This blog was originally sent out by email in January 2026. If you’d like to be the first to receive my emails, please hop on the list here.
After the Christmas and New Year busy-ness, I started thinking about how it was always a January tradition for me to sit down and write thank you letters to everyone who had given me presents.
Picture it, me with long hair (usually crimped) and squished fingers wrapped around my pen, trying to think of something to say. I would be allowed to use my Mum’s posh paper and everything. I liked that bit.
My folks would encourage me to include something about why I liked the present, something about my festive season if I wasn’t with the gift giver, something about them and something about my life in the coming year.
Years later, my grandfather expressed his disappointment in me not applying to Oxbridge to read English because I wrote such lovely letters (wtf, but here we are).
I resented the time it took at the time but applying context from such an early age really has helped me in my work now. You see, it’s all about context.
When I work with clients on their SEO, I see it so clearly – not everyone knows what you know, but you think they do.
When I witness resistance in my clients’ faces when encouraging them to add more story or more description to a website page or blog (“omg Maddy HOW many words?! what do I say?! what if they tell me I’m wrong? What if they don’t tell me I’m wrong and everyone is talking about how wrong I am? What if, what if what if”)
But….it’s actually more context that people need to know. It makes all the difference.
It’s the difference between me running a boutique SEO agency handholding my wonderful clients and the cheap rando guys one might find in your spam folder. We are not competitors and you know it, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this.
And I bet you’re not like your competitors either!
So, you need to start telling people. Context is everything.
Want to know where to start? Check out my blog on SEO for beginners
