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Every method described here is one a reader can run themselves, including the ones also sold as a service. Ivan Sp writes about the methods and tools used across real engagements, from a controlled hosting benchmark to step-by-step tutorials anyone can run themselves. Where a post covers a method also offered as a service, both stay linked so a reader can do it by hand or hire it out.

Original Research

WordPress hosting performance benchmark study

Policy and Platform Fixes

Tool and Task Guides

Why This Content Sits Outside the Service Pages

Service pages describe work delivered for a client. Blog posts teach a method a reader can run themselves, sometimes the same method covered under a linked service page for anyone who would rather hire it out. Neither version withholds the real steps to protect the paid version.

Where the Standard Agency Blog Breaks Down

How many marketing blogs have you left because the post stopped exactly where it got useful?

The usual advice: Publish enough detail to demonstrate expertise, and hold back the steps that make the service worth buying.
What holds up in practice: Withheld steps are visible to the reader and they convince nobody. The reason to hire somebody is scale, judgement, and time, and none of those is protected by leaving out step four.

Picture a post explaining that log analysis reveals crawl waste, without saying how to export a log or what to look for. The reader learns that something exists.

That reader searches for a post that answers the question and finds one elsewhere. Their opinion of who knows the subject now comes from the site that told them.

I publish the whole method. Anyone who wants to run it themselves now can, and anyone who would rather not knows exactly what they are buying.

A post that teaches nothing ranks for nothing and convinces nobody. The withheld step protects a service that was never at risk.

If you follow a method here and it works, you have lost nothing by not hiring anyone. Publishing it serves exactly that purpose.

Four Things Commonly Assumed About Marketing Blogs

Which of these have you assumed about agency content?

Ivan Sp writes against four assumptions that shape most agency blogs.

Commonly assumed	What actually holds
Publishing the method costs you the sale.	People hire for scale, judgement, and time. A reader who can run a method once still cannot run it across ten thousand URLs monthly.
More posts means more authority.	Authority follows from being right about something specific. Forty general posts signal less than four that answer a real question completely.
Blog posts should target keywords.	A post should answer a question completely. The vocabulary follows from answering it, and a post built around a term usually answers nothing.
Case studies need client names to be credible.	A named client with a vague number persuades less than an anonymous one with a specific, verifiable figure.
Original research is too expensive for a small practice.	One controlled test on a question nobody has answered properly earns more than a year of commentary.

If a post here saves you a consulting fee, it has done its job. The methods that need somebody else are the ones you will recognise when you reach them.

What This Blog Covers

Original research: A controlled hosting benchmark, testing one variable across several providers.
Policy explainers: Where Google’s published rules actually draw the line, and what sits inside it.
Tool guides: Step-by-step methods using Screaming Frog, Search Console, GA4, and raw server logs.
Platform fixes: Specific recurring faults, traced from symptom to cause to correction.
Who each post is for: Anyone running their own site, and anyone checking what a provider is doing.
What is never withheld: The real steps. A post covering a service explains the method in full.
Cost to follow along: Most methods here need only free tools and access you already have.

A Worked Example: Two Versions of the Same Post

Consider one topic written two ways. The comparison below is illustrative, written to show what withholding actually costs. No client engagement is described here.

Element	Withheld version	Complete version
States the problem exists	Yes	Yes
Names the tool	Yes	Yes
Gives the export steps	No	Yes
States what to look for	Vaguely	Specifically, with thresholds
Reader can act today	No	Yes
Reader can judge the author	No	Yes
Likely to be cited by an answer engine	No	Yes

I write the right column. The final row matters commercially, since a passage that answers nothing is a passage nothing will quote.

A withheld method is a recipe that lists the ingredients and stops before the oven temperature. Nobody cooks it and nobody trusts the chef.

The second-to-last row is the real argument. A reader cannot judge expertise from a summary, and expertise is the only thing a consultancy actually sells.

How to Get the Most From These Posts

I write each post so a reader can follow it start to finish in one sitting.

Pick the post matching a question you actually have, rather than reading in order.
Open the tool named in the post before reading past the first section.
Run each step on your own site as you read, since the findings only matter on real data.
Note the thresholds given, since most methods here turn on a specific number.
Follow the linked service page where the same method needs running at scale.
Re-run any monitoring method on the schedule the post recommends.
Record your baseline before making a change, since most posts end with a verification step.
Come back to the verification step after the stated waiting period rather than immediately.

How This Engagement Is Scoped

What You Need Before You Start

Time required: Most methods here run in ten minutes to two hours on a single site.
Access needed: Google Search Console for most posts, plus GA4 or server access for a few.
Tools required: Free tiers cover most of it. Two posts benefit from a paid crawler licence.
Skill level: Comfortable in a spreadsheet and willing to read documentation.
What can go wrong: Acting on a single month of data, and changing several things at once.
Expected result: A specific finding on your own site, rather than a general understanding.
When to hire instead: When the method needs running monthly, or across more than a few hundred URLs.

Tools and Primary Sources

The tools used across these posts are listed below. Each opens in a new tab.

Google Search Console is free and underpins most of the methods described here.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a free tier sufficient for several of these workflows.
Google Analytics 4 supplies the conversion and revenue data the measurement posts audit.
Microsoft Clarity provides heatmaps and session recordings at no cost.
Google Search Central documentation is the primary source every policy explainer here is checked against.

Pick One Post and Run It Today

I suggest starting with whichever of these describes a question you already have.

If pages are missing from Google, start with the Search Console cannibalization post.
If a crawl has never been run on your site, start with the Screaming Frog workflow.
If your revenue figures look wrong, start with the GA4 purchase event audit.
If rankings look stable but traffic is falling, start with the SERP fingerprinting method.

Each of those takes under an hour and produces a finding specific to your own site. A general understanding of SEO changes nothing on its own.

Common Questions

Why publish methods that are also sold as services?

The methods are not the product. Running them across thousands of URLs, every month, and knowing which finding matters is the product. A reader who can run a method once has lost nothing by reading it, and neither has anyone else.

Discuss Any of This as a Project

A post describing a manual method is often the starting point for a conversation about running it at scale instead. The first call is a free 30-minute consultation with no pitch attached.

Book a free 30-minute consultation