The PixelCrayons blog: notes from the team that does the work.
Practical posts on SEO, development, design and AI, written from our own client work, not borrowed research. Every post is free to read, with no sign-up and no invented statistics. Posts sit in five categories: marketing, development, design, AI and growth. Each category page links to the services it covers.
56 posts · 5 categories · No sign-up
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Why has my website traffic dropped? Check in this order
A traffic drop usually starts in the data, seasonal demand, a release on your own site, a Google update, a site move or an AI answer above you.
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PHP2Shell: how we patched 375 servers and hundreds of client sites in 12 hours
PHP2Shell (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) lets one unauthenticated request run code on any PHP install that serves web traffic.
SEO blueprint: what goes in one, and how we built ours
An SEO blueprint decides which searches to win, which page answers each one, what happens to your old URLs and how you will measure the result.
Website not generating leads? Four tests to find the cause
When a website is not generating leads, the cause is almost always one of four problems: enquiries that never arrive, slow replies, the wrong visitors or a…
Digital marketing audit: 25 checks before you raise your budget
A digital marketing audit should tell you whether to raise your budget, not just list problems.
AI tools for digital marketing: what to check before it ships
AI tools for digital marketing now draft copy, set bids, pick placements and flag changes in your reports, much of it inside Google Ads, Meta and GA4.
AI visibility audit: how we measure mentions and citations on a frozen prompt set
An AI visibility audit records what assistants say about you, on fixed questions, under recorded conditions.
SaaS growth: who should own what across marketing, web and sales
SaaS growth stalls when marketing, the website and sales each report on their own work. One UK B2B SaaS engagement shows the fix.
Website not converting? What to fix first and what to test
Before testing anything, reconcile your tracking and find the step where visitors leave. Then answer the questions that stop careful buyers there.
Peak season eCommerce: the change-freeze checklist, and who owns each item
A store survives peak season when structural work lands in the quiet months, non-essential changes stop before the rush, and each remaining risk has a named…
Browse all 56 post titles
- Why has my website traffic dropped? Check in this order
- PHP2Shell: how we patched 375 servers and hundreds of client sites in 12 hours
- SEO blueprint: what goes in one, and how we built ours
- Website not generating leads? Four tests to find the cause
- Digital marketing audit: 25 checks before you raise your budget
- AI tools for digital marketing: what to check before it ships
- AI visibility audit: how we measure mentions and citations on a frozen prompt set
- SaaS growth: who should own what across marketing, web and sales
- Website not converting? What to fix first and what to test
- Peak season eCommerce: the change-freeze checklist, and who owns each item
- B2B content strategy: mapping content to pipeline stages, from a SaaS engagement
- eCommerce revenue leak audit: nine checks, worked on two stores we built
- AI agent vs automation vs a chatbot: the questions we ask before building an agent
- When should you migrate your ecommerce platform? A test, worked on FleaSolve’s move
- Why design-to-code handoffs break, and what one team designing and building changes
- Why we turn down small SEO retainers: the intake test, and what we suggest instead
- When should you spend less on PPC? What our team checks before raising a budget
- When a retainer is the wrong answer: how to tell if your work should be a fixed project
- Why we don’t quote a flat rate for SEO, and the questions that set your price
- Before you sign a white-label partner: the questions to ask, and how we answer them
- The agency capacity problem nobody admits to: how to see it before a deadline breaks
- “Just do what ChatGPT recommended”: how we review an AI-written marketing plan
- Why governed delivery says no to some AI automation, and where the approval step goes
- The keyword that’s costing you money: how to find rankings that never pay
- SEO on Amazon or your own store: what changes in the plan, and which to do first
- Healthcare marketing compliance reviews: how to plan a campaign around the approval chain
- Why a SaaS SEO roadmap differs from an eCommerce one: the pages to build first
- Week one of a dedicated marketing team: the checklist, the plan and the first review
- What should an SEO audit cover, and how should its fix list be ranked?
- White-label or referral: how an agency should decide, with the margin worked out
- Core Web Vitals: what actually moves LCP, INP and CLS, and how to read field data
- AEO vs SEO: what changes when buyers ask AI instead of Google, and what to check
- Adding delivery capacity without hiring: how we size a white-label pod for an agency
- Freelancer, partner team or new hire: what each costs an agency beyond the rate
- Website care after launch: what the first 90 days should cover, and what they should not
- One team or five: what split suppliers cost a Gulf fragrance retailer
- When an agency should turn a client down: the intake test we apply to our own enquiries
- Before you scale ad spend: the checks that join up ads, CRO and analytics
- Peak load: how we staff a partner agency’s surge, and hand the work back afterwards
- What a white-label pod reports, week to week, and what your client sees
- How a Creative Agency Cut Turnaround Time by 50% With PixelCrayons
- What your agency can resell from a Shopify build, and how the partner rate card prices it
- Brand consistency across channels: why structure comes before the style guide
- 13 actionable tips to increase organic traffic, starting with pages you already have
- Which Shopify features does your store need? What four of our builds used, and why
- How to remove bad reviews from Google: what you can report, and how to answer the rest
- AEO and GEO, measured: the 39 buyer prompts we monitor and how we read them
- Five search trends we checked against our own Search Console, and how to check yours
- How to rank higher on Google Maps: the 11-step profile checklist, with no rank promises
- Paid search for a Shopify store: the account structure we run and why
- Keyword research tools: the workflow we run, and which tool answers which question
- Marketing automation: what to connect first, and what to keep in human hands
- Is Magento right for your store? Lessons from Al Majed for Oud’s bilingual build
- Do reviews shape AI answers? What we check, from a law firm’s reputation work
- Top 11 White-Label Marketing Agencies in 2026
- Magento migration: how a full catalogue moved with zero data loss
The four topics
we write about.
We write about the work we do. Each topic links to one of our four service areas, where the same team does that work. So you can always check a post's advice against how we actually deliver.
How to get the most
from these posts.
Start with the question
Every title is a question a client or partner asked us. If it isn't your question, skip it; the next one might be. You don't need to read the posts in order.
Written from real work
We write from our own work: 500+ agencies served, and sites delivered since 2004 through every Google core update. We don't rewrite other people's blog posts. If we haven't done the work, we don't write the guide to it.
Check it on your own site
Each post explains how something works, so you can test it on your own pages before you believe it. Any figure is a public fact you can check, or one of the recorded figures we use across this site.
Prefer the answers
applied to your site?
Send the brief and an itemised, priced proposal comes back. Or start with the free website review: we measure one page of your website and a person reviews the report.
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