John K Mitchell's Misc Blog

How to Get a Better Work-Life Balance When You Run a Small Business
How to Get a Better Work-Life Balance When You Run a Small Business


Running a small business can easily take over your life. One quick email becomes an evening of work. A quiet Sunday turns into catching up on paperwork. Before long, you are always working, thinking about work or feeling guilty because you are not working.

A better work-life balance does not mean caring less about your business. It means finding a way to run it without allowing work to consume every available hour. That can be better for you, your family, your employees and, perhaps surprisingly, the business itself.


TL;DR: Work-Life Balance Is Good for You and Your Business


Small business owners often accept long hours as part of the job. In the early days, that may be unavoidable. You might be doing the sales, accounts, marketing, customer service and admin yourself. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/?p=3134

Google Search Console Gets New Generative AI Controls and Reporting: What Small Businesses Need to Know
Google Search Console Gets New Generative AI Controls and Reporting: What Small Businesses Need to Know


Google has started rolling out new Generative AI controls and performance reporting in Google Search Console. For the first time, website owners can get a clearer view of whether their pages are appearing in Google's AI-powered search features and can choose whether their content is eligible to appear in them.

TL;DR: Google Search Console now has a new Search generative AI control and a separate Generative AI performance report. The control lets eligible site owners include or exclude their website from certain Google generative AI features. The report shows impressions from AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. However, the rollout is currently limited to a subset of website owners, so you may not see either feature yet. At the time of writing, it appears to be showing on at least some UK sites. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/?p=3137

How to Get to a 10-Year Anniversary in Your Business
How to Get to a 10-Year Anniversary in Your Business


Reaching 10 years in business is a big achievement. It takes more than a good idea. You need to adapt, manage money, keep customers happy and somehow keep going when running a business feels harder than it should.

Recently, I attended an event held by Games n Gear, a computer gaming shop in Llandudno that opened 10 years ago. You can also find the business on Facebook at Games N Gear | Llandudno. Seeing a local independent business celebrate a full decade got me thinking about what it actually takes to survive for that long.


TL;DR: How Do You Keep a Business Going for 10 Years?


There is no magic formula for reaching your tenth anniversary in business. If there were, every new business would follow it and nobody would ever close. The reality is far less tidy. Some businesses start with a brilliant idea and disappear within months. Others begin with a fairly ordinary product or service and are still trading decades later. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/2026/07/how-to-get-to-a-10-year-anniversary-in-your-business/

The Importance of Testing Your Small Business Website
The Importance of Testing Your Website (and Why Most Small Businesses Skip It)


TL;DR – Quick Version for Busy People


Short version: If you don’t test your website properly, you’re probably losing customers without even realising it. Broken links, confusing wording, spelling mistakes, and pages that don’t work properly all quietly push people away.

Website testing isn’t just for tech teams or big companies. It’s something every small business should do regularly. It means checking your links, reading your content properly, making sure everything works, and confirming your website actually says what you meant it to say. Not what you accidentally typed at 11pm on a Tuesday.

In this post, we’ll go through the different types of website testing in a simple, practical way. We’ll look at checking internal and external links, proofreading for spelling and grammar, and something even more important: making sure your content actually makes sense to someone else. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/?p=3125

LLMS.txt Files: Should Small Business Websites Be Using Them Yet?
TL;DR: An llms.txt file is a relatively new proposal designed to help large language models (LLMs) such as AI chatbots and AI search tools understand the most important content on a website. It acts a bit like a guidebook, pointing AI systems towards key pages and information. While there is growing interest in the idea, there is currently limited evidence showing major direct benefits for most small business websites. Some organisations and AI-focused websites have started using llms.txt files, and I am testing them myself, but so far I have not seen any hard results that can clearly be attributed to having one. As with many new web standards, it is worth understanding and monitoring, but it should not replace proven SEO, content, accessibility, or website improvement work.

As artificial intelligence becomes a bigger part of how people find information online, website owners are starting to look at ways of making their websites easier for AI systems to understand. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/?p=3119

Facebook and YouTube Adverts: How Small Business Owners Can Spot the Scams Before They Waste Money
Quick Summary: Facebook and YouTube are packed with adverts promising secret business methods, easy profits, instant success and products that supposedly cost less than a couple of cups of coffee. While some advertisers are genuine, many use manipulative sales tactics that are designed to trigger emotions rather than provide useful information. Small business owners should learn to recognise common warning signs, research advertisers independently, check Google search results, read reviews from multiple sources and avoid making rushed decisions. Even when users report questionable adverts, platforms such as Facebook and YouTube sometimes decide that the advert does not break their rules, which can leave misleading adverts running for longer than many people would expect.

Every day, millions of people watch videos on YouTube and scroll through Facebook. Along the way they are shown a constant stream of adverts. Some are from well-known brands. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/?p=3116

How to Make Your Website Dyslexic Friendly
TL;DR: A dyslexic-friendly website is easier for everyone to use. Simple fonts, clear layouts, good colour contrast, shorter paragraphs, helpful headings, and accessible content can make a huge difference. Improving readability not only helps visitors with dyslexia but can also increase engagement, trust, and conversions for your small business.

When people visit your website, they want information quickly and easily. If your content is difficult to read, confusing to navigate, or visually overwhelming, visitors may leave before they find what they need. For people with dyslexia, these challenges can be even greater.

Creating a dyslexic-friendly website is not about completely redesigning everything or spending thousands on specialist development. In most cases, it involves making sensible improvements that benefit all visitors. A website that is easier to read is often easier to use, easier to understand, and more likely to convert visitors into customers. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/?p=3114

AI Search Visibility: How Small Businesses Can Stay Visible as Search Changes
AI Search Visibility: How Small Businesses Can Get Found When Customers Ask AI for Help


TL;DR: Traditional SEO is still important, but more people are now using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to find answers, products and services. Instead of showing a list of websites, these tools often provide direct recommendations. If your business isn't mentioned, you may be invisible to potential customers even if your website ranks well in Google. The good news is that you don't need a huge marketing budget to improve your visibility. By creating helpful content, answering real customer questions, building authority in your niche and making your expertise easy for AI systems to understand, you can increase the chances of your business being recommended when people ask AI for advice.

Search is changing faster than many small business owners realise. For years, getting found online meant focusing on Google rankings, keywords and backlinks. https://www.forestsoftware.co.uk/blog/?p=3104