Resources
Resources
Guides
44 guides
- 15 things every luxury villa website needsA luxury villa website needs to do three jobs: show the property honestly, answer every question a group organiser has before they enquire, and make booking or enquiring easy. These 15 villa website features cover photography, floor plans, live availability, clear rates, policies, speed, tracking and the booking step.
- Agency, freelancer or specialist consultant?An agency gives you a team and capacity. A freelancer gives you one skilled person at lower overhead. A specialist consultant gives you senior expertise and direct access, with other specialists brought in as needed. The right choice depends on the size of the project, how much strategy you need, and how you prefer to work.
- Astro vs WordPress for business websitesWordPress is a complete content management system with an admin area and a plugin for most needs. Astro is a framework for building fast, content-led sites, and it needs a separate CMS for editing. Choose WordPress for bookings, forms and frequent self-editing. Choose Astro for a lean site with developer support.
- Booking engines for lodges and villas comparedThere is no single best booking engine for a guest house, lodge or villa. The right one depends on the property type, the channels you sell through and how the engine joins your website. This comparison covers eight systems and the four checks that matter: website integration, tracking, design control and channel management.
- Bricks Builder vs ElementorBricks and Elementor are both visual builders for WordPress. Elementor is a plugin with a free version, a very large user base and many add-ons. Bricks is a paid theme aimed at developers who work with classes, components and dynamic data. Choose Elementor for familiarity and reach, Bricks for a structured custom build.
- Care plan vs hosting onlyHosting keeps a website online. Maintenance keeps it updated, backed up, secure and working. Most business websites that run on WordPress need both, but not every site needs a full care plan. Hosting only can be enough if someone capable is already doing the upkeep, or if the site is simple and low risk.
- Does llms.txt matter? What the data saysOn current evidence, llms.txt does not matter for search visibility. Google says its Search does not use the file. A study of nearly 300,000 domains by SE Ranking found no link to AI citations, and Ahrefs found that 97% of the files it tracked received no requests in a month. It is optional.
- GEO vs SEO: what changes and what doesn'tGEO, or generative engine optimisation, is the work of being cited and described accurately in AI answers. SEO is the work of ranking in search results. They share the same foundations: crawlable pages, clear content and a trusted business. GEO adds a focus on direct answers, and it changes how results are measured.
- Google AI Overviews & AI Mode: what changes for South African businessesGoogle AI Overviews and AI Mode are both available in South Africa, according to Google's help pages checked on 10 October 2026. Neither needs special optimisation. Pages that are indexed, useful and clearly written are eligible, and Search Console now shows impressions from both and lets site owners opt out.
- Google Business Profile guide for South African businessesA Google Business Profile in South Africa follows the same rules as everywhere else. A business qualifies if customers visit it or it travels to them. Service-area businesses remove their address, set up to 20 service areas and keep to about two hours' drive from base. One profile per business.
- Google free booking links for lodges and villasGoogle free booking links are unpaid links in Google's accommodation booking module. They show your own website's rate for the guest's dates and send the click to your booking page. Most properties need a verified Business Profile and a booking system that sends live rates to Google. Villas follow a separate, stricter route.
- Hotel SEO guideHotel SEO is the work of being found on Google by travellers who have not yet chosen where to stay, and of being the first result when they search for you by name. This hotel SEO guide covers how travellers search, which pages to build, Google Business Profile, technical basics and what to measure.
- How ChatGPT and Google AI recommend hotels and villasAI assistants recommend hotels and villas from information they can already reach: Google's own listing, review and price data, pages on the open web, and booking platforms. Google says no special files or markup are needed. The work is a complete Business Profile, a crawlable website with specific facts in text, and connected rates.
- How long does it take to build a website?Most business websites take weeks, not days. At Stryx, a typical project takes about 6 to 8 weeks from the signed agreement to launch. Online shops and sites with bookings or integrations take longer. Content, feedback speed and scope are what move the launch date most.
- How long does SEO take?There is no fixed answer to how long SEO takes. Google says some changes show in search results within hours and others take several months. The timeline depends on where the site starts, how strong the competition is and how much work is done each month. Nobody can guarantee a date.
- How often should WordPress be updated?Install WordPress security releases as soon as they appear, which most sites do automatically. Update plugins and themes weekly if you can and at least monthly. Apply major WordPress versions within a few weeks, after testing. Review the PHP version once a year.
- How to choose a web design company in South Africa (2027 checklist)Choose a web design company in South Africa on evidence, not on a sales pitch: live examples of similar work, a written scope, clear ownership of your domain and site, a POPIA operator agreement and support after launch. This checklist and scorecard help you compare suppliers fairly.
- How to choose a web designer in the Cayman IslandsThe best web designer in Cayman for your business is the one who understands who your visitors are, puts your .ky domain and accounts in your name, handles the Data Protection Act properly and stays reachable after launch. Local or overseas matters less than those four points.
- How to get your business recommended by ChatGPTWhen ChatGPT searches the web, it can only recommend businesses it can find, so the route in is ordinary SEO plus crawler access. Allow OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, rank for what you do and where, state the facts plainly on the page, and add short summaries and questions and answers. Placement is never guaranteed.
- Marketing a clinic to international patientsMedical tourism marketing works when a clinic answers the questions a patient abroad cannot ask in person: who will treat them, what the process involves, how long they must stay and what happens after they fly home. Clear pages, careful enquiry handling and honest claims matter more than advertising volume.
- Medical SEO guide for clinics & specialistsMedical SEO means making a practice easy to find and easy to trust: one clear page per service and practitioner, an accurate Google Business Profile, content written or reviewed by named clinicians, and a fast, technically sound site. Results are measured in enquiries, calls and bookings, not rankings alone.
- My WordPress site was hacked: what to do nowIf your WordPress site was hacked, do not delete anything yet. Write down what you see, tell your hosting provider, take a copy of the site as it is, change every password, then clean or restore it and close the gap the attacker used. Bring in a professional if the site handles payments or personal data.
- Payment gateways for South African online stores comparedThe main payment gateway options for a South African online store are Payfast, Peach Payments, Yoco, Ozow, Paystack, Netcash and DPO Pay. Shopify Payments is not available here, and Stripe points South African businesses to Paystack. The right choice depends on your platform, payment methods and payout needs.
- POPIA compliance checklist for websitesFor POPIA website compliance, a site needs a lawful reason for every piece of personal information it collects, a clear notice at the point of collection, opt-in consent for electronic marketing, reasonable security, written contracts with operators and a plan for breaches. This checklist follows the Act section by section.
- Schema markup for service businessesSchema for a local business is a block of structured data that tells search engines who you are, where you are and what you do. A service business needs two or three types: LocalBusiness or Organization for the business, and Service for what it offers. It must match what visitors can see on the page.
- SEO reporting: the KPIs that matterThe SEO KPIs that matter are the ones tied to revenue: enquiries, calls, bookings and sales that come from organic search. Clicks, impressions and rankings are supporting measures that explain why those numbers move. A useful report shows both, and says plainly what changed and what happens next.
- SEO vs Google Ads: where to spend firstGoogle Ads buys visibility now and stops when you stop paying. SEO earns visibility over months and keeps working after the work is done. If you need enquiries soon and can fund clicks, start with ads. If you can wait and want lower long-term reliance on paid traffic, start with SEO. Most businesses end up using both.
- Should a South African WordPress site be hosted locally?Host a South African WordPress site locally when most visitors are in South Africa and the site does live work such as bookings, a shop or logins. International hosting with a CDN suits mostly static sites and overseas audiences. POPIA sets conditions for sending personal information abroad but does not forbid it.
- Technical SEO audit checklistA technical SEO checklist confirms that search engines can reach, read and index a site. Check crawling and indexing first, then duplicate URLs, mobile content, speed, HTTPS, structured data, redirects and access for AI crawlers. Fix what blocks pages from being found before anything else.
- The direct-booking website playbook for villas and lodgesTo increase direct bookings, give guests who already know your property a good reason and an easy way to book on your own website. That means knowing what each channel costs you, a site that answers every question, a booking step that works, and tracking that shows where bookings come from.
- Upgrading PHP on WordPress safelyA safe WordPress PHP upgrade follows five steps: take a backup, update WordPress, plugins and the theme, test the new PHP version on a staging copy, switch the version in your hosting panel, then test the live site. If something breaks, switch back. WordPress.org currently recommends PHP 8.3 or greater.
- Website accessibility in South AfricaWebsite accessibility in South Africa rests on equality law, not on a web-specific statute. The Constitution and the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act prohibit unfair discrimination on the ground of disability. Neither names a technical standard. WCAG from the W3C is the recognised benchmark to work towards.
- Website redesign checklist (with redirect plan)A website redesign checklist has three parts: record what the current site does before you change it, map every old URL to a new one with permanent redirects, and check everything again after launch. The redirect plan is the part that protects existing search traffic.
- Website RFP template for corporatesA website RFP should tell suppliers who you are, what the site must achieve, what is in scope, your budget range, your timeline and how you will choose. This template sets out twelve sections with prompts, ready to copy into your own document and fill in.
- Website speed on South African mobile networksWebsite speed in South Africa depends more on the site than on the network. Opensignal measured average mobile download speeds of 17.5 to 60.1 Mbps across the five national operators in mid-2025. Heavy pages, distant servers and slower phones are what make a site feel slow.
- What a medical practice website needsA medical practice website needs to show who the practitioners are, what they treat, where the practice is and how to book. It also needs to protect patient information, load quickly on phones, be usable by people with disabilities and record enquiries so the practice knows what the site produces.
- What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making a website's content more likely to be used and cited in answers written by AI systems such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. The term comes from a 2023 research paper. Google's position is that it is still SEO.
- What WordPress maintenance actually includesWordPress maintenance is the routine work that keeps a site secure, working and recoverable: updates to WordPress, plugins, themes and PHP, tested backups, security checks, uptime and performance monitoring, and small fixes when something breaks. Hosting on its own covers none of this unless the plan says so.
- Why is my WordPress site slow?A slow WordPress site usually comes down to a few causes: underpowered or distant hosting, no page caching, oversized images, too many or badly built plugins, a heavy theme, a cluttered database or an old PHP version. Measure first to see whether the delay is on the server or in the page.
- WooCommerce maintenance checklistA WooCommerce maintenance checklist adds store-specific tasks to normal WordPress care: back up right before changes because orders arrive all the time, test updates on staging, place a test order afterwards, and check payments, scheduled actions, logs, template overrides and order emails every month.
- WooCommerce vs Shopify (South African view)Shopify is a hosted subscription platform that handles hosting, security and checkout for you. WooCommerce is a free, open source plugin that turns a self-hosted WordPress site into a shop. In South Africa both rely on local payment gateways and courier integrations. Choose Shopify for simplicity, WooCommerce for control and content.
- WordPress maintenance checklist (monthly)A monthly WordPress maintenance checklist has six stages: confirm a fresh backup, apply updates in small groups, check users and security, test the forms and pages that bring in business, check speed and uptime, and tidy up. Do them in that order, because each stage protects the next.
- WordPress vs Webflow for business websitesWordPress is open source software you host yourself and extend with plugins. Webflow is a subscription platform that combines a visual design tool, a CMS and hosting. Choose WordPress for flexibility, bookings and ownership of the code. Choose Webflow for a design-led marketing site with no server upkeep.
- WordPress vs Wix vs SquarespaceWix and Squarespace are all-in-one subscription builders: hosting, templates and security are included, and you can launch a site yourself. WordPress is open source software you host separately, with far more flexibility and more upkeep. Choose a builder for a simple site. Choose WordPress when the site must grow or integrate.
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