GUESTS: Geoff Atkinson, Founder and CEO of Huckabuy
– Subscribe to the Podcast or Write a Review: –
iTunes – Google Podcasts – Stitcher – TuneIn
As marketing and sales experts, we think a lot about what makes a perfect user experience. There’s an endless amount of opinions and statistics on what moves people through the buyer’s journey more smoothly.
What about Google’s perfect experience? Perhaps we should care equally about how easy it is for Googlebot to crawl your website.
That’s what Geoff Atkinson – the founder and CEO of Huckabuy – believes.
I had the opportunity to talk to Geoff about why he takes SEO so seriously in the latest episode of the B2B Revenue Executive Experience podcast. Plus, he gives us a few expert tips on making a website more readable for Googlebot.
Why you should care about SEO
Although many marketers claim SEO is dead, 93% of online experiences begin with a search query. Currently, Google possesses just over 90% of the search engine market share.
What’s more? 75% of searchers never go past the first page of results. That’s a severe number of people missing your content if you’re not investing in proper SEO marketing.
*FYI: That means you too, B2B execs. You might be neck-deep in an ABM program, but without inbound techniques like SEO, you’re missing your chance to educate prospects on their own terms. Not to mention, it’s always a plus if a prospect has heard of your brand before you contact them.
Geoff discloses that the average Huckabuy customer grows their organic search traffic by 62% in one year. But, that’s not all. Huckabuy clients are seeing their organic search traffic convert at about 2x the rate of any paid channel.
“The conversation that a website has with Google is as important as the conversation we have with users.”
GEOFF ATKINSON, Founder and CEO of Huckabuy
Another reason B2B execs should be investing in SEO is that voice search will continue to grow in popularity. Though voice search isn’t an exceptional experience yet, speech recognition technology will continue to improve, as well as results.
Early adopters already use voice search to…
… search for local businesses.
… make reservations.
… hear business’ prices.
… find products to purchase.
According to a study done in 2018, the top industries for voice searches are (respondents were able to choose more than one):
- Restaurants/cafes (51%)
- Grocery stores (41%)
- Food delivery (35%)
- Clothing stores (32%)
- Hotels/BnB’s (30%)
Other industries seeing an increase in voice searches include:
- Healthcare
- Bars/pubs
- Hair/beauty
- Dental care
- Auto repair
As humans continue to change the ways we want to search, search engines’ capabilities will evolve to meet those needs. B2B companies have no excuse for forgoing modern SEO tactics.
“Our average customer after 12 months grows their organic search channel by 62%.”
GEOFF ATKINSON, Founder and CEO of Huckabuy
Google’s perfect world
Now that we understand the value in your website’s content being readable by Googlebot, we need to know how to make it readable.
Geoff gives us three keys to making your site more readable by Googlebot:
- Don’t use complicated front-end coding language. Although complicated coding might be ideal for dynamic content or design, it’s extremely difficult for spiders to crawl. Googlebot prefers flat HTML, similar to Wikipedia’s format.
- Render javascript content. Because Google prefers flat HTML content, dynamic rendering is an excellent option for javascript-powered websites. When Googlebot runs into heavy javascript content, it oftentimes has to index via multiple rounds of crawling.
Dynamic rendering solves this broken process that normally ends in missed elements, like metadata and alt text. The dynamic rendering process results in a client-side and a server-side of your website, allowing for search bots to easily crawl the flat HTML side.
- Instantly loading pages. Similar to human users, Googlebot prefers webpages that load instantly. In order to crawl all content seamlessly, it’s necessary for your website to quickly load. Many times, heavy javascript content prevents that from happening.
Fortunately, there are ways to optimize your website for Google and human users. Knowing the benefits of investing in SEO, methods like dynamic rendering could be the right choice for your website.
Organic search is the long-run
It’s typical for B2B companies to have lacking SEO techniques because of the time it takes to show results. Although organic search optimization requires time to really take off, Geoff has seen the returns it can yield for organizations.
“Organic search is way underinvested in.”
GEOFF ATKINSON, Founder and CEO of Huckabuy
If your company can forgo instant gratification, the results of smart SEO tactics will be overwhelming.
This post includes highlights of our podcast interview with Geoff Atkinson – the Founder and CEO of Huckabuy. To hear this episode and many more like it, subscribe to B2B Revenue Executive Experience here.
If you don’t use iTunes, you can find all our episodes here.