Google - Why it's like my 10 year old daughter!

It might come as a shock to you but Google is actually a 10 year old girl in disguise. Let me explain my own journey with her and see if you agree.

About 3 months ago I decide to create my own business after 21 years of working for large corporations. You can find out a little more about me here, but this isnt about why I started my company.

I'm not a web developer or a technology guru, the most technical skill I posess is the ability to clear my browsing history! but I have used plenty of technology in my professional world and suffered the pain of IT issues.

Anyway...I needed to build a website and this is where Google starts making life a little difficult for me.

As I have absolutely no technical skills I decided to use a platform call WordPress (WP). It seemed pretty simple, and in fact it is. However, as a person who likes visual things I got carried away.

When you use WP you can build a page from scratch (Although I don't know how to do that) or most commonly, you can load a theme. A theme is a template for your webpage.

Here's where the issues start.

There are plenty of free solutions that turn into paid addons once you realise that you need some basic features not covered by the free version. Typically, the cost is ￡30-80 so nothing major in the scheme of running a business.

So I spent about ￡150 on a few different versions of my website, spent hours adding some very flashy plugins (elements within the site that enable features) and weeks building content, needless to say I was very proud of my creation.

Now this is where the virtual 10 year old daughter comes into play......

If you are building a website you will come across the term SEO, which means search engine optimisation. Basically, how search engines (mainly Google & Bing) find your website and rank it's contents. They measure a range of things but the one I want to focus on is about page speed and readability.

Using the their speed tool (a rating system out of 0-100 for Mobile & Laptops) I proudly entered my URL.

To my horror my mobile ranked at 0......yes 0...out of 100!!!! and my laptop ranking wasn't much better at 15 out of 100! What I hear you ask...well basically my ranking was so low you would get cramp in your hands trying to get to the page my site was actually listed on!

What I later found out is...that my beautiful, paid for theme was loaded with elements that slowed the speed down significantly, things like pictures, videos, animations, I loved it.

Whilst I was proudly waiting for the page to load, Google did the equivalent of a Kevin & Perry sketch! or something my 10 year old daughter will do if she wants something and it takes more than 3 seconds to come....had a tantrum and ignored my website!

So, back to the drawing board.

I quickly looked at ''light'' WP themes and came across Generatepress, this worked brilliantly. Speed was great and I added more content and less themes.

My page speed is now at a wopping 15 for mobile and 84 for desktop, I've still got some work to do on my mobile clearly!

Back to my 10 year old daughter.

The other part of Google that I'm focussing on is the readability. I came across Yoast which rates your page for readability, using a Flesch score.

They score your content in the following way.

90-100 - very easy to read, easily understood by an average 11-year-old student

80-90 - easy to read

70-80 - fairly easy to read

60-70 - easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students

50-60 - fairly difficult to read

30-50 - difficult to read, best understood by college graduates

0-30 - very difficult to read, best understood by university graduates

So, as you can imagine, I looked at my content only to be told by Yoast is was very poor at 16 readability!

So I used their tools to work through all the challenges Google would find with my content, and manged to get most page scores to about 60.

I have no idea how to get to 100 - I think it's a myth!

To sum up, if you are building your website then I would recommend getting your 10 year daughter to stand next to you and explain what she sees, if it's not what you want then you need to change it! As Google will kick you into touch.

I'm happy to provide more information about my journey to those you are suffering the same experience.

And for those readers who want to see my finished (almost) site simply click here.