The 5 Things Google wants to See From Your Website

Is your website quietly sabotaging your Google rankings?

You could be doing everything right—marketing, content, offers—but if your site is missing just a few key things, Google’s quietly pushing you to the bottom of search results. And the worst part? You probably won’t even know it... until your traffic dries up.

After auditing websites for 20+ years and helping online business owners get found by the right people, I’ve seen these same overlooked mistakes hold websites back again and again.

If even one of these five red flags shows up on your site, it might be time to take action before your visibility—and your leads—disappear.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Website Red Flags Killing Your Visibility
• 1:43 Clear Purpose and Relevant Content
• 5:33 Fast Loading Speed Requirements
• 7:36 Mobile-Friendly Design Essentials
• 9:10 Creating Original, Helpful Content
• 11:35 Website Security and Final Tips

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:00

You could be doing everything right marketing content offers but your site is missing just a few key things. Google's quietly pushing you down to the bottom of the search engine results and, the worst part, you probably don't even know it until your traffic dries up. After auditing and reviewing websites for over 20 years and helping online business owners get found by the right people, I've seen the same overlooked mistakes hold websites back again and again. If one of these five red flags show up on your site, it might be time to take action before your visibility and your leads disappear. So let's dive in. Welcome to the e-commerce made easy podcast.

Carrie Saunders: 0:41

I'm your host, Carrie Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine month old. My main goal to help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I've seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech and to easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place. So sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show.

Carrie Saunders: 1:12

Today, we're talking about the five core things that Google wants to see on your site, and these are the staple things. These are the things that are ever constant and not really changing. So these are really the foundations of great search engine optimization, and we want to make sure that we are doing really well with search engine optimization, because if Google doesn't trust your website, no one's going to find it, and that is key. We want Google and the other major search engines to find your website so that you can get leads while you're sleeping, while you're being with your family and all the other things you want to be doing in your life too, because 70 to 90% of online experiences start with a search engine, but if your site isn't giving Google and the other search engines what it wants, you're invisible, you're not found. So the good news, though, is it is fixable and you don't need to be an SEO expert. So let's dive in to those top core five items we need to be doing on our website to make sure it has a strong foundation for search engine results. So the first one is actually more simple than you might think, but also can be very nuanced and a little bit hard to do, and that's clear purpose and relevance. So we want to make sure that it's very clear to Google who you help out and what you do, and this is going to be very easy for it and it's going to be very fast for it to figure that out. So when we talk about you know coming up with our ideal customer and the words they use, this is where this kind of comes into play and it's why it's so important is Google needs to know who you're speaking to. Who do you want to help? Are you a shoe store and you help runners specifically with their feet problems? Do you? Is that who you serve? Or are you a shoe store that serves the general public with comfy shoes that they love to walk around in? Specifically, who do you serve and maybe different sections of your website serve different people too. So focus those sections on those people that you generally going to have an overarching also target audience as well.

Carrie Saunders: 3:18

We want to make sure that your homepage headline, your page titles and your section headings all work together to support who you help and what you do. So it's like writing an English paper to your teacher when you're in school. We start off with a title. You know this is our main idea for the paper and then your title supports the main idea. Each of your headings major headings support that title and the subheadings support the headings above them. So it's all supportive and all related. We wanted to. We want to do that as well with our websites.

Carrie Saunders: 3:54

So if you're a course creator, helping moms start Etsy shops, for example say that in plain English. Don't be like fancy with it. You just simply say I help mom start Etsy shops. Be simple. Sometimes we try to make this too hard, make it like super. You know like we're thinking. You know we're thinking third to fifth grade level, at most seventh grade level. When we want to use copy and words on our website. The simpler the better, the easier for the user. That's fast. You know you're looking at your website fast to skim and read it. They don't really have to use a different level of their brain to read and comprehend it. That's why we want to have it in the elementary grade level, somewhere around fifth grade. Some say third, some say up to seventh. Like I said, seventh is probably the max I would want to go. We want to make it easy for them to skim and read and understand.

Carrie Saunders: 4:46

As well as Google and the major search engines is really, really important. A lot of people I see will overcomplicate this, make things sound fancy when we just need to spell it out and then we talk about this several times on the podcast is fast loading speeds. Speed and greatly impact search engine optimization and your conversions with your potential clients. Google prioritize mobile first and they want it to be fast. We need fast loading sites, especially on mobile, but it improves the user experience, so it improves the people who are using Google. They don't want to click on website links that within Google searches that are really slow. That degrades not only that website's reputation but also Google. So Google's always presenting at the top the websites that are a lot faster. So this is very important.

Carrie Saunders: 5:35

Tools like PageSpeed Insights, which is by Google. Gtmetrix is also great. I actually like to use those two Plus. I like to use Webmaster Speed Tools as well the great test. They're just great free testing tools and can really get you a good idea as to what is slowing down your website.

Carrie Saunders: 5:54

So make sure that you're compressing your images and you are using plugins that cache your webpage and you are using plugins that cache your webpage and you remove unnecessarily plugins, unnecessary plugins or scripts, especially ones you no longer use. One thing I find a lot on websites is they have website bloat because they were like, oh, let me try this add on or let me try this feature, and then they end up not liking the feature, but they don't remove that plugin or that feature and it's bogging down their site. So you can get pretty easily bloated there when you're doing that. And then what caching plugins means if you're not familiar with what that is is it's basically a snapshot. It's basically think of it like little photos. It's like photos of your website versus a moving video. So they take little snapshots of what your website was at a specific point in time and then display that to the consumer versus going off into the back end of the website and finding the latest information for it so that information gets refreshed regularly. Hopefully that makes sense. But basically a cache is a static copy of your website at a certain point in time and again, like I said, it refreshes later.

Carrie Saunders: 7:03

And then point number three is mobile friendliness. Over 60% of users are browsing on mobile and Google and the major search engines index mobile first. They do that first, so they're looking at your mobile website first before they even determine how good your desktop is. So even if you have a great optimized desktop version of your website, that's going to be overshadowed by whether your mobile is good or not first. So if your site doesn't work on phones, doesn't work on tablets or is hard to navigate, it's a major red flag and this is something I highly encourage you getting to fixing right away if you do see problems with that.

Carrie Saunders: 7:44

So test your website on your mobile phone right now. Can you easily read, click and buy? Can you schedule that call? If you don't have the other types of mobile phones, let's say you have Android and you don't have Apple. Browsers like Firefox and Chrome have a built-in tool where you can test it on the other device as well. Or use a friend this would be a great conversation with a business friend or one of your best friends. Say, hey, can we look at my website on your phone? It's a great, great conversation and just interaction in general and might get talking about what you do and who you serve, and then they might think of who they can refer to you. So it's a win-win situation. It's, you know, great socialization, which we all need a bit more, I feel like with social media and true, real socialization and is a great way to test your site.

Carrie Saunders: 8:33

And then we want to make sure we have helpful, original content. Google doesn't want just any content. Think about they are serving their customers, which are the people searching on their website. They want content that's helpful to real people who are doing the searching. That boosts confidence in that search engine, same for Bing and the other major search engines. It boosts confidence when they deliver to you what you're expecting and great value too. So we wanna think about blog posts that answer questions, service pages that are very clear and helpful and explain what you do, and product pages that don't sound AI generated, that sound like they're really talking to a human being and helping them see the benefits more over than the features on that website.

Carrie Saunders: 9:21

So if you haven't started blogging we've talked about this a few times on our podcast I highly encourage you. If that's something you want to do, start with a once a month routine for that one. I feel like once a month is the minimum and not overwhelming for those starting out, and then, if you can work it up to every other week, that's even better. When you have new, fresh content like that for blog posts, that helps Google notice you as well, because your website's not stagnant. You have new content, you are attending to it. These are signals to it that you think your website's important.

Carrie Saunders: 9:54

And if you don't think that blogging is appropriate to you, what piece of content could you create regularly? Is it adding new products? Say, you sell physical goods that you ship out? You know, adding new products or refreshing your product pages regularly is also great If you're just a service provider or coach and you don't have a whole lot of dynamic content. Doing that refresh of your website and adjusting your pages also indicates to Google that you're paying attention to your website, and it really helps. So If you want to go into blogging, though, pick one question your audience asks you and write a helpful blog post about that this week. That's my challenge to you. If you want to go on to the blogging bandwagon, if you don't feel like blogging is where you're at right now or something you want to do, pick one piece of content on your website, your service page or specific product page, and review it and revamp it and then put this on your calendar regularly so that you are looking like you're paying more attention to your website, because it's so easy to just set it and forget it. Trust me, I absolutely know. And then the last one is a bit more of a no-brainer, and everybody should be doing this.

Carrie Saunders: 11:02

Now, we do still run into this sometimes, though, is we want to make sure that your website uses HTTPS. It has to have a security certificate behind it. Now Google will penalize you heavily if you don't have an HTTPS or SSL certificate behind it. This is that little lock that's up in your search bar, and if you click in your search bar or in your URL bar, I should say excuse me, you want to make sure it says HTTPS in the front. They hide this right now. On the modern browsers. You can't see it unless you actually click up there. So click up there and make sure it says that. And if your site is showing not secure, google is very, very, very likely dinging your rankings for this. So make sure that whomever is your service provider for your website, whether it's a host or software as a service make sure that it is there. If it's software as a service, I can pretty much guarantee you do have HTTPS, so that shouldn't be a problem for you.

Carrie Saunders: 12:01

So let's wrap up what we talked about today on how. What are the basics? How do we make sure Google is happy with us? So, first off, we want to have a clear purpose and message and then support that with your headings and your subheadings and your paragraphs. We want to make sure that we have a fast website. We want to make sure it is fast on mobile and fast on desktop, and then we want to make sure that it works great on mobile, on phones, on tablets, before we even really dig into the desktop. The mobile and the tablets are really, really important. And then we want to have original, helpful content. What is your audience asking you frequently? What can you talk about that will draw them in to be curious about you and your products or your services? And then, finally, we want to have a website that is secure. We want to make sure it has an SSL certificate and is displaying the HTTPS up in the URL bar.

Carrie Saunders: 12:58

These aren't fancy marketing tricks. They are the core foundation of being found online and the core foundation of search engine optimization. A lot of people try to overcomplicate SEO anymore, and it's really not that complicated when you are looking at the basics of it Now. There are a lot of other layers you can add onto it. But if you don't have this right, adding those other layers on won't do you a whole lot of advantage until you get this right. So I encourage you to listen back through this episode again.

Carrie Saunders: 13:28

If you need to take notes and pick something to work on, pick one of these five things to double check. The last one is probably the easiest one to check off your box I'll give you a hint there and then start going through one through four and making sure that you're doing a good job on each of those. If your website isn't hitting these mark check, don't panic. Just start with one change today. So whether it's adding a stronger headline or compressing your images, pick one thing just to work on and then come back to it.

Carrie Saunders: 13:58

Make sure you schedule it in. We don't do the things we don't schedule, so make sure you're scheduling it in. And if you want us to take a quick peek at your website, you're always welcome to email us at sales at bcsengineeringcom. Just ask for me and my friendly staff will get the ticket over to me. And if this help episode helps you out, would you do me a favor? Please leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app, or share with your friend. That really helps spread the word for our podcast and helps us help others just like you, and we will see you next week.