SF Digital Studios

Last quarter we ran a structural audit on 50 small local service businesses across the UK. Plumbers, electricians, accountants, dental practices, solicitors, decorators. Different trades. Same problem. 47 of them shared the same fixable mistake. The same feature was missing. The same Map Pack ranking was suffering for it. It wasn’t NAP inconsistency. It wasn’t missing schema. It wasn’t a thin website or weak reviews. Those were all important. None of them were the one. The one missing feature was something simpler. Cheaper. And almost no agency tells their clients about it. It was weekly Google Business Profile Posts. What Are Google Business Profile Posts? A Google Business Profile Post is a short content update you publish directly to your Google Business Profile. It appears in your profile listing on Google Search and Google Maps. Users see it when they look you up. Google reads it as a freshness signal. You can post offers, events, product highlights, or general updates. Each post...

For twenty years, “doing SEO” was enough. You picked keywords . You ranked pages. The traffic came. The leads followed. That formula just broke. Today, the same buyer who used to type “best plumber London” into Google now asks ChatGPT . Or Perplexity. Or Gemini. Or Google’s own AI Overviews. The blue links are still there. They’re just no longer the main event. Gartner predicts traditional search volume will drop 25% by 2026 as buyers shift to AI-powered answer engines. That’s not a slow drift. That’s a structural change inside one budget cycle. There’s a new playbook. It’s three letters now, not two. SEO, AEO and GEO. This guide breaks down what each one means, how they fit together, and what a small business should actually do this quarter. What Are SEO, AEO And GEO? SEO is Search Engine Optimisation . The classic discipline. You optimise individual pages to rank in Google’s blue links. The reward is a click. AEO is Answer Engine Optimisation . You structure your content so AI assi...

Right now, somebody is typing your business name into ChatGPT . They want to know if you’re any good. They want to compare you to your competitor. They want a quick recommendation before they even visit your website. And ChatGPT is answering them. Without you in the room. Over 800 million people use ChatGPT every single week. Most no longer scroll through ten blue links. They ask. They take the answer. They make a decision. Gartner predicts that by 2026, one in four search clicks will move from Google to AI assistants . That’s the biggest shift in how customers find businesses in twenty years. This is the new search. There’s a new game to win it. It’s called Answer Engine Optimisation, or AEO. The good news? Most small businesses have never heard of it. Which means you can still win. What Is Answer Engine Optimisation? Answer Engine Optimisation is the practice of structuring your content so AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Claude pick it as the source for the...