January is going well for you so far? I personally really like January, because it’s long and slow. And because the rest of the year flies by so quickly, I’m just going to enjoy this month dragging on and on and on…

I’ve got a LOT of exciting things planned for 2026, including another complimentary Masterclass coming up very soon (you’ll be the first to get an invite).

And I started 2026 strong by getting a link back to our website, and a citation of my name, talking about ChatGPT, on a national UK newspaper’s website. If you’ve read my guide to getting found by AI, you’ll know how important getting cited in the press is. I got the link and citation by following the steps I’ve given you in this post here, so check that out if you want to do the same.

1 thing to know this week

Google are on the back foot against OpenAI (the makers of ChatGPT) so they’re letting everyone get in on their new AI shopping tool. If you sell products online, read this blog post, and get your products suggested to shoppers when Gemini is making it’s recommendations. At the moment it won’t cost you anything, so get in there and get some data about what it’s worth to your business before Google starts charging.

This week’s 5-minute win for your website

OK – this week let’s tackle a tiny change with a big payoff: your homepage headline.

Your headline is the #1 thing visitors read first when they get to your site, and clarity matters (it was actually one of my “Website rules for 2026“).

Open your website and look at your main headline – is it clear? Does it explain to customers who know nothing about you, enough about what you do? Or enough to make them want to read on? Does it sell you adequately? Does it do you / your business justice? Does it address your ideal customer?

Ask yourself: “Does this clearly say what I do and who I help?”

If it does, amazing, go and put the kettle on.

If it doesn’t, you might want to rewrite it using this simple template: I help [who] [achieve what] without [pain point].

I’ve just done it for our website and have emailed my suggestions to the rest of the team to see what they think. Currently our h1 is “Crafting digital excellence” – which I really like, but it’s very abstract and doesn’t “speak” to anyone. Our website is very well SEO’d, but at the time of writing the h1 I think we just got a bit too wrapped up in our rebrand – plus, it can be hard to encapsulate a lot in a few words.

The things we “do” best are code anything you need, and keep long lasting, happy client relationships.

We also are willing to “inherit” websites built by other people that are buggy and broken, and not all agencies will do that.

We’ll do it because we’re technically extremely capable, and we’ve met some of our loveliest clients that way – but we don’t want to shout about it too prominently because dealing with someone else’s broken code is hardly our favourite way to spend time.

So I’m thinking we should go with something more like (I drafted these with a bit of help from ChatGPT to make it quicker):

“Build, fix, or scale your website – with a team you can trust.”

Keep in mind your headline will be (or should be) your h1 tag and so is very important for SEO and telling Google what you do.

(Therefore also keep in mind if you’ve got someone doing your SEO, you’ll want to run your plans past them before you change your home page h1!)

For that reason, we might go with something more like:

“Build, fix, or scale your website – with a trusted web development team.”

Give it a go, and do email me your “before and after” as I’d love to see what you do!

Speak soon,

Lisa

Lisa Freeman

​https://www.instagram.com/talking.web

​https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisafreemanweb