90: Is Google Hiding Your Best Offer? 5 Website Checks to Run This Week

🌟 Your Website Might Still Be Introducing You as Someone You Used to Be

You changed your business in the last year or two. New offer, new focus, maybe a full pivot.

So when was the last time you looked at what your website is telling Google?

I’m asking because I just found out the answer for my own site, and I had to put my hand over my mouth.

This week I spent $1,500 on a website template, and the site is nowhere near live. It’s a template, and I have all the customizing ahead of me. It started with a DM, went through a website audit that made me laugh and then cringe, and ended with a template name I couldn’t make up.

Yes, a website post on a blog that’s mostly about email lists and newsletters. Stay with me, because by the end you’ll see exactly how the two connect.

If you’d rather not take notes, I put every step from this post into a one-page website checkup. Grab the one-page checkup here. It also gets you on my weekly 3-2-1 Create newsletter if you’re not already there.

Quick question before we start: has your business changed in the last year or two? Tell me in the comments.

✨ How a DM From a Follower Started All of This

A few weeks ago, a follower sent me a message that made my stomach drop. I’m leaving her name out because it came as a private DM.

She isn’t a website person. Her site was on Podia, and so was mine. In fact, she was on Podia because of me, and I suspect plenty of you are too.

She told me that when she looked at what Google was showing for her site, it was full of old, dead pages and barely any of her current ones. She moved her site to a different platform, and about a month later Google finally started showing her pages. That was her experience, not a promise I can make to you or to myself, but it got my attention.

Along with the warning, she sent me a 10-minute check. I’ll hand it to you in a minute.

I’d wanted to move off Podia for a while, mostly for aesthetics. SEO and page rankings weren’t even on my radar, because that’s back-end techy stuff that doesn’t light me up.

I also told you I might move to Squarespace because AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude have a much harder time reading Podia pages. As far as I can tell, that still holds up. But I skipped the simplest step of all: looking at what Google sees on my site today. I had a theory, a plan, and a lot of excitement, and I had not looked.

So I did the boring thing and diagnosed first. I’m not a techy person, so I had Claude go through my site page by page while I sat there with my coffee and my mouth wide open.

💡 What I Found on My Own Website

I considered not telling you. The person who teaches email for a living had a brand new flagship offer completely hidden from Google. But I’d rather you hear it from me and run the check on your own site than assume everyone else has this figured out.

What came back:

• My newest signature offer, The Newsletter System, was set to hide from search engines. Google had never seen it, not once. It came down to one flipped switch.

• My homepage was telling Google I still teach social media content, months after I pivoted to email.

• A past Canva workshop was still live, with a save-your-spot button for a date that had come and gone.

• The Instagram footer linked to my old handle instead of my new one.

• My Content Coven membership page had 15 main headlines on it, and Google wants one per page so it can tell what the page is about.

• The phrase “personal brand,” which I’d love to be found for, wasn’t on my homepage at all.

None of this was hard to fix. I just didn’t know to look.

Every one of those problems was a leftover: a piece of the business I used to have, still sitting on my site and still talking to Google. A website gets built in layers. A workshop page here, a launch page there, a new offer tacked on at the end. Nobody sits you down and says it’s time to go back through the whole thing, and every time I added a page, I was thinking about the person reading it, never the search engine.

Your website should be working for your email list while you’re at school pickup, not quietly telling Google you’re someone you used to be.

🎯 The 5 Website Checks to Run First (In This Order)

You can find most of this in one sitting.

Check 1: Diagnose before you rebuild

Open Google and type site: then your website address with no spaces, like site:yourwebsite.com. Hit Enter. What comes back is the list of pages Google knows about your site, which isn’t always the list you think it is.

If you have Google Search Console (you should; it’s free), open the pages report. It shows what Google has indexed and what it hasn’t. Please don’t panic over a big number under “not indexed.” Most of that is normal, and the report can lag by a week or two.

Check 2: Look for the “hide from search” setting

Almost every website platform has one. It’s easy to flip on while you’re building a page and forget about it, which is exactly what happened to me. Go through your most important pages (home, about, services or offers) and make sure none of them are hidden. If you can’t find the setting, ask Claude or ChatGPT where your site is hosted and where to find it.

Check 3: Rewrite your page titles and descriptions

That’s the little blurb that shows up on Google when someone searches. Keep titles under 60 characters and descriptions between 120 and 160, and say what you do now, not what you did two years ago.

A simple formula: what you do, who it’s for, and your name. Something like: email marketing for service-based female solopreneurs, with [Your Name].

While you’re in there, pair your big keyword with your niche. “Personal branding” on its own is far too competitive for a solopreneur to win. “Personal brand email list solopreneur” is a much smaller pond, and one where you can actually be found.

Check 4: Put your keyword on the page, once, naturally

Not just in the title. One natural sentence near the top of the page is plenty, so don’t stuff it in until it sounds like a robot wrote it. Then give each page one main headline, with your section headlines underneath. That’s the fix for my 15-headline Coven page.

Check 5: Clean up your menu and click every footer link

Use clear labels in a logical order: free stuff first, paid stuff after, and your number one call to action right in the menu. For me, that’s joining my newsletter. Then click every link in your footer. That’s how I found the Instagram icon sending people to the wrong account after I switched handles.

A few smaller steps live on the one-page checkup: a short description under each image, asking Google to recrawl your key pages after you make changes, and calendar reminders at two weeks and six weeks to check how you’re ranking. Download it here so you don’t have to write the list yourself.

💡 SEO vs. GEO: The Short Version

You’ve probably heard both terms. SEO is showing up when somebody searches on Google. GEO is showing up when somebody asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or another AI tool for an answer and your name comes back.

Nobody knows exactly how those tools decide who to mention, and it keeps changing. A few things I learned this week should help: pages that read in plain text, with specific content, numbers, and examples (one more reason I love my podcast blog). A bio that’s consistent everywhere you show up, whether that’s Instagram, Pinterest, your website, YouTube, or Facebook. And being mentioned on other people’s sites, which is where podcast guest spots and collaborations come in.

Your homework: ask ChatGPT, and maybe Perplexity, the questions your dream client would ask, and see whether you show up. Do it again next month if you’ve made changes.

🌟 Why I’m Spending My Time on This

I’m not an SEO genius, and I’m not a website expert. So why does this matter so much to me?

Someone on a podcast last week said only two platforms in the world aren’t run by an algorithm: your email list and your website. I don’t know if that’s 100% true, because Google decides who finds your website, and AI tools are deciding for themselves now. That’s the whole reason the audit matters. But I agree with the heart of it, and it’s a big part of why I’m leaning on Instagram less.

In episode 81, I told you I’m going all in on email. I’m exhausted from fighting the algorithm; it’s an uphill battle I’m not winning, and I don’t pay for ads. If you’re tired of wondering whether a post will get shown, and tired of putting your best work into a carousel that can stop being shown to the people who raised their hands to follow you, same.

More than half of my email subscribers open my newsletters, with an average open rate of 53.6%. That’s not bragging. It’s the difference between a room I own and can reach with one click, and a room I rent and can’t reach with one post.

Your website is where someone lands after they hear your podcast, Google you, or click your link in bio. Your newsletter is where they stay. When both work, you’re no longer at the mercy of the feed, and I want that control.

🎬 Moving Off Podia After Six Years (and Why It’s Spicy Margarita)

I’m moving my website and blog off Podia, where they’ve lived for six years. No drama. Podia served me well, and I’m grateful.

I told you Squarespace, and now I’m telling you Showit. When I compared Squarespace, Wix, and Showit, they could all fix what my old setup couldn’t, and the differences were small. So I did what I tell you to do all the time: I picked the one I’d be excited to open every week.

I don’t want to oversell this. Switching platforms is not a magic fix. The settings, the words on your page, and the leftovers matter more than where your site lives, and you can fix a lot of that today without moving anything. I’m moving because I want a home I love, and the audit means I’m doing it with my eyes open.

I made the decision with my community. I asked in my Instagram stories which platform to use, showed the templates I was considering, had everyone vote, and then showed the winner. I got 40 replies on that one story, and most were some version of “do it,” even though the template costs about three times what I planned to spend. It’s from Tonic, it’s about $1,500, and that’s just the template. I’m writing the copy myself.

People love being part of a decision. You can’t get that kind of behind-the-scenes feedback by asking AI which template to buy. The algorithm decides who sees my posts, but a vote in my stories is a real conversation with people who already know me, and that’s the part of Instagram I’m keeping.

Then there’s the name: Spicy Margarita. If you’ve been around since episode one, you know why I almost fell out of my chair.

I was building a meal prep course because it was the safe choice. We owned a CrossFit gym. One day, while Rob and I worked on the outline, I told him I was done. He asked what course I’d make if I could make anything, and I said, with zero hesitation, “Canva and branding, hands down.” He said, “Then do it.” I told him that made no sense because I didn’t have a business, and he said, “Well, then start one.”

The Creative Bodega was born over margaritas in our kitchen. Rob came up with the name because I lived in New York City for 10 years, and he knew exactly what a bodega was: the corner store with a little bit of everything. Years later, the template I love is named after the drink in our hands when it all started. I’m choosing this website partly with my heart, and that’s a bonus.

✅ If You’re Moving Platforms: 2 Things to Do First

• Screenshot your domain settings before you touch anything. They include the records that keep your email working, and if you lose them, your emails can’t go out. Put that on a huge Post-it.

• Keep your old site live until switch day. I’m building the new one hidden, which means I have to remember to un-hide it. Funny, until you’re a busy solopreneur with a thousand other things on your plate.

I’ll report back at the six-week mark once my site goes live. I’m aiming for Black Friday, but we’ll see.

🛠️ Resources

• Google Search Console: free, and where I looked at the pages report

• ShowIt: the platform I’m moving to

• Spicy Margarita template from Tonic: the template I fell for

• Episode 81: where I said I’m going all in on email

• Episode 1: the margarita story (& entire story for that matter behind The Creative Bodega)

💪 Your Website Should Be Working While You’re at School Pickup

The five checks, one more time: diagnose before you rebuild, look for the hide-from-search setting, rewrite your page titles and descriptions, put your keyword on the page with one main headline, and clean up your menu and footer. You don't need a new platform, and most of it fits in one sitting.

If you’re in The Content Coven, I made a copy-and-paste AI prompt that walks you through this entire website audit step by step on any platform. It’s waiting for you inside. If you’re not in yet, come join us. My workflows, my AI prompts, and the Canva templates you see me using all go in there.

Know a solopreneur who hasn’t looked at her website in a year? Send her this post.

What was your biggest “oh no” after checking what Google shows for your site? Tell me in the comments!