January 15, 2024 • 27 mins
Unlock the secrets of a powerful online presence with none other than web guru Brandon Phillips, who joins us to dissect what transforms a website from good to exceptional. Say goodbye to the idea of static digital billboards and hello to dynamic, engaging platforms that not only catch Google's eye but captivate your customers. We're peeling back the layers of the digital realm, focusing on user experience signals like site speed and relevance through the lens of finding a reliable heavy-duty towing service. Let's navigate the journey together, learning how to craft websites that are not just seen but remembered.
As we explore the vast landscape of WordPress, we affirm its position as a cornerstone in the world of web development. Get the inside scoop on why a mobile-friendly, user-centric design isn't just a luxury—it's a necessity. We'll break down the nuances of website builders versus content management systems, comparing the flexible, customizable nature of WordPress to the more rigid structures of platforms like Wix and Squarespace. Equipped with tools like the Lighthouse report and rich results report, this episode is your blueprint to constructing a website that's not just a digital destination but a journey toward unmatched online authority and lead generation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It is 2024, a new year is upon us, and that means
it's time to tackle one of themost bothersome things, at least
to me, in our industry whatmakes a good website?
Hello everyone, and welcome toanother exciting episode of the
(00:21):
Google Business Buzz.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm a Jay and that's hey, andrew, what's going on?
Everybody, we got a good onefor you.
Today, we are joined by our ownweb guru, the man himself,
brandon Phillips.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hi everybody, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thanks for joining us .
Thank you, Brandon, for takingsome time out of your day to
join us in our mission toeducate the small business owner
on the best ways to market andadvertise online, Because
there's so many options, so muchconfusion.
I wanted to present them withsome actionable recommendations
(01:01):
here.
So let's get started, Jay.
What do we have planned for thepeople?
Speaker 1 (01:07):
100%.
So what we got planned for thepeople everyone is a
supercharged episode all aboutwebsites.
Now it is 2024, a new year isupon us, and that means it's
time to tackle one of the mostbothersome things, at least to
me, in our industry what makes agood website?
This is kind of a myth or afable, depending on who you talk
(01:27):
to.
Everyone kind of makes up theirown answer to that question,
and it really bothers me because, for the small business owner,
for you, our audience, I needyou to understand that there is
a professional standard in thisindustry for what a good website
means and one that can bebeneficial for you.
There is a way to measure this,there is a way to see this and
there is kind of a convention wecan all agree on, and it starts
(01:47):
with understanding a few things.
So the website obviously is youronline business space and
there's a digital storefrontwhere people can find
information about your productsand services.
That's obvious, but what Ireally want to bring it to is
how that website ranks iseverything, and that is because,
ladies and gentlemen, the goalof a website obviously is to
(02:08):
attract people in, get themfamiliar with you, working with
you, purchasing your productsand services and having a great
user experience, and so we cannever neglect the website.
Now we have the man, the myth,the legend, our very own web
manager here, brandon here totell us all about the website
later on in the episode.
But first, before we go intonitty gritty about the website,
(02:28):
about builders, we're going toget into common sense advice and
kind of checkpoints you shouldlook for.
We first need to talk aboutunderstanding the customer, and
to do that we must understandthe customer journey.
So Henry is going to share hisscreen and talk a little bit
about what that customer journeylooks like and show you a case
of a good website and whatpeople see, and we're going to
(02:50):
get into all that.
So, without further ado, henry,take us away.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Thank you, jay.
When we do the search for heavyduty towing service in Sparci's
Nevada, we see a few differentresults.
The top three results are theones that are going to get the
most actions right Red clicks,direction requests, even phone
calls.
But why are these businesses onthose top three spots right?
(03:22):
Why are they ranking so high?
This area, which shows the mapin any given location, is also
influenced by the organic rankand this is why a website is
very important, Because Googleis taking that into
consideration when they'recreating this search engine
(03:43):
results page for the user thatis stuck on the side of the road
in Sparci's Nevada.
Google is looking at theirlocation, google is looking at
what their intent is and thekeywords that they're using and
they're cross referencing thatwith the Google Business
Profiles, the information onthat Google Business Profile and
(04:04):
the websites that areassociated with those Google
Business Profiles.
And when everything aligns andwhen Google receives the correct
signals from a website, thenthat allows for Google to apply
a better prominence ranking tothe Google Business Profile.
(04:24):
So we know that Google is 25years old and they started out
only with these 10 links, theirorganic links.
They ended up iterating on thatand creating what's now a very,
very comprehensive searchengine with all kinds of
(04:45):
different options, but itstarted out with these 10 links.
This ranking, this organicranking, affects Google's local
ranking, and we know that awebsite's quality score can also
affect their Google ads qualityscore.
So all of these things worktogether, not just because of
(05:07):
Google's algorithm.
It's because of the user'sexperience, which is primarily
what Google is looking toreplicate with their algorithms.
They can't physically go tothese businesses and test them
out to see what kind ofexperience they give their
customers.
What they can do is createsimulations using different
(05:32):
signals to try to aspire to getas close as a human being as
possible.
So if a website is slow, baduser experience.
If the website doesn't havethose keywords in the headers or
in the metadata, bad userexperience.
And this is all you know.
(05:53):
Really, this is all publicinformation that anybody can
find online, and now I'm goingto pass it over here to my
colleague, brandon Phillips,who's going to go into why these
websites are showing up so high.
Right?
What are these particularsignals that Google is looking
(06:13):
for?
Because it's not black andwhite.
We definitely have to keep upto date, because Google changes
their algorithms.
They change their articles andguidelines frequently, and if
we're not up to date, ourclients suffer, and if a
business isn't up to date, doingit themselves, they're going to
suffer.
(06:33):
So, bp, take us through it.
I'm going to stop sharing hereand give you the screen.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
All right.
Well, thanks, henry, for thegreat intro there and thanks to
Jay for getting us on track.
The idea of a website issomething like AJ was saying at
the very beginning, somethinglike it's misunderstood very
much.
Many folks like to consider awebsite as being like a virtual
(07:01):
billboard, where it's just aplace for it to look attractive
and appealing and to relay someinformation.
That point of view is reallyoutdated in the current climate
of where things are.
In addition to theforward-facing, user-facing
parts of the website, thebillboard-type parts of the
(07:24):
website that you actually seevisually, there are also a ton
of things that are going onbehind the scenes, on the back
end, that won't be apparent tosomebody who's visiting the
website but will matter a greatdeal to Google.
Who is actually running theseanalyses, like Henry was saying,
to actually determine whereyour site is going to rank,
(07:49):
because everybody wants thenumber one spot, but how do you
actually decide who gets there?
So with that, I'm going to chata little bit about both the
things your users will see on awebsite and the things they want
.
So, first and foremost, one ofthe things that most people
consider off the bat is thedesign of the website.
(08:11):
This boils down to largely apurely user experience-based
decision.
A user who's going to yourwebsite wants to see information
that is organized, well-styled,not distracting or difficult
for them to digest.
They want to be able to seewhat your business does in a
(08:35):
snapshot sort of way.
So with this site, I'm sharinga quick example of one of the
considerations we do, for thatis the opening heading, and this
is something that matters toGoogle a lot as well.
This heading here you can see,does a great job of capturing
everything about this businesshere.
(08:55):
So, even if you know nothingabout Grand River Express Towing
, now that you've visited thewebsite here before doing
anything else, you're given lotsof great information.
You're given what they do,which is roadside rescue, you're
given their location Detroit,michigan and you're given a way
(09:15):
to contact them all withouthaving to move your mouse at all
.
This is good website design.
It gives your users exactlywhat they're looking for in the
easiest to digest manner thatthey can immediately go right in
and make whatever decisionthey're trying to make on your
website.
Another factor to consider thatmany people overlook is not
(09:40):
just how your site looks on adesktop, but on a mobile device.
Nowadays, over 50% of websitetraffic is taking place over a
mobile device.
That number is correct, right,gentlemen?
50% are more these days.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Majority.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And Google even uses mobilefirst indexing in their
algorithm because of this.
So yeah, this is an increasing,so 50% is being generous, I
think that right.
Right More yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So, um, as Henry said , mobile first is is truly the
the way Google looks at thingsthese days.
So the way a site looks on amobile device is something that
absolutely must be considered.
Now, here at OMG, and, and anyreputable website design company
(10:36):
should be creating a website.
That is what we call responsive.
What that basically means is,in this example you can see,
when I resized the, the windowhere, the website automatically
restructured itself to match.
That means going back to theuser experience.
That means when a user pullsthis up on their iPhone, when
(10:59):
they're stuck on the side of theroad, for example, when they
might need it most, they'restill able to get the
information on this website in away that that isn't difficult
for them to read, or anythinglike that.
You can see these boxes heregive a good example, as well as
the menu.
When we increase the size ofthe window, you can see these
boxes respond in a way thatlooks best at any width.
(11:23):
So that is another thing thatwe consider when we're doing A
website.
As far as the front user facingaspect, now to pivot on that,
the things you can't see I havea report here Now this before I
get into it.
This is a tool that is calledLighthouse.
(11:44):
It is the the page analysistool that Google themselves has
have adopted to dig in andactually get usable metrics on a
website.
Now, many I won't say every, butmany many different companies
and marketing agencies and this,and that they have a bunch of
(12:08):
different scanners that thatthey use to try and get people
to kind of run these scans andthey give different pieces of
information.
Some are usable, some are not.
Some are usable, some are not.
But in those cases it's kind ofbuyer beware, because while
these scan tools may be helpful,if it's something that was
(12:32):
developed by a third partycompany, there's really no way
of validating that Google islooking at the same things that
this whatever scan tool may belooking at.
It may give you goodinformation, but there's no way
to actually validate that fixingthose things will directly
translate into what Google islooking for.
(12:53):
That's why we go withLighthouse here.
Whenever we do our internaltesting.
This tool here, which, which wecan provide the link to you,
we'll be able to put it up foryou.
It's page feed webdev.
This is the same exact toolthat Google uses and these are
the same exact for metrics thatGoogle uses as well Performance,
(13:14):
accessibility, desk practicesand SEO.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That is such useful information that I want to
highlight that out and bringthat out to the audience.
So, audience, I know you'relistening.
What he just told you is key.
He said that when folks sellwebsites in our industry,
oftentimes companies will comeup with their own little scans,
and these scans are the bane ofeveryone's existence.
Right?
They sometimes companies willmake you to believe like your
site is, you know, not doingvery well, and that may not be
(13:40):
the case.
What Brandon is showing youhere is the industry gold
standard One of many to evaluateof a site is really good in the
eyes of Google.
It's not what random companyABCD thinks, it's what Google
thinks, because Google isultimately the one crawling,
indexing and doing theirsimulation, their assessment of
how good this website is in reallife to the actual human user
(14:02):
that's going to be on it.
They don't get it perfect, butthey're trying, and this web,
this report right here, thisLighthouse report, is the way to
do that.
So don't let yourself getmisled If someone is telling you
that your website isn't, youknow, performing very good.
Second, second, guess that goto this page, speedwebdev, click
on mobile here and put in theURL of your website and then
(14:22):
you're going to get some actualbasis in reality for how this
website is.
What are some key performanceindicators this website, how
does it fair on performance,accessibility, best practices,
seo?
We're going to demystify thisand we're going to keep it away
from this agency paywall whereyou know these guys tell you all
this rubbish and we want tobring it back into real,
concrete tools that you can use,and so here is one.
(14:43):
So, thank you, brandon, keepgoing.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
The first thing that gets overlooked on this report a
lot is the size of the assetson the page, namely the images.
When adding images to a website, always, always, always, make
sure to compress any imagesbefore you upload, because
visually to a user you can havean image that's two, three, four
(15:06):
times as large as thecompressed version.
That visually looks nodifferent to the user.
So it's really just taking upextra space on the website for
no reason at all.
Other factors that affect thisreport are, like I said, we can
go on and on and on.
There are factors for how cleanthe scripts are running on the
(15:30):
page and other matters as wellthat are gonna vary from case to
case.
So I wanted to show everyonethis tool and just kind of
demystify that aspect for alittle bit.
We also have something that weimplement on the back of our
sites, known as the localbusiness schema, and I'm gonna
(15:51):
take a breath if Henry wants totalk a little bit about this
schema, because I can see yousmiling and I know this is your
thing.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Absolutely.
Thanks for bringing that up.
So, local business schema well,schema in general is basically
a way for search engines toquickly identify the kind of
website that you have and theinformation on that website.
So, way back when, the bigsearch engines came together and
(16:22):
they made an agreement and youcan find this on schemaorg to
use these scripts to quicklyidentify these different data
points on a website.
So what I did here is againused another one of Google's own
tools, the rich results test,and you just quickly Google rich
(16:47):
results test and it'll pop up.
All I did was click or copy andpaste the URL and I get all of
our different schema markups.
We have hours of operation, wehave telephones, we have the has
map, which is how we connectthe Google business profiles to
(17:11):
the website.
So all of this data is quicklyindexed by Google, by Bing, by
Yahoo, by DuckDuckGo, apple Allof these different search
engines quickly go to this andgrabs that information, and this
helps our clients and thewebsite gain authority, because
(17:32):
that's what it's all about.
Google is looking forexperience, expertise, authority
and trust.
Just got to know a little aboutcoding and if you don't know
about coding, well, omg,national, omg, toe marketing can
take care of that.
Am I right, guys?
100%.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
That's what we're here for, 100%.
Well, awesome, henry, thanksfor the insight there.
I knew you could do an evenbetter job of me than of taking
everybody through the localbusiness there, so Pish.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Posh BP.
Thank you, bro, Thank you, Iappreciate that.
So let's see what are yourtakeaways here from what we've
gone over until now, cause Ilove how you sum everything up.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
My takeaways, man, and to everyone listening, is
that the website is not just abillboard.
I love that sentiment from BP.
I mean, this isn't 1300.
We're not drawing our websitein the sand.
This is a mobile, friendly,frantic, high-paced world we
live in and everyone wantseverything all the time at the
touch of their fingertips.
And so the website goes awayfrom being this mystical thing
(18:38):
for which everyone has their ownyardstick by which they measure
it.
And now we should have learnedthat there is now a lighthouse
report we can use to simulatethe user experience to Google
how they see it.
That's component number one and,in my opinion, the report Henry
showed you, guys, the richresults report will also show
you important things like theschema.
Schema is a big word when youtalk about websites, cause it's
(18:58):
basically just long story, shortcode that's specific to that
industry, among other thingsthat's embedded in the website
that makes it more relevant towhat that advertiser is doing
with that website in the eyes ofGoogle.
So we've learned about thelighthouse report, we've learned
about the schema, we've learnedabout having everything quickly
accessible at a glance to usersand making that journey
(19:21):
seamless.
And I think the only thing wehaven't really covered,
gentlemen, is the differencebetween we deal a lot with
custom WordPress sites and thatis somewhat, at least to me, an
industry gold standard for manyuse cases.
I think there's a lot ofconfusion with builders, or CMSs
, as I believe they're called.
I think, really quickly, weshould touch on the pros and
(19:43):
cons of using a custom WordPresssite, as OMG national does, as
OMG toe marketing does, kind ofan industry gold standard, as
opposed to the tempting, cheaperoption of getting one of these
cookie cutter sites.
So let's touch on that realquickly.
I think that'll have some valueto the small business owners
watching and listening.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yes, to start off, the reason I wanted to spend the
first part of my time heretalking about all of the things
that we do and pay attention tois to help people realize what
Taking on the task of building awebsite really entails, because
(20:21):
what we see a lot of is people.
People will Start a website andthey'll get something, even
that may end up looking visuallygood, but they may leave out
some of these behind-the-scenesfactors and they find themselves
frustrating, not findingsuccess on Google, on Getting
leads, because they theirwebsite is still not ranking and
(20:41):
and they have trouble figuringout why.
So To to kind of around roundeverything altogether, I'll
cover some of the most popularof the CMS's which that's short
for content management systemwhich what that means is
basically some sort of platformthat controls and helps you to
manage your website files.
(21:02):
Nowadays, it's very rare tofind somebody who's actually
typing out HTML code, line byline, to make their their
website.
We have so many tools nowadaysto help so that even somebody
who doesn't have a strong webdevelopment or coding background
Can still make these thingshappen if they're careful in
their choices and they payattention to these things.
(21:24):
So Some of the the most popularpaid CMS is out there.
You've probably seenadvertisements for them on TV or
anywhere else.
They're not without merit, butit's important to know which
ones they are and to know kindof how they work.
So you've probably heard ofsome like Wix or a Squarespace
(21:46):
or the go-daddy website builderis is also very popular that
that's based on a system calledDuda.
These platforms are all Goodfor for introductory level folks
who are looking to get theirfeet wet with with the website
development.
The drawback of many of theseis they tend to be very
(22:09):
templated.
They tend to be veryCookie-cutter in in what you can
actually design and build, andthere are also Oftentimes
restrictions on what sort ofthird-party integrations we can
set up or things like that.
If it's a very simpleinformational site using one of
(22:32):
these options, maybe all right,if you pay attention to all of
the other things that that gointo a successful website as
well.
Now there's another anotherfield here for for the CMS's.
Those would be the more opensource options.
Some of those would be jumlah,is is a popular one, as well as
(22:55):
Drupal and and kind of kind ofthe king of the the CMS is
saving the best for last is onethat we use here, called
WordPress.
Now, all three of those that Ijust named are open source,
meaning that they can bedownloaded and installed For
free with an open license foruse on on any commercial website
(23:16):
.
There's there's no restrictionor cost to downloading and using
these platforms.
The reason we go with WordPressis Well, there's a few different
reasons why we choose it.
One is Flexibility.
Wordpress is very, very widelysupported.
In fact, 43% of websites noware built in WordPress,
(23:40):
approaching half of the internet.
So Really, you couldn't ask fora more widely supported system.
If you look at, if you look atthe pie chart of the matter, we
see WordPress would be occupyingalmost half, and then all of
the other Others that Imentioned are kind of fighting
for for a second place on on theother side, but it's it's
(24:03):
spaced pretty evenly betweenthem.
So all of that to say that ifYou're using WordPress as your
chosen system, it is far morelikely that any third-party
integration you're working withwill be supported by WordPress.
Well, what's a third-partyintegration?
Well, towers, for example, wehave lots, lots of Tow truckers
(24:28):
who come to us a lot of timesthey'll want to do something
like Embed a form for somebodyto search for a vehicle and an
impounded vehicle or somethinglike that.
So they can, somebody can logon and see where's my car we do
have my car, etc.
That's a third-partyintegration, often with towbook
or or another platform that withWordPress we can easily
(24:49):
integrate it with just a littlebit of know-how.
Another example of a realtor.
Realtors, of course, want tohave their property listings
appear on their site.
That's kind of their whole, thewhole point of what they want
to showcase.
So other platforms hit or missas far as success, but Just
(25:11):
about every major IDX or MLSintegration that's the system
that controls the, the actuallistings of the properties,
every, every major one of thoseis is supported easily by
WordPress.
So these are some of thereasons why we choose to go with
WordPress.
There's no overhead cost to usethe system.
(25:31):
It's widely supported.
And the third major reason isthe support that WordPress has
from its plugins.
What a plugin is is it'sbasically a mini application
that can be installed and run onthe WordPress site.
Many of them are available forfree and Some are are a paid
(25:56):
plugin, but it would give you avery specific capability on your
own capability on your websitethat it might not be possible
for somebody to come up withOtherwise, depending on the
situation.
It could depend on what's goingon, but an example that just
jumps to mind would be, ifsomebody wants a custom shipping
(26:17):
quote, to know exactly how muchit's going to cost to ship from
point A to point B On apre-built website ora
template-based website thatactually might be a pretty big
challenge for somebody toovercome, but with WordPress we
can simply go to US PostalService or we can go to UPS,
fedex, whichever platform theywant to use, download the plugin
(26:37):
, set it up on the back end ofthe website to get it integrated
and then boom, they get thatinformation.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It sounds like and thank you for that always a
treasure trove of information,brandon that WordPress is the
way to go for a website that'sgoing to grow and be able to be
changed and modified for yourbusiness.
So it may be tempting, ladiesand gentlemen, to go with a CMS
and go for the cheaper option,but that may come back to bite
you later when you want thatwebsite to do things that the
platform simply doesn't allowfor, and so that's why we at OMG
(27:08):
National, omg Tome Marketing,are going to continue to
champion WordPress.
And so, ladies and gentlemen,there was a ton of information
coming your way today, and Ithink all of it is stuff that
you need to know in 2024 andbeyond.
As always, it was an utterpleasure to kick it with you
guys and gals out there.
So, from all of us at OMG, wewish you a happy new year and a
(27:31):
prosperous 2024.
And thanks for kicking with us.
Until the next time, pleaselike, share, comment, subscribe
and we'll see you on the trail.
Bye, bye.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
See you everybody.
It is 2024, a new year is upon us, and that means
it's time to tackle one of themost bothersome things, at least
to me, in our industry whatmakes a good website?
Hello everyone, and welcome toanother exciting episode of the
(00:21):
Google Business Buzz.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm a Jay and that's hey, andrew, what's going on?
Everybody, we got a good onefor you.
Today, we are joined by our ownweb guru, the man himself,
brandon Phillips.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Hi everybody, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Thanks for joining us .
Thank you, Brandon, for takingsome time out of your day to
join us in our mission toeducate the small business owner
on the best ways to market andadvertise online, Because
there's so many options, so muchconfusion.
I wanted to present them withsome actionable recommendations
(01:01):
here.
So let's get started, Jay.
What do we have planned for thepeople?
Speaker 1 (01:07):
100%.
So what we got planned for thepeople everyone is a
supercharged episode all aboutwebsites.
Now it is 2024, a new year isupon us, and that means it's
time to tackle one of the mostbothersome things, at least to
me, in our industry what makes agood website?
This is kind of a myth or afable, depending on who you talk
(01:27):
to.
Everyone kind of makes up theirown answer to that question,
and it really bothers me because, for the small business owner,
for you, our audience, I needyou to understand that there is
a professional standard in thisindustry for what a good website
means and one that can bebeneficial for you.
There is a way to measure this,there is a way to see this and
there is kind of a convention wecan all agree on, and it starts
(01:47):
with understanding a few things.
So the website obviously is youronline business space and
there's a digital storefrontwhere people can find
information about your productsand services.
That's obvious, but what Ireally want to bring it to is
how that website ranks iseverything, and that is because,
ladies and gentlemen, the goalof a website obviously is to
(02:08):
attract people in, get themfamiliar with you, working with
you, purchasing your productsand services and having a great
user experience, and so we cannever neglect the website.
Now we have the man, the myth,the legend, our very own web
manager here, brandon here totell us all about the website
later on in the episode.
But first, before we go intonitty gritty about the website,
(02:28):
about builders, we're going toget into common sense advice and
kind of checkpoints you shouldlook for.
We first need to talk aboutunderstanding the customer, and
to do that we must understandthe customer journey.
So Henry is going to share hisscreen and talk a little bit
about what that customer journeylooks like and show you a case
of a good website and whatpeople see, and we're going to
(02:50):
get into all that.
So, without further ado, henry,take us away.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Thank you, jay.
When we do the search for heavyduty towing service in Sparci's
Nevada, we see a few differentresults.
The top three results are theones that are going to get the
most actions right Red clicks,direction requests, even phone
calls.
But why are these businesses onthose top three spots right?
(03:22):
Why are they ranking so high?
This area, which shows the mapin any given location, is also
influenced by the organic rankand this is why a website is
very important, Because Googleis taking that into
consideration when they'recreating this search engine
(03:43):
results page for the user thatis stuck on the side of the road
in Sparci's Nevada.
Google is looking at theirlocation, google is looking at
what their intent is and thekeywords that they're using and
they're cross referencing thatwith the Google Business
Profiles, the information onthat Google Business Profile and
(04:04):
the websites that areassociated with those Google
Business Profiles.
And when everything aligns andwhen Google receives the correct
signals from a website, thenthat allows for Google to apply
a better prominence ranking tothe Google Business Profile.
(04:24):
So we know that Google is 25years old and they started out
only with these 10 links, theirorganic links.
They ended up iterating on thatand creating what's now a very,
very comprehensive searchengine with all kinds of
(04:45):
different options, but itstarted out with these 10 links.
This ranking, this organicranking, affects Google's local
ranking, and we know that awebsite's quality score can also
affect their Google ads qualityscore.
So all of these things worktogether, not just because of
(05:07):
Google's algorithm.
It's because of the user'sexperience, which is primarily
what Google is looking toreplicate with their algorithms.
They can't physically go tothese businesses and test them
out to see what kind ofexperience they give their
customers.
What they can do is createsimulations using different
(05:32):
signals to try to aspire to getas close as a human being as
possible.
So if a website is slow, baduser experience.
If the website doesn't havethose keywords in the headers or
in the metadata, bad userexperience.
And this is all you know.
(05:53):
Really, this is all publicinformation that anybody can
find online, and now I'm goingto pass it over here to my
colleague, brandon Phillips,who's going to go into why these
websites are showing up so high.
Right?
What are these particularsignals that Google is looking
(06:13):
for?
Because it's not black andwhite.
We definitely have to keep upto date, because Google changes
their algorithms.
They change their articles andguidelines frequently, and if
we're not up to date, ourclients suffer, and if a
business isn't up to date, doingit themselves, they're going to
suffer.
(06:33):
So, bp, take us through it.
I'm going to stop sharing hereand give you the screen.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
All right.
Well, thanks, henry, for thegreat intro there and thanks to
Jay for getting us on track.
The idea of a website issomething like AJ was saying at
the very beginning, somethinglike it's misunderstood very
much.
Many folks like to consider awebsite as being like a virtual
(07:01):
billboard, where it's just aplace for it to look attractive
and appealing and to relay someinformation.
That point of view is reallyoutdated in the current climate
of where things are.
In addition to theforward-facing, user-facing
parts of the website, thebillboard-type parts of the
(07:24):
website that you actually seevisually, there are also a ton
of things that are going onbehind the scenes, on the back
end, that won't be apparent tosomebody who's visiting the
website but will matter a greatdeal to Google.
Who is actually running theseanalyses, like Henry was saying,
to actually determine whereyour site is going to rank,
(07:49):
because everybody wants thenumber one spot, but how do you
actually decide who gets there?
So with that, I'm going to chata little bit about both the
things your users will see on awebsite and the things they want
.
So, first and foremost, one ofthe things that most people
consider off the bat is thedesign of the website.
(08:11):
This boils down to largely apurely user experience-based
decision.
A user who's going to yourwebsite wants to see information
that is organized, well-styled,not distracting or difficult
for them to digest.
They want to be able to seewhat your business does in a
(08:35):
snapshot sort of way.
So with this site, I'm sharinga quick example of one of the
considerations we do, for thatis the opening heading, and this
is something that matters toGoogle a lot as well.
This heading here you can see,does a great job of capturing
everything about this businesshere.
(08:55):
So, even if you know nothingabout Grand River Express Towing
, now that you've visited thewebsite here before doing
anything else, you're given lotsof great information.
You're given what they do,which is roadside rescue, you're
given their location Detroit,michigan and you're given a way
(09:15):
to contact them all withouthaving to move your mouse at all
.
This is good website design.
It gives your users exactlywhat they're looking for in the
easiest to digest manner thatthey can immediately go right in
and make whatever decisionthey're trying to make on your
website.
Another factor to consider thatmany people overlook is not
(09:40):
just how your site looks on adesktop, but on a mobile device.
Nowadays, over 50% of websitetraffic is taking place over a
mobile device.
That number is correct, right,gentlemen?
50% are more these days.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Majority.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And Google even uses mobilefirst indexing in their
algorithm because of this.
So yeah, this is an increasing,so 50% is being generous, I
think that right.
Right More yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So, um, as Henry said , mobile first is is truly the
the way Google looks at thingsthese days.
So the way a site looks on amobile device is something that
absolutely must be considered.
Now, here at OMG, and, and anyreputable website design company
(10:36):
should be creating a website.
That is what we call responsive.
What that basically means is,in this example you can see,
when I resized the, the windowhere, the website automatically
restructured itself to match.
That means going back to theuser experience.
That means when a user pullsthis up on their iPhone, when
(10:59):
they're stuck on the side of theroad, for example, when they
might need it most, they'restill able to get the
information on this website in away that that isn't difficult
for them to read, or anythinglike that.
You can see these boxes heregive a good example, as well as
the menu.
When we increase the size ofthe window, you can see these
boxes respond in a way thatlooks best at any width.
(11:23):
So that is another thing thatwe consider when we're doing A
website.
As far as the front user facingaspect, now to pivot on that,
the things you can't see I havea report here Now this before I
get into it.
This is a tool that is calledLighthouse.
(11:44):
It is the the page analysistool that Google themselves has
have adopted to dig in andactually get usable metrics on a
website.
Now, many I won't say every, butmany many different companies
and marketing agencies and this,and that they have a bunch of
(12:08):
different scanners that thatthey use to try and get people
to kind of run these scans andthey give different pieces of
information.
Some are usable, some are not.
Some are usable, some are not.
But in those cases it's kind ofbuyer beware, because while
these scan tools may be helpful,if it's something that was
(12:32):
developed by a third partycompany, there's really no way
of validating that Google islooking at the same things that
this whatever scan tool may belooking at.
It may give you goodinformation, but there's no way
to actually validate that fixingthose things will directly
translate into what Google islooking for.
(12:53):
That's why we go withLighthouse here.
Whenever we do our internaltesting.
This tool here, which, which wecan provide the link to you,
we'll be able to put it up foryou.
It's page feed webdev.
This is the same exact toolthat Google uses and these are
the same exact for metrics thatGoogle uses as well Performance,
(13:14):
accessibility, desk practicesand SEO.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
That is such useful information that I want to
highlight that out and bringthat out to the audience.
So, audience, I know you'relistening.
What he just told you is key.
He said that when folks sellwebsites in our industry,
oftentimes companies will comeup with their own little scans,
and these scans are the bane ofeveryone's existence.
Right?
They sometimes companies willmake you to believe like your
site is, you know, not doingvery well, and that may not be
(13:40):
the case.
What Brandon is showing youhere is the industry gold
standard One of many to evaluateof a site is really good in the
eyes of Google.
It's not what random companyABCD thinks, it's what Google
thinks, because Google isultimately the one crawling,
indexing and doing theirsimulation, their assessment of
how good this website is in reallife to the actual human user
(14:02):
that's going to be on it.
They don't get it perfect, butthey're trying, and this web,
this report right here, thisLighthouse report, is the way to
do that.
So don't let yourself getmisled If someone is telling you
that your website isn't, youknow, performing very good.
Second, second, guess that goto this page, speedwebdev, click
on mobile here and put in theURL of your website and then
(14:22):
you're going to get some actualbasis in reality for how this
website is.
What are some key performanceindicators this website, how
does it fair on performance,accessibility, best practices,
seo?
We're going to demystify thisand we're going to keep it away
from this agency paywall whereyou know these guys tell you all
this rubbish and we want tobring it back into real,
concrete tools that you can use,and so here is one.
(14:43):
So, thank you, brandon, keepgoing.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
The first thing that gets overlooked on this report a
lot is the size of the assetson the page, namely the images.
When adding images to a website, always, always, always, make
sure to compress any imagesbefore you upload, because
visually to a user you can havean image that's two, three, four
(15:06):
times as large as thecompressed version.
That visually looks nodifferent to the user.
So it's really just taking upextra space on the website for
no reason at all.
Other factors that affect thisreport are, like I said, we can
go on and on and on.
There are factors for how cleanthe scripts are running on the
(15:30):
page and other matters as wellthat are gonna vary from case to
case.
So I wanted to show everyonethis tool and just kind of
demystify that aspect for alittle bit.
We also have something that weimplement on the back of our
sites, known as the localbusiness schema, and I'm gonna
(15:51):
take a breath if Henry wants totalk a little bit about this
schema, because I can see yousmiling and I know this is your
thing.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Absolutely.
Thanks for bringing that up.
So, local business schema well,schema in general is basically
a way for search engines toquickly identify the kind of
website that you have and theinformation on that website.
So, way back when, the bigsearch engines came together and
(16:22):
they made an agreement and youcan find this on schemaorg to
use these scripts to quicklyidentify these different data
points on a website.
So what I did here is againused another one of Google's own
tools, the rich results test,and you just quickly Google rich
(16:47):
results test and it'll pop up.
All I did was click or copy andpaste the URL and I get all of
our different schema markups.
We have hours of operation, wehave telephones, we have the has
map, which is how we connectthe Google business profiles to
(17:11):
the website.
So all of this data is quicklyindexed by Google, by Bing, by
Yahoo, by DuckDuckGo, apple Allof these different search
engines quickly go to this andgrabs that information, and this
helps our clients and thewebsite gain authority, because
(17:32):
that's what it's all about.
Google is looking forexperience, expertise, authority
and trust.
Just got to know a little aboutcoding and if you don't know
about coding, well, omg,national, omg, toe marketing can
take care of that.
Am I right, guys?
100%.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
That's what we're here for, 100%.
Well, awesome, henry, thanksfor the insight there.
I knew you could do an evenbetter job of me than of taking
everybody through the localbusiness there, so Pish.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Posh BP.
Thank you, bro, Thank you, Iappreciate that.
So let's see what are yourtakeaways here from what we've
gone over until now, cause Ilove how you sum everything up.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
My takeaways, man, and to everyone listening, is
that the website is not just abillboard.
I love that sentiment from BP.
I mean, this isn't 1300.
We're not drawing our websitein the sand.
This is a mobile, friendly,frantic, high-paced world we
live in and everyone wantseverything all the time at the
touch of their fingertips.
And so the website goes awayfrom being this mystical thing
(18:38):
for which everyone has their ownyardstick by which they measure
it.
And now we should have learnedthat there is now a lighthouse
report we can use to simulatethe user experience to Google
how they see it.
That's component number one and,in my opinion, the report Henry
showed you, guys, the richresults report will also show
you important things like theschema.
Schema is a big word when youtalk about websites, cause it's
(18:58):
basically just long story, shortcode that's specific to that
industry, among other thingsthat's embedded in the website
that makes it more relevant towhat that advertiser is doing
with that website in the eyes ofGoogle.
So we've learned about thelighthouse report, we've learned
about the schema, we've learnedabout having everything quickly
accessible at a glance to usersand making that journey
(19:21):
seamless.
And I think the only thing wehaven't really covered,
gentlemen, is the differencebetween we deal a lot with
custom WordPress sites and thatis somewhat, at least to me, an
industry gold standard for manyuse cases.
I think there's a lot ofconfusion with builders, or CMSs
, as I believe they're called.
I think, really quickly, weshould touch on the pros and
(19:43):
cons of using a custom WordPresssite, as OMG national does, as
OMG toe marketing does, kind ofan industry gold standard, as
opposed to the tempting, cheaperoption of getting one of these
cookie cutter sites.
So let's touch on that realquickly.
I think that'll have some valueto the small business owners
watching and listening.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yes, to start off, the reason I wanted to spend the
first part of my time heretalking about all of the things
that we do and pay attention tois to help people realize what
Taking on the task of building awebsite really entails, because
(20:21):
what we see a lot of is people.
People will Start a website andthey'll get something, even
that may end up looking visuallygood, but they may leave out
some of these behind-the-scenesfactors and they find themselves
frustrating, not findingsuccess on Google, on Getting
leads, because they theirwebsite is still not ranking and
(20:41):
and they have trouble figuringout why.
So To to kind of around roundeverything altogether, I'll
cover some of the most popularof the CMS's which that's short
for content management systemwhich what that means is
basically some sort of platformthat controls and helps you to
manage your website files.
(21:02):
Nowadays, it's very rare tofind somebody who's actually
typing out HTML code, line byline, to make their their
website.
We have so many tools nowadaysto help so that even somebody
who doesn't have a strong webdevelopment or coding background
Can still make these thingshappen if they're careful in
their choices and they payattention to these things.
(21:24):
So Some of the the most popularpaid CMS is out there.
You've probably seenadvertisements for them on TV or
anywhere else.
They're not without merit, butit's important to know which
ones they are and to know kindof how they work.
So you've probably heard ofsome like Wix or a Squarespace
(21:46):
or the go-daddy website builderis is also very popular that
that's based on a system calledDuda.
These platforms are all Goodfor for introductory level folks
who are looking to get theirfeet wet with with the website
development.
The drawback of many of theseis they tend to be very
(22:09):
templated.
They tend to be veryCookie-cutter in in what you can
actually design and build, andthere are also Oftentimes
restrictions on what sort ofthird-party integrations we can
set up or things like that.
If it's a very simpleinformational site using one of
(22:32):
these options, maybe all right,if you pay attention to all of
the other things that that gointo a successful website as
well.
Now there's another anotherfield here for for the CMS's.
Those would be the more opensource options.
Some of those would be jumlah,is is a popular one, as well as
(22:55):
Drupal and and kind of kind ofthe king of the the CMS is
saving the best for last is onethat we use here, called
WordPress.
Now, all three of those that Ijust named are open source,
meaning that they can bedownloaded and installed For
free with an open license foruse on on any commercial website
(23:16):
.
There's there's no restrictionor cost to downloading and using
these platforms.
The reason we go with WordPressis Well, there's a few different
reasons why we choose it.
One is Flexibility.
Wordpress is very, very widelysupported.
In fact, 43% of websites noware built in WordPress,
(23:40):
approaching half of the internet.
So Really, you couldn't ask fora more widely supported system.
If you look at, if you look atthe pie chart of the matter, we
see WordPress would be occupyingalmost half, and then all of
the other Others that Imentioned are kind of fighting
for for a second place on on theother side, but it's it's
(24:03):
spaced pretty evenly betweenthem.
So all of that to say that ifYou're using WordPress as your
chosen system, it is far morelikely that any third-party
integration you're working withwill be supported by WordPress.
Well, what's a third-partyintegration?
Well, towers, for example, wehave lots, lots of Tow truckers
(24:28):
who come to us a lot of timesthey'll want to do something
like Embed a form for somebodyto search for a vehicle and an
impounded vehicle or somethinglike that.
So they can, somebody can logon and see where's my car we do
have my car, etc.
That's a third-partyintegration, often with towbook
or or another platform that withWordPress we can easily
(24:49):
integrate it with just a littlebit of know-how.
Another example of a realtor.
Realtors, of course, want tohave their property listings
appear on their site.
That's kind of their whole, thewhole point of what they want
to showcase.
So other platforms hit or missas far as success, but Just
(25:11):
about every major IDX or MLSintegration that's the system
that controls the, the actuallistings of the properties,
every, every major one of thoseis is supported easily by
WordPress.
So these are some of thereasons why we choose to go with
WordPress.
There's no overhead cost to usethe system.
(25:31):
It's widely supported.
And the third major reason isthe support that WordPress has
from its plugins.
What a plugin is is it'sbasically a mini application
that can be installed and run onthe WordPress site.
Many of them are available forfree and Some are are a paid
(25:56):
plugin, but it would give you avery specific capability on your
own capability on your websitethat it might not be possible
for somebody to come up withOtherwise, depending on the
situation.
It could depend on what's goingon, but an example that just
jumps to mind would be, ifsomebody wants a custom shipping
(26:17):
quote, to know exactly how muchit's going to cost to ship from
point A to point B On apre-built website ora
template-based website thatactually might be a pretty big
challenge for somebody toovercome, but with WordPress we
can simply go to US PostalService or we can go to UPS,
fedex, whichever platform theywant to use, download the plugin
(26:37):
, set it up on the back end ofthe website to get it integrated
and then boom, they get thatinformation.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It sounds like and thank you for that always a
treasure trove of information,brandon that WordPress is the
way to go for a website that'sgoing to grow and be able to be
changed and modified for yourbusiness.
So it may be tempting, ladiesand gentlemen, to go with a CMS
and go for the cheaper option,but that may come back to bite
you later when you want thatwebsite to do things that the
platform simply doesn't allowfor, and so that's why we at OMG
(27:08):
National, omg Tome Marketing,are going to continue to
champion WordPress.
And so, ladies and gentlemen,there was a ton of information
coming your way today, and Ithink all of it is stuff that
you need to know in 2024 andbeyond.
As always, it was an utterpleasure to kick it with you
guys and gals out there.
So, from all of us at OMG, wewish you a happy new year and a
(27:31):
prosperous 2024.
And thanks for kicking with us.
Until the next time, pleaselike, share, comment, subscribe
and we'll see you on the trail.
Bye, bye.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
See you everybody.
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