How to Build a Website for Google’s Perfect World – In Just 7 Minutes with Geoff Atkinson

Resources/Links:

• Check out Geoff’s Website: https://huckabuy.com/cloud/page-speed/

Summary

Are you struggling to get your website views and interactions? Do you want to get those organically?

Are you familiar with how PageSpeed and SEO work? Did you know that it can affect how Google understands your website?

Geoff Atkinson is the former Senior Vice President of Marketing at Overstock.com. He is now the Founder-CEO of Huckabuy, an SEO software company.

In this episode, Geoff shares his insights on how you can organically increase your website’s views and interaction by knowing how Google reads and understands websites. He also shares the secrets of building a perfect website with the power of PageSpeed and SEO.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:09 – Geoff’s ideal client: “Anybody that is looking for increases in organic search traffic. So that’s really a very grad, it can be- we have e-commerce, software companies, non-profit, legal, we pretty much cover every industry.”
• 01:42 – Problem Geoff helps solve: “The problem that we solve is sites are built for humans, and they’re complex and hard for Google to understand so we solve that problem for you.”
• 02:17 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Geoff: “If you think of Google as like a black box, or you’ve never had success with SEO, if you’re sort of scratching your head, wondering what to do, the industry is a bit misleading, and so we sent to solve those questions for you.”
• 03:41 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Geoff’s solution: “Let’s say the biggest mistake is this reliance on agencies as a solution for SEO. Everybody immediately goes to outsource this problem and have an agency work on it. If you think about three main pillars of SEO, one’s link building, getting your domain authority up, one’s content, and one’s technical SEO.”
• 05:15 – Geoff’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “I think PageSpeed is becoming a really important ranking factor. In 2021, Google’s pushing a huge algorithm update called the Page Experience update. They’ve been talking about it for about nine months. PageSpeed is already a major factor but in 2021, the beginning of 2021, there’s going to be a big, big shift up, and it’s going to become even more of a factor. So, paying attention to page speed now is key.”
• 06:24 – Geoff’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Geoff’s Website: https://huckabuy.com/cloud/page-speed/
• 06:53 – Q: Why are PageSpeed and SEO important? A: SEO is important for a lot of reasons. I think of it as the oxygen of the internet, you kind of need it to survive. And it’s built a lot of huge brands. PageSpeed is important, not just for SEO, but if you think about your own interactions with sites, how quickly it loads, it’s how likely you’ll stay on the site.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“PageSpeed is important, not just for SEO, but if you think about your own interactions with sites. How quickly it loads, it's how likely you'll stay on the site.” -Geoff Atkinson Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:09
Greetings everyone in a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. I’m Tom Poland beaming out to you from Little Castaways Beach in Queensland, Australia, joined today by Geoff Atkinson. Geoff, good day, sir. A very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Geoff Atkinson 00:23
I’m in Park City, Utah, Tom. Thanks for having me on.

Tom Poland 00:25
Utah. All right. Have you voted yet?

Geoff Atkinson 00:28
Yes, I voted via mail.

Tom Poland 00:30
One day before the big day, yeah? So-

Geoff Atkinson 00:32
Yeah, that’s right.

Tom Poland 00:33
If you’re listening to this, folks, it’ll be after the presidential election but we are one day before, officially right now, drums are rolling, hearts are beating. And for those of you who don’t know Geoff, he was the former Senior Vice President of Marketing at Overstock.com. Pretty big company. He’s now the founder, CEO of Huckabuy which is an SEO software company which introduces the title of our interview quite nicely, Geoff, is “How to Build a Website for Google’s Perfect World”. And Geoff’s going to show us how to do that in just seven minutes. Geoff, our time starts now. Question number one, who is your ideal client?

Geoff Atkinson 01:09
Anybody that is looking for increases in organic search traffic. So that’s really a very grad, it can be- we have e-commerce, software companies, non-profit, legal, we pretty much cover every industry. So usually, they need a somewhat complicated site, and then we can really help them.

Tom Poland 01:25
They want to drive traffic to the website, get subscribers, convert to clients, and you’re the guy that can help them get found organically?

Geoff Atkinson 01:34
That’s correct.

Tom Poland 01:34
Right. So of course, number two, therefore, is what’s the problem you solve? We might have just covered that but did you want to elaborate on that at all?

Geoff Atkinson 01:42
Yeah, the problem that we solve is sites are built for humans, and they’re complex and hard for Google to understand so we solve that problem for you. We translate your site so that Google- it’s very easy for Google to understand. It’s very easy for them to crawl, it’s very fast. That’s the problem that we solve.

Tom Poland 01:58
Right. So, question number three is, what are some of the typical symptoms that people experience with that problem? So, someone listening to this, they’re going, “Okay, that’s me. I heard what Jeff just said about symptoms. And that’s pretty much what’s going on with our website.” What are some of those typical symptoms?

Geoff Atkinson 02:17
Yeah, if you think of Google as like a black box, or you’ve never had success with SEO, if you’re sort of scratching your head, wondering what to do, the industry is a bit misleading, and so we sent to solve those questions for you. Maybe your site’s slow, and it’s causing Google not to be able to crawl it correctly. Maybe you think you’re doing all the right things, but there are some technical obstacles that are keeping them from, you know, being able to fully index you and giving you the credit that you deserve. If you’re doing like a bunch of content, for example, and it’s just not really paying off yet. That’s kind of an indication that we could help.

Tom Poland 02:51
So, folks are doing a lot of, probably doing a lot of content blogging, and maybe podcasting and writing articles, and they’re just not moving up the organic search rankings list, right?

Geoff Atkinson 03:02
That’s correct. They have some sort of technical problem.

Tom Poland 03:05
Right, and half the time simply because the website’s not built such a way that Google can go, “Oh, that’s quite relevant.” Does that sound right?

Geoff Atkinson 03:14
Yup.

Tom Poland 03:14
Okay, cool.

Geoff Atkinson 03:14
That’s spot on.

Tom Poland 03:16
Thank you. So, four and a half minutes left. Question four, what are some of the common mistakes that people make when trying to solve that problem? I imagine, it’s almost like there’s a billboard in the middle of the desert somewhere, now I can see it, so they build a bigger billboard but how would you- because these are intelligent people, they’re wanting to get ahead, they want to get the website found on Google, they’re not going to sit on the data to do nothing. So, what are some of the things that people try that just flat out don’t work?

Geoff Atkinson 03:41
Let’s say the biggest mistake is this reliance on agencies as a solution for SEO. Everybody immediately goes to outsource this problem and have an agency work on it. If you think about three main pillars of SEO, one’s link building, getting your domain authority up, one’s content, and one’s technical SEO. The first two are way better to do internally than any other solution. And even the third, agencies don’t have the technical chops to be able to make these changes. So here you have an $80 billion industry in the United States, with an overarching net promoter score of zero. People are extremely frustrated, it’s not the solution to the problem. They keep spending money, but it’s not the solution to the problem. There’s this constant friction between people that are wanting to grow their SEO and organic search, and those that provide for them being agencies primarily, that can’t fix the problem. And so, thinking about the first two done internally, and maybe the third, they’re done with a buyer internally as well. You’re just going to get better results than a typical route.

Tom Poland 04:44
Right. Thank you for that. And often what happens with agencies is that you pay them for three months or so and nothing happens or six months or even 12 months. Sometimes nothing happens and you write them a “Dear John” email.

Geoff Atkinson 04:58
Yeah, there was a reason that it’s constant churn, right? What agency- interactions around us. Yeah.

Tom Poland 05:02
100%. All right, so what’s one valuable free action this is question five. Two and a half minutes left. What’s one valuable free action that someone listening to this could take? It’s not going to solve the whole problem, but it might take them a step in the right direction.

Geoff Atkinson 05:15
Yeah, you know, I think PageSpeed is becoming a really important ranking factor. In 2021, Google’s pushing a huge algorithm update called the Page Experience update. They’ve been talking about it for about nine months. PageSpeed is already a major factor but in 2021, the beginning of 2021, there’s going to be a big, big shift up, and it’s going to become even more of a factor. So, paying attention to page speed now is key. If you go to Huckabuy, you can hop on, go to our PageSpeed page, you can navigate from the top navigation, and we’ll give you information about what it is, what’s coming down the pipe, and also how prepared are you. So, we’ll actually analyze the site, tell you where you can improve, tell you if you use our PageSpeed product, what the outcome would be. But it’s something that prep for now is this will probably be the biggest update they’ve done in about five years, and it’s totally focused around PageSpeed.

Tom Poland 06:07
Wow. So, the rules are going to change again. Forgive me, but what is PageSpeed?

Geoff Atkinson 06:12
PageSpeed is simply how fast does your site load. So, Google’s in a computer, and if they come to crawl, and it’s taking three to 10 seconds to crawl, they’re going to move on and go out there. So how fast your PageSpeed.

Tom Poland 06:23
All right.

Geoff Atkinson 06:24
Yep.

Tom Poland 06:24
80 seconds left, two questions to go. One valuable free resource we could direct people to and I’m going to steal your thunder on this because I’ve already got it just for the sake of time. Huckabuy, H-U-C-K-A-B-U-Y .com, huckabuy.com/cloud/page-speed. That’s one I just mentioned, actually. So, let’s go there, folks, and just see if you’re ready for 2021! Question number seven, and just a minute left, what’s the one question I should have asked you, but didn’t, Geoff?

Geoff Atkinson 06:53
I’d say, you know, overarchingly why PageSpeed and SEO are important. SEO is important for a lot of reasons. I think of it as the oxygen of the internet, you kind of need it to survive. And it’s built a lot of huge brands. PageSpeed is important, not just for SEO, but if you think about your own interactions with sites, how quickly it loads, it’s how likely you’ll stay on the site. So, it has a huge effect on bounce rates, conversion rates, things that people don’t really pay attention to, but it’s probably the most important metric that’s ignored.

Tom Poland 07:22
This is- Geoff, thanks so much for your time. This is an absolute game-changer, isn’t it? And it’s coming soon your way. You’re coming soon to you, a website near you!

Geoff Atkinson 07:32
That’s correct.

Tom Poland 07:33
Once again, thanks so much for your time and your insights. Appreciate it!

Geoff Atkinson 07:36
Thank you, Tom.

Tom Poland 07:38
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.