Full Transcript
Lauren: Okay so I have to tell you something. A friend of mine spent like three full weekends building her own website. She was really proud of it. And then someone told her it wasn't showing up on Google at all. She was devastated.
Honor: Welcome to the 805 Web Minute with Lauren and Honor. We make website stuff make sense. Let's get into it.
Honor: That story is so common it's almost a rite of passage. I've taken over a lot of DIY websites — GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace — and at this point I can usually tell you what's wrong before I even open the editor.
Lauren: Wait, seriously? Just from looking at it?
Honor: The same patterns show up every single time. And the first one is something most people have genuinely never thought about — heading structure.
Lauren: Heading structure. Like... titles on the page?
Honor: Here's the thing that surprises people. Just because you made a line of text bigger and bolder in your website builder does not mean it's actually a heading. To you it looks like a headline. To Google, to screen readers, to anything reading the code underneath — it's just regular text someone styled to look important.
Lauren: Oh. So there's like... a difference between how it looks on screen and what the code actually says.
Honor: Exactly. Think about a newspaper. There's a headline, a subhead, a lead paragraph, then the body copy. That structure isn't random — it tells you instantly where to look and what matters. Websites work the same way under the hood. When the structure is set up right, Google can read your page, understand what it's about, and show it to people searching for what you offer.
Lauren: And when it's not set up right?
Honor: Google sees a wall of content it can't parse. I've had clients who had a full website — pages, photos, contact info, the works. But no real page titles. No descriptions for search engines. Nothing that told Google what the site was even about. It looked like a website. It was invisible.
Lauren: That's wild. Like having a store but the sign out front is in invisible ink.
Honor: That is actually the perfect way to put it.
Lauren: Okay so what's the second thing you keep seeing?
Honor: The template trap. You go to GoDaddy or Squarespace and you see the demo site and it looks amazing. Clean, modern, professional. And you think — I can make mine look like that.
Lauren: And then you start building and suddenly nothing looks right anymore.
Honor: You want the logo a little bigger. The text a different color. That section moved down. And suddenly you're fighting the template. Things shift in ways you didn't expect. The spacing breaks. What looked so clean in the demo looks cluttered and weird with your actual content.
Lauren: Okay I feel called out because I have done this. Not with a website, but like... with everything.
Honor: The deeper issue is that most people skip the step that comes before design. Figuring out what you're actually trying to say. Who's your customer? What do you sell? What makes you different from the three other businesses doing the same thing in your town?
Lauren: And if you don't know those things?
Honor: You're just decorating. Once you know those things, the design part gets way easier. It stops being a guessing game.
Lauren: Okay that's a really clean way to put it. You're just decorating. I'm going to use that.
Honor: There's also something I had to learn the hard way when I first started doing this. I'd look at a client's DIY site and point out the problems. The missing structure. The broken layout. The stuff that was quietly killing their search rankings. And I didn't expect people to get heartbroken about it.
Lauren: Wait — heartbroken? Over a website?
Honor: Think about it. These are people trying to grow their business. The ads made it sound easy. So they committed — nights, weekends, real time. They built something. And when you make something, there's an attachment that comes with it. That's completely human.
Lauren: Yeah, even if it's not perfect — it's yours. You put yourself into it.
Honor: Exactly. So now I don't walk in pointing out everything that's wrong. I ask what they were going for first. I listen. Then we figure out together what's worth keeping and what needs to change. Nobody's bad at design. The ads just made it sound way easier than it actually is.
Lauren: That's honestly a really kind approach. Okay — what's the last big thing?
Honor: The trap nobody finds until they're ready to leave. Getting your stuff out is not easy. GoDaddy, Wix, Squarespace — none of them offer a clean export. Your images, your text, your page layouts — they're all locked inside their system.
Lauren: So like... if you want to move somewhere else, you're basically starting over?
Honor: Someone has to manually pull everything out, or scrape it, or just rebuild from scratch. And that is not an accident. The whole thing is designed to keep you paying. Make leaving annoying enough and most people just stay.
Lauren: That's kind of evil honestly.
Honor: And on top of that, I can't tell you how many times I've logged into a client's GoDaddy account and found they're paying for things they never needed. Premium security add-ons, SEO tools that don't do what they promise, stuff pushed through scare tactics at checkout.
Lauren: Ugh, it's like those gym memberships where somehow you end up paying for a nutrition coach and a towel subscription.
Honor: Every single time, it's a relief to tell someone they can cancel half of what they're paying for.
Lauren: Okay so if someone's listening right now and they've got a DIY site and they're low-key panicking... what do they actually do?
Honor: Honestly? Take some time to assess where you're actually at. Is your website doing what you need it to do? Are people finding you through it? Are they calling? If not, the answer probably isn't another template. It's going back to basics — getting clear on your story, who you're talking to, and what makes you worth choosing.
Lauren: Fix the thinking before you fix the design.
Honor: An ugly website with clear thinking behind it will out-perform a pretty template that says nothing about the business. Every single time.
Lauren: And if someone just wants to hand this whole thing off to someone who actually knows what they're doing?
Honor: That's what we do at YouGrow. You tell me about your business — what you do, who you do it for. I build you a professional website that's structured right, loads fast, and works for every customer who lands on it. Seventy-nine dollars a month, everything included, month-to-month, cancel anytime. You need something changed, you call or email me directly. I'm local, here in Arroyo Grande.
Lauren: No dashboard to fight with. No templates to wrestle. No mystery charges. Just a website that actually works. Alright, this has been 805 Web Minute. Thanks for listening.