Privacy Policy
This policy was last updated on 6 August 2026
This is a personal portfolio and blog, not a business collecting customer data. There are no accounts, no forms, and no mailing list. The short version: analytics is the only thing here that touches your data, it is switched off until you say otherwise, and you can change your mind at any time.
This policy sets out the basis on which any personal information is processed. It works within the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Who We Are
This website is liamhayward.co.uk, run by Liam Hayward, an SEO specialist based in the United Kingdom. It exists to publish writing, document professional experience, and host a few free SEO tools. It carries no advertising, no affiliate links, and no sponsored content.
Liam Hayward is the data controller for this website. Questions about this policy can be sent to this address .
What We Collect
There are no contact forms, no sign-ups, and no accounts on this website, so you cannot submit personal details to it even if you wanted to. Nothing you type is stored on our servers.
If you choose to email us, we hold that correspondence in our email account for as long as it is useful to the conversation. That is ordinary email, not a database.
When you visit, and only once you have consented, our analytics tools collect technical information about the session:
- Pages viewed and time spent on each.
- Where you arrived from, such as a search engine or another website.
- Browser, device type, and operating system.
- Approximate location, at country or region level, derived from your IP address by the analytics provider.
- Interactions with the page, such as scroll depth and clicks.
This is collected in aggregate and is not used to work out who you are.
The SEO Tools
The tools at /tools/ ask you to paste a URL. That URL is sent to our Cloudflare Worker, which fetches the page you named, analyses it, and returns the result to your browser. The URL is used for that request and nothing else. It is not written to a database, because this website has no database attached to it, and it is not retained after the response is sent.
Please do not paste URLs containing private tokens or session identifiers into these tools, or into any tool like them.
How We Use It
Analytics tells us which articles are worth writing more of, where people lose interest, and whether the tools are being used. It informs what gets published and what gets fixed. It is not used for advertising, for building a profile of you, or for sharing with anyone for commercial purposes.
Analytics and Cookies
Our Cookie Policy is the authoritative account of what is set, when, and for how long. In summary:
- Google Tag Manager (Google LLC) delivers the tools below and enforces your consent choice. It sets no cookies and collects nothing on its own.
- Google Analytics 4 (Google LLC) provides aggregate traffic statistics. It loads for every visitor, but until you accept it runs in a consent-denied state that sets no cookies and creates no identifier for you.
- Microsoft Clarity (Microsoft Corporation) provides heat maps and session recordings. It does not load at all until you accept.
- Ahrefs Web Analytics (Ahrefs Pte. Ltd.) is cookieless and stores nothing in your browser, so it does not rely on consent.
Our lawful basis for Google Analytics and Clarity is your consent, under regulation 6 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 and Article 6(1)(a) of the UK GDPR. You can withdraw it at any time on the Cookie Policy page, which takes effect immediately and deletes the analytics cookies this website is able to reach.
We run no advertising here and set no advertising cookies of our own.
Where the Information Goes
This website is hosted on Cloudflare Workers. Cloudflare processes request metadata, including IP addresses, for security and performance, as described in Cloudflare's privacy policy.
Analytics data is processed by Google, Microsoft, and Ahrefs on their own infrastructure, under their own privacy terms. We hold no analytics database of our own. Where those providers store or process data outside the UK, they do so under the safeguards recognised in UK data protection law: an adequacy decision, including the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, the International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.
How Long It Is Kept
Analytics data is retained by each provider according to that provider's retention settings, for as long as it is useful for understanding how the site is used. Your consent decision is stored in your browser, not by us, and expires after 12 months, at which point you are asked again.
Links to Other Websites
Links out from this website are provided for convenience and are not an endorsement of the destination or its operator. Once you follow one, this policy no longer applies, and we accept no responsibility for what happens there.
Your Rights
Under the UK GDPR you have the right to access personal data held about you, to have it corrected or deleted, to object to or restrict its processing, to have it transferred to another controller, and to withdraw consent at any time.
To exercise any of these, or if you believe something we process about you is wrong, please get in touch and we will look into it. If you are not satisfied with the response, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
Further Information
General information about cookies is available at allaboutcookies.org. For Google Analytics, see Google's summary of how it uses data. For Microsoft Clarity, see the Microsoft Privacy Statement.
Changes to This Policy
This policy is updated when the site's behaviour changes. The date at the top reflects the most recent revision.