Business
How to reach out to Geoff Atkinson: Google has a perfect world, and if you want to see long-term success with your business, it’s time your website started living in it. The most successful businesses follow Google’s ideal model, and they’ve seen some huge returns from their online efforts. In this episode, Geoff Atkinson of Huckabuy delves into that perfect world and the methods you can implement to find your place in it. Keep reading to find out more. Google’s Perfect World In Google’s perfect world, all websites would look as if they were built for Google, not humans. This is because the Google bot acts as a “bouncer” that grants your website access to the customers beyond. They’re your most important visitor, and what they look for is different from a human’s perfect website experience. These are the top 3 characteristics they look for. Fast Page Speed and Loading Time For years now, Google has hammered on the importance of having a good page speed and loading time. This is important no matter what platform is used to access your website, so much so that slower websites often see huge penalties in their search engine rankings. These penalties are largely the result of Google’s inability to fully crawl the websites. Google bots have a finite amount of time to crawl each website, and when your pages take too long, they tend to give up and move onto the next site on their list. No Complicated Coding Languages The next characteristic Google crawlers search for is flat HTML. The more simplistically your website is coded, the more likely they will be to promote it. Think of it as UX for Google. You want Google to keep coming back to your site each time you add a new page or piece of content. They won’t do that if you make it difficult to navigate with complicated coding languages. Automation of Structured Data Markup In every algorithm update over the last 5 years, Google has given more and more weight to mobile-friendliness and the structured data of websites. If your website is currently designed without flat HTML, you can benefit from structured data. This is because it helps make your website more understandable, which translates into better indexation, more clicks, more customers, and significantly higher revenue. An example of this would be rich snippets. These enable you to target users who can qualify themselves as potential customers. Don’t worry, though, a complete redesign of your website isn’t necessary to make structured data or any of the other characteristics available for Google. A new “wrinkle” in the website called dynamic rendering now makes it possible for websites to load dynamically based on what “calls” them. So when a Google bot calls up a page on your website, they’ll see a simplified version of the website you show users. Businesses that take advantage of dynamic rendering on their websites see a more defined role in Google’s perfect world than those that don’t. Google just wants to be able to access the world’s information. If you want to succeed, your website information should be made as available as possible. KEY INSIGHTS Google’s perfect world involves simple websites that load quickly. Google’s search bots give up on indexing your site if pages don’t load within a certain timeframe. Dynamic rendering is a great way to give Google a simple website without affecting customer experience. GEOFF’S TAKEAWAYS Wikipedia is a great example of Google’s perfect world. You need to put fundamental architecture into place if you want Google to index your site and know what you’re doing. Websites that get the most benefit from structured data are the ones that are difficult for Google to understand without help MORE FROM GEOFF The Huckabuy Website Geoff's LinkedIn Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on Other Platforms