Companion page to the book
Sources and links from Get Your Business Seen Online
Get Your Business Seen Online: A practical guide to websites, SEO and AI search for UK businesses is my practical guide for UK business owners and the people who build and market their websites. The book prints its web addresses in full. This page lists the same sources so you can open them with one tap.
Search engines and regulators move and rewrite their guidance. I check every link here and update it when a page moves or changes. If something in the book no longer matches its source, the version on this page is the one to trust.
- Sources
- 70
- Parts covered
- 6
- Links last checked
Part 1Understand how customers find you
Chapter 2SEO basics: how search engines work
- In-depth guide to how Google Search works
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Crawling, indexing and serving explained by Google.
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- What is a sitemap
Google Search Central developers.google.com
What a sitemap does, and why it helps discovery without guaranteeing indexing.
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- Robots.txt introduction and guide
Google Search Central developers.google.com
What robots.txt controls, and what it does not.
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- Block search indexing with noindex
Google Search Central developers.google.com
How the noindex rule keeps a page out of Google's results.
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- How to specify a canonical URL
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Choosing the preferred address when the same content appears at several URLs.
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- Visual elements gallery of Google Search
Google Search Central developers.google.com
The different kinds of result a search page can show.
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- A guide to Google Search ranking systems
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's published list of ranking systems. There is no single checklist for a guaranteed position.
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Chapter 3SEO basics: keywords and intent
- Performance report (search results)
Search Console Help support.google.com
What the Search Console performance report counts, including query data omitted for privacy.
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- Bing Webmaster Tools
Microsoft Bing bing.com
Bing's service for website owners: search reporting and site checks.
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- FAQ about Google Trends data
Trends Help support.google.com
Why Trends shows relative interest rather than search counts.
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- About Keyword Planner forecasts
Google Ads Help support.google.com
How Keyword Planner metrics are estimated, and their limits.
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Chapter 4SEO basics: the page
- Influencing title links in Google Search
Google Search Central developers.google.com
How the title you supply relates to the headline Google displays.
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- Control your snippets in search results
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Meta descriptions and the search-dependent summaries Google shows.
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- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's questions for judging whether content is written for people.
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- Images tutorial
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Writing useful text alternatives for images.
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- Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results
Google Search Central developers.google.com
How Google describes Core Web Vitals in relation to search.
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- SEO link best practices for Google
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Crawlable links and descriptive anchor text.
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Chapter 5SEO basics: local SEO for UK businesses
- Understand your Business Profile performance and insights
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Calls, direction requests and other profile actions that never appear as website clicks.
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- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Relevance, distance and prominence in local results.
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- Business eligibility and ownership guidelines
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Which businesses qualify for a profile, and who should own and manage it.
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- Manage your service areas
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Service-area limits and when to hide a business address.
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- Guidelines for representing your business on Google
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Rules for names, addresses and other profile details.
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- Manage your business category
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Choosing primary and additional categories.
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- Edit your business hours
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Regular, special and more hours on a profile.
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- Prohibited and restricted content
Maps User Generated Content Policy Help support.google.com
Google's rules on fake, incentivised and conflicted reviews.
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- Create a Google link or QR code to request reviews
Google Business Profile Help support.google.com
Sharing a direct review link with real customers.
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- Introducing the new Bing Places for Business
Bing Search Blog blogs.bing.com
Microsoft's October 2025 announcement of the rebuilt Bing Places.
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- Bing Places business guidance
Bing Places for Business bing.com
UK availability, service-area eligibility and account guidance.
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- Bing Places verification FAQ
Bing Places for Business bing.com
Verification, private addresses and authorised ownership.
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- Spam policies for Google web search
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's policies on doorway pages, scaled content and link spam.
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Chapter 6Measure visibility and enquiries honestly
- What are impressions, position and clicks?
Search Console Help support.google.com
How Search Console defines each performance metric.
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- About Analytics sessions
Analytics Help support.google.com
How Google Analytics groups interactions into sessions.
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- Performance report (search results)
Search Console Help support.google.com
What the Search Console performance report counts, including query data omitted for privacy.
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- About events
Analytics Help support.google.com
Events as measured interactions, which are not the same as received enquiries.
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- Storage and access technologies: what are the exceptions?
Information Commissioner's Office ico.org.uk
The statistical purposes exception for analytics and the limits of consent.
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- Consent mode overview
Google Tag Platform developers.google.com
How Google tags behave when consent is granted or denied.
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Part 2Build and design a website that gets seen and converts
Chapter 7Choose the platform and plan the site
- Site moves and migrations
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Planning redirects and checks when page addresses change.
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Chapter 9Make the website fast, mobile and accessible
- Web Vitals
web.dev web.dev
The Core Web Vitals metrics and their thresholds.
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- Lighthouse performance scoring
Chrome for Developers developer.chrome.com
How a lab performance score is calculated, and why it differs from field data.
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- Understanding Google page experience
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's guidance on page experience and search.
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- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2
W3C w3.org
The accessibility standard used as the design target in chapter 9.
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- Understanding 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum)
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Minimum text contrast and how it is measured.
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- Understanding 2.4.11 Focus Not Obscured (Minimum)
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Keeping the keyboard focus visible behind sticky headers and banners.
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- Understanding 2.5.8 Target Size (Minimum)
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Minimum size and spacing for buttons and links.
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- Forms tutorial
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Labels, instructions and error messages for accessible forms.
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- Images tutorial
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Writing useful text alternatives for images.
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- Understanding 1.4.10 Reflow
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Content that still works when zoomed or on a narrow screen.
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- Understanding 2.3.3 Animation from Interactions
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative w3.org
Letting people turn off motion triggered by scrolling or clicking.
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Chapter 10Launch, rebuild and check the live website
- How HTTP status codes affect Google's crawlers
Google Crawling Infrastructure developers.google.com
What 200, 301, 404, 410 and 5xx responses mean for crawling.
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- Robots.txt introduction and guide
Google Search Central developers.google.com
What robots.txt controls, and what it does not.
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- Block search indexing with noindex
Google Search Central developers.google.com
How the noindex rule keeps a page out of Google's results.
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- How to specify a canonical URL
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Choosing the preferred address when the same content appears at several URLs.
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- Content Security Policy (CSP)
MDN Web Docs developer.mozilla.org
How a CSP header allows or blocks scripts, images and connections.
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- What is a sitemap
Google Search Central developers.google.com
What a sitemap does, and why it helps discovery without guaranteeing indexing.
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- IndexNow documentation
IndexNow.org indexnow.org
Notifying participating search engines when pages change.
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- How to use the Indexing API
Google Search Central developers.google.com
The API is limited to job-posting and livestream pages, not ordinary service pages.
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- Sitemaps ping endpoint is going away
Google Search Central Blog developers.google.com
Google's 2023 notice retiring the sitemap ping endpoint.
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- URL Inspection tool
Search Console Help support.google.com
The difference between indexed information and a live test.
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Part 3Develop search coverage and credibility
Chapter 11Google, Bing and AI assistants
- AI features and your website
Google Search Central developers.google.com
No special schema or technical requirement for AI Overviews or AI Mode, and how their traffic is reported.
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- Google's common crawlers
Google Crawling Infrastructure developers.google.com
Google's crawler names, including Google-Extended, for robots.txt decisions.
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- Which crawlers does Bing use?
Bing Webmaster Tools Help bing.com
Bing's crawler names and user agents.
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- Overview of OpenAI crawlers
OpenAI developers.openai.com
OpenAI's crawler names and what each one is used for.
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- AI Performance report
Bing Webmaster Tools Help bing.com
Page citations and grounding queries reported by Bing, where available.
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Chapter 12Build a map of real demand
- Holistic SEO
Koray Tugberk Gubur holisticseo.digital
Koray Tugberk Gubur's semantic SEO and topical map work, which informs chapters 12, 13, 23 and 24.
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Chapter 13Semantic content that people can read
- Holistic SEO
Koray Tugberk Gubur holisticseo.digital
Koray Tugberk Gubur's semantic SEO and topical map work, which informs chapters 12, 13, 23 and 24.
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Chapter 14Make your business an identifiable entity
- Kalicube
Jason Barnard kalicube.com
Jason Barnard's entity and Entity Home work, which informs chapters 14 and 25.
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- Entity corroboration
Kalicube kalicube.com
Jason Barnard's explanation of how independent sources confirm facts about an entity.
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- How Google's Knowledge Graph works
Knowledge Panel Help support.google.com
Google's own description of the Knowledge Graph and knowledge panels.
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Chapter 15Structured data, honestly
- Introduction to structured data markup
Google Search Central developers.google.com
What structured data is and how Google uses it.
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- Service
Schema.org schema.org
The vocabulary definition for describing a service a business offers.
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- Local business structured data
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's LocalBusiness markup guidance.
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- General structured data guidelines
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Markup must match visible facts; valid markup does not guarantee a rich result.
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- Latest Google Search documentation updates
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Dated changes, including the May and June 2026 entries retiring FAQ rich results and their documentation.
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Chapter 16Internal links that help people move
- SEO link best practices for Google
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Crawlable links and descriptive anchor text.
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Chapter 17Earn links and mentions
- Spam policies for Google web search
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's policies on doorway pages, scaled content and link spam.
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- Qualify outbound links
Google Search Central developers.google.com
When to mark links as sponsored, user-generated or nofollow.
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Part 4Turn attention into an enquiry
Chapter 18Receive and follow up the enquiry
- Key concepts for direct marketing using electronic mail
Information Commissioner's Office ico.org.uk
Service messages, promotional content and subscriber types.
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- How do we comply with the PECR electronic mail marketing rules?
Information Commissioner's Office ico.org.uk
Consent, the soft opt-in and opt-out requirements for marketing email.
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Part 5Grow, test and decide
Chapter 19Improve, refresh and scale with restraint
- Influencing title links in Google Search
Google Search Central developers.google.com
How the title you supply relates to the headline Google displays.
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- Control your snippets in search results
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Meta descriptions and the search-dependent summaries Google shows.
Link checked
- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's questions for judging whether content is written for people.
Link checked
- Spam policies for Google web search
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's policies on doorway pages, scaled content and link spam.
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Part 6How I do SEO: the methods in depth
Chapter 23Topical maps and source context
- Holistic SEO
Koray Tugberk Gubur holisticseo.digital
Koray Tugberk Gubur's semantic SEO and topical map work, which informs chapters 12, 13, 23 and 24.
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Chapter 24Semantic writing and micro-semantic review
- Holistic SEO
Koray Tugberk Gubur holisticseo.digital
Koray Tugberk Gubur's semantic SEO and topical map work, which informs chapters 12, 13, 23 and 24.
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Chapter 25Entities, the Entity Home and brand consensus
- Kalicube
Jason Barnard kalicube.com
Jason Barnard's entity and Entity Home work, which informs chapters 14 and 25.
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AppendicesChecklists, playbooks, glossary and worksheets
Appendix DWorksheets and source notes
- SEO Starter Guide
Google Search Central developers.google.com
Google's own introduction to the basic search and page practices covered in chapters 2 to 4.
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Chapters not listed above don't link to outside web pages.
About the book
Get Your Business Seen Online covers how buyers search now, what a website needs to be found and trusted, local and AI search, and how to test changes without fooling yourself. Parts 1 to 5 are for owners and buyers of website and SEO work. Part 6 sets out the methods I use in depth, for marketers and in-house teams.
Want help applying it to your website?
If you've read the book and want a second pair of eyes on your own site, tell me what you're working on.