A twenty-four hour SEO audit of your Shopify or Etsy shop, delivered as a forty-page PDF, hand-typeset and quietly bound. Composed in full by a small green creature with strong feelings about title tags, alt text, and merchants who say “handmade” when they mean “drop-shipped.” One audit. No subscription. No dashboard.
— About the Author
The Goblin first appeared in the parish records of a market town in Gloucestershire in the spring of 626 A.D., listed without ceremony as “a small green tenant of the brewer’s back room, conducting business in the manner of an accountant.” By 1140 he had taken to auditing the stalls of travelling merchants without invitation. By the late seventeenth century he was widely tolerated, if not entirely beloved, in the wool and lace trades.
His methods have not materially changed since 1843. He reads everything on the page. He follows every link. He looks at the photographs and forms an opinion of them. He visits the competitors and, more reluctantly, the competitors’ competitors. He drafts his findings by hand and types them up by morning.
He is paid in coin and does not accept retainers. He delivers exactly one document. He answers up to three replies and then becomes, as he puts it, “disagreeably scarce.”
He has audited, by his own estimate, somewhere in the region of eleven thousand small shops. He has approved of roughly four hundred of them. He is, by any reasonable measure, the wrong person for a great many of you. That is the point.
— A representative remark
“I have read your homepage three times now. I do not, in any of those readings, learn what you actually sell. This is the first thing we shall fix.”
— Attributed to the Goblin, undated
You would like a dashboard. There is no dashboard. There is a PDF, and the Goblin, and a single email address. That is the whole of it.
You believe an SEO audit should consist of a score out of one hundred and a red-amber-green chart. The Goblin can produce such a chart on request. He will be visibly disappointed in you.
You want recommendations “powered by” something. The recommendations are powered by a small green creature who has been reading shop windows since the reign of Penda of Mercia.
You expect the Goblin to implement the changes himself. He will not. He will tell you, in writing, exactly what to do; the doing is, regrettably, yours.
You sell drop-shipped goods and would prefer not to be told. The Goblin will know within four minutes and will mention it, gently but unmistakably, in the opening paragraph.
You want a monthly subscription. He does not have one. He has, on three occasions in the last century, been talked into a standing arrangement (see III, above) and he has regretted two of them.
— The deliverable
Typeset by the Goblin in the same fashion as this page — a serif for the headings, a sans for the body, and a monospace for anything that ought to feel like a stamp or a date. Delivered by email, signed by hand, accompanied by a brief note on what to read first.
— An audit of
Marlow &
Daughter.
A linen shop in Bristol, est. 2022.
You receive an email asking only for your shop URL and any single thing the Goblin should pay particular attention to. He prefers a sentence to a brief.
Every product page, the homepage twice, the “About” page with audible sighing, and the three nearest competitors. He takes notes by hand and types nothing until he has read everything.
Forty pages of plain English, set in Fraunces and Inter, with the twelve most important actions ranked by how cross he became while writing each one down.
Sealed, signed, and accompanied by a one-paragraph note on what to read first. You may reply once with questions. He will answer them, briskly.
— A small dictionary
You will encounter these phrases throughout your audit. They are the closest the Goblin comes to a rating system, and he is, on the whole, against rating systems.
Mild grumble™
A complaint, but a survivable one. The shop will continue to function. The Goblin would prefer it did not.
Considerable grumble™
The matter is materially costing you visitors. The Goblin recommends attending to it within the fortnight.
The Goblin is incensed™
Reserved for things the Goblin considers personally insulting. Two or three per audit, never more than six.
Goblin-approved™
A rarely-bestowed mark of acceptance. The Goblin will not pretend to be delighted; this is the next best thing.
— The Goblin's Notebook
Receive a short letter from the Goblin every other Sunday. One small grumble, one quiet recommendation, one anonymised finding from a shop he has read this fortnight. Free. Unsubscribe whenever the affection wears off.
— Or read the Journal first, if a sample is preferred.
— Sign-off
If you have read this far you are either his sort of merchant, or you are still deciding. Either is fine. The Goblin will be in his back room, with his loupe.
Summon the Goblin — $19 ↗— the Goblin
No follow-up sequence. No upsell. No call. One PDF, in twenty-four hours.