Hi Reader!

A few months ago I found an old client on LinkedIn and clicked over to see her new website. She'd rebuilt it with someone else after we worked together years back.

Me, being me, I went over to her website and went to check it out page by page. Here's what i noticed...it looked fine. Really fine, actually. Good colors, good photos, her branding carried over nicely.

But then I decided to look beyond the surface. Because I want you to hear this. Looking fine and being built right are two completely different things. Underneath the surface, there were a handful of problems that would never show up if you just glanced at the site.

Here's the thing. There was one detail on her site that most people would never notice, and it's an easy one for you to check on your own right now.

Her headings were a mess. Multiple H1 tags on the same page, with no real structure underneath them. To you or me, that just looks like bold text in a few different sizes. It reads fine. But headings aren't just a styling choice, they're how a page tells Google what it's actually about. Think of them like a table of contents. When there's one clear H1 and a logical flow underneath it, Google understands the page. When there are several H1s competing with each other, it's like handing someone a table of contents where every single line says chapter one. Nothing stands out as the main point.

You don't need to touch any code to check this on your own site. There's a free Chrome extension called SEO Meta in 1 Click. Add it to your browser, click it on any page, and it shows you exactly what your headings look like right there. No logging into your website required.

I go deeper on a few more things like this in this week's episode of Website Design Made Simple, including a couple more simple, non-technical checks. You can listen here: Why Your Website Looks Good But Isn't Built Right (5 Hidden Issues to Check) [Ep 149]​

Take a minute today and run that extension on your homepage. See what it turns up.

You've got this,

P.S. Curiosity got the better of me and I'm glad it did. Sometimes the smallest thing you check ends up telling you the most.