Meredith's Husband: 0:32

Hey, this is Meredith husband, I've got some SEO advice for you. But I'm gonna keep it really simple so that you can understand it. So make sense. And most importantly, so you can actually use Hello, hey. I was actually thinking of renaming this podcast to can you hear me now? I assume that's got to already be too. There's

Meredith: 0:59

got to be a podcast or to call that. How are you doing? I'm great. Thank you. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm pretty good. Yeah. Good. How are you listener? Sure. Sure. She

Meredith's Husband: 1:14

are they are? them are. I hope Yeah.

Meredith: 1:17

Yeah, me too. I hope you're very good.

Meredith's Husband: 1:19

So I just, I just got an email just like, an hour ago. And I thought this might be interesting. Okay, especially if our listener is using our WordPress website. Okay. And so I got this, this is from like a tool that I use for my clients to monitor their WordPress health and keep it updated and everything. And so this, this was an alert that this site was now vulnerable. Oh, and this is actually a former client who I kept in the system just because I he's a great guy. And if this ever happened, I want it to be able to reach out. But this happens when, when you don't keep a WordPress site up to date. You gotta you gotta when you have a WordPress site, you want to, you know, keep your plugins updated. And the WordPress itself updated in a nice does it do it automatically. So some hosts will, yes. WordPress by itself. No, you can you can get tools that will do it automatically. And there is a There's a host that I recommend, called Site ground. Fantastic. Ground like ground.

Meredith: 2:17

Yeah. Ground couldn't DRO to site.

Meredith's Husband: 2:22

Yeah, yeah, kind of everything would be really? Oh, yes, everything. I saw your Twitter account yesterday. And it's like five, that's like, a handful of photos. And then 50 million Bowie, images. Anyway, SiteGround is good someday. I'll talk about it because it's okay. It's a fantastic web post if you're running a WordPress site. But anyway, so this site had become vulnerable because nobody was keeping updated. And what happens then, is, sites get hacked. Oh, really, especially WordPress sites. Always. It's if you don't keep it updated. It's really not a matter of if but when

Meredith: 3:03

our WordPress sites hacked more than Squarespace.

Meredith's Husband: 3:07

Yes, you don't have to worry about being hacked. If you're on Squarespace. If you're on a platform like Squarespace or Wix, or any of those, where they handled the hosting for you, they will they will be secure. If you're on WordPress, you need to watch it yourself. Now. Again, some hosts like SiteGround will take care of this for you. But they won't always catch it. And what happens is I you know, what I've heard from people over the years is like, Well, nobody's gonna hack my site. Nobody. Yes. So but they don't happen to me, there are 30,000 WordPress sites per day hacked. 1000 Yes. And they don't, you know, the people hacking these sites are not trying to get access to your information or whatever. They have their own interest. They, technically, this is a blackhat SEO very, very blackhat SEO technique. But what happens is they you know, people will write code that will scan the the internet looking for WordPress sites that are out of date. And when something becomes out of date, it becomes a vulnerability just like if you have Windows or Mac, you'll get security updates, like, Hey, your system needs to be updated, because it's now vulnerable. Well, that what that means is hackers have found a way in and so they release a patch to block it. Same thing. Same thing with WordPress sites and plugins. And if you don't, you know, install the update. These these hackers are going to get into your WordPress site. And what they're going to do is they're going to, they're going to put in links to their own websites.

Meredith: 4:44

What? Yes, so then they get affiliate links,

Meredith's Husband: 4:48

not affiliate links, they just get it. So remember how I'm talking? I'm always talking about how important links are for Google in SEO? Well, if they can create an automated bot that's gonna go out and generate 1000s of links to any website they want. This is one way to do that. This is why this is blackhat SEO. And so what happens is they

Meredith: 5:09

listener you just happen to listen in and this is your first time, I would recommend going to Episode One, one Blackhat I don't know Chris will put a little input here of what episodes to you that will define

Meredith's Husband: 5:25

Blackhat. SEO. It's just tricky. Sneaky, scummy SEO tactics, to put it mildly. Yes. And so what what these things will do is they will create entire pages on your WordPress site that just talk about their own site, and they will link to their own site. And even if a user tries to go to this page, they won't even go to the page, they'll go straight to this person's other website. Oh, and what's the bad thing is that as this happens, if this happens to your WordPress site, you'll never know it. Oh, my God, because they're not going to tell you because if you Yeah, obviously, if they were, if you became aware of this, you would get rid of those pages, you get rid of those links.

Meredith: 6:10

Is there a way to scan your your websites? Oh, I'm so smart.

Meredith's Husband: 6:16

So but they so these people want those links to stay there. They don't want they don't want them to be erased. So they so they try to hide it. But what happens is Google sees it. And Google Google's Google sees this. And if you don't catch it and get rid of this, this hack, you can ultimately be banned from Google. So you will see your traffic just disappear. And this does happen. This happens. Often, I've I've removed many, many, many hacks over the years. And inevitably, the most well known one is it will continue to be the most well known one is the is a pharma hack. So it links to fake pharmacies, fake pharmacies, fake pharmacies overseas, in Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe somehow, and they're 99 times out of 100. It'll be Viagra, fake Viagra, fake Cialis. Yeah. And there was somebody some somebody did a story on this one. I don't remember if it's like the Wall Street Journal or 60 minutes or something. They actually ordered some of these so they order Viagra. Yeah, I got him when they looked at him and what the pills. The pills were. They were compacted sawdust. No. painted blue with no with like latex house paint. sold as Viagra.

Meredith: 7:44

Oh my gosh, you know, people took it.

Meredith's Husband: 7:47

Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, nothing happens that you know, you can eat Sadhas doesn't nothing is bad gonna happen? Yeah, but latex paint. Yeah, not the grip, but just enough to cover a pill. Yes.

Meredith: 7:57

Still, you're gonna poop that out?

Meredith's Husband: 8:01

Well, certainly, yes. A

Meredith: 8:03

sudden, okay, I'm

Meredith's Husband: 8:04

not gonna No comment. Yeah.

Meredith: 8:07

Let's leave that here.

Meredith's Husband: 8:08

But that's what happens if you don't keep your long story

Meredith: 8:12

that he didn't think the podcast would go this far.

Meredith's Husband: 8:16

Fake Viagra. That's what happens if you don't keep your your WordPress site up to date and protected. And yes, there are tools that will do that. That was my next question like SiteGround will scan if you host on SiteGround. And again, if you're if you're running a WordPress website, and you're looking for a host, I highly recommend SiteGround I'll do and I'll do an entire episode someday on on Well,

Meredith: 8:40

there'll be a link down that somebody can go to

Meredith's Husband: 8:43

Yeah, a lot of times people if you're running a WordPress site, you're already going to be on a host, and you might not want to switch. So there are there are also tools that you can use the one I use, to just kind of monitor a whole bunch of sites is called, I think it's called there'll be up manage correction. It's called Managed WP at manage wp.com. I'll check it later. Okay, and if that's not at all certain. But yeah, what they'll do is they'll they'll run us, they'll run a security scan daily, and you can see like, a couple bucks a month. Oh, that's great. But it won't clean your site. If you if you find a hack, then you're going to need either your host to take care of it. In which case, again, SiteGround is great. Some hosts like GoDaddy are going to, you know, really cheap hosts are going to be like, No, that we can't do that, or they're going to charge your money. SiteGround will do it for free.

Meredith: 9:37

Okay. And so that goes through it. And that will also clean it up.

Meredith's Husband: 9:43

Yes, they'll clean it out. Because the host doesn't want you know, it isn't the host the website host best interests. They don't want to hack in there on their servers, you know, so it's in their best interest to clean it up. Right, true. Okay, well, that. Just that just came in. So I'm going to reach out to this to this guy later today. Yeah, absolutely. A heads up.

Meredith: 10:03

Good job. Yeah. Sounds great.

Meredith's Husband: 10:07

Yeah, thanks, everybody. Goodbye. I wanted to talk a little bit more about blogging. Because last week, I think I gave you I gave you an idea for you know, what I thought was a very easy way to get started blogging. But it's by no means the only way there okay. literally an infinite number of ways. You're really limited by your own creativity. Yes. Oh, and as a as a professional, creative, you should have an advantage. Yes. Yes. So So I introduced that that method, because I figured it if you haven't started blogging, I figured that would be the thing that kind of sounds the most to you. What you think of blogging should be? Does that make sense?

Meredith: 10:52

What thinks to me that so if you had sound like me, if you had,

Meredith's Husband: 10:57

no. So if you haven't started blogging, I introduced that idea, because I thought that would align with what you probably expect blogging should be the who, what, why, how answers, how much should? How much should you pay a photographer for your wedding photo? Like those sorts of things? What's your, you know, those are probably the things that you're thinking that, you know, a blob should be? Right. And I, you know, that should be an easy method to come up with those. But there are many others. So I wanted to cover some of the others. That'd be great. In case you have done that, in the last week, if you have congratulations. You say assume nobody has, but maybe somebody has. Yes, there's, there's so there's lots of other ways to do it. And I wanted to talk about some. Okay, so, another one of my favorite ways to do this is interviews. And you might you might think, Well, who am I going to interview? How am I gonna do that, but bla bla bla bla bla. I mean, there's lots of possibilities. Also, you want to think about when you're doing this, is there some way you can like, sort of kill two birds with one stone get, you know, dual purpose out of this blog entry? So

Meredith: 12:06

maybe maybe there should be another another phrase that will kill two birds was once like, there's got to be a nicer thing that doesn't hurt birds. Yeah. Why would you want to kill on birds are great. All right. It's got to be another. There has to be another

Meredith's Husband: 12:23

when you are blogging? Yes. And you'd like to take

Meredith: 12:27

care of two things at once. Yeah. Hello.

Meredith's Husband: 12:31

Okay. So interviews, like, let's say, you are a, say wedding photographer, I assume there are a lot of wedding photographers out there related to other types of photographers. So you can follow up with your clients after the wedding. Not right after, but maybe they're probably on their honeymoon, Wait, can I just give them time to go on their honeymoon, and settle back into life, but then reach out and say, hey, I want to know, you hope your honeymoon was great or hope everything is going? Well wanted to ask you a few questions, you know, and they can be not necessarily things like, how did you feel about this? It's not like a service questionnaire. But you can say like, Hey, if you could go back, I you know, I'm interested. If you could go back and talk to yourself before your wedding. What What advice would you give yourself? Just a quick comment here. Questions like this, you might want to preface by saying you're writing a blog or taking a survey to publish on your website, a question like that out of the blue might seem a little odd, you know, questions like that, where it's going to help you as a photographer, because then then you you know, you have some idea into the mindset of your clients both before and after hiring you. It's certainly going to appeal I would think, to engaged couples planning their their wedding because I remember, you know, leading up to it, there's a lot going on. And a lot of unknown stuff. It's literally a once in a lifetime event. So you know, you kind of feel in some way like you're what are the ways the one like you're rolling the dice like what I what I what I what I meant by that. Like, I hope this I hope this caterer is makes good fish. Oh, I hope this DJ is good. I hope the photog the photos come out with not I hope she's the one for me. But anyway, that's one idea. You could you could you could do things like that. You could interview other photographers, you could do like a round table, that may be a little more difficult because people are gonna feel like you are a competition etc.

Meredith: 14:45

So could you do a collective link?

Meredith's Husband: 14:49

What do you mean a collective like,

Meredith: 14:50

yeah, I don't I actually don't think that's the best best idea. Because then you're, you're making other people be like, Oh, we well actually. Or maybe you're just sharing the wealth and you're listing all these other photographers that people can click on?

Meredith's Husband: 15:03

Well, what I would do is I would talk to wedding photographers in another state or something word yeah

Meredith: 15:09

nice

Meredith's Husband: 15:10

nice nice not not the one down the street. They're probably not gonna want to do it. But if you have friends, you have friends across the country when you talk to you know, that's a possibility. Another possibility interview other other vendors, you know, yeah, that's what I was thinking talk to DJ To talk to caterers, talk to event venues, ask them, you know, hey, as a DJ, what, you know, what's the one thing that you think engaged couples should know about? You know, but you know, before they select their music, things like that, you know, then you can link to them, you know, I assume, yeah, you could talk to them on the phone and record it just dude like this a Zoom meeting, have it transcribed, and say, hey, I'll link to you. I would assume they would do that. Yeah. DJ is a pretty cool, yeah, DJ isn't the best. DJ was awesome. Our

Meredith: 15:54

DJ was so good. What was his name? Remember, ah, I'm gonna look for while you talk.

Meredith's Husband: 16:03

That's just some ideas about interviewing. And I will use the same method I discussed discussed last week about transcribing. If you are transcribing a, by the way, I've learned this,

Meredith: 16:13

and DJ Gaza. Really? Yep. TJ Gaza, Gary Hoffman, DJ Gaza. So hold on. I'm gonna just see if the site is its is changed the site is now 74 events.com 74 events.com. Well, check out and check it out. Hold on. And his name is Gary Hoffman.

Meredith's Husband: 16:40

Yeah, he was good. He was really good. Great. If he's, if he's still at the head of that. Or if he's still a part a part of that. I recommend him if you're in New York City.

Meredith: 16:50

Yeah. All right.

Meredith's Husband: 16:53

Well, let's move on. So in the last couple of weeks, I found another tool for transcribing audio with multiple speakers, which is good, because it's a little different than the tools I recommended if you're just speaking yourself, because as as we have learned, people tend to talk over each other.

Meredith: 17:11

No, yes. No, I don't believe it.

Meredith's Husband: 17:16

And that creates a transcription problem that a tool called sonics.ai, S O n, i x.ai. is really good. Time sonics.ai S O n, i x.ai is really good for transcribing things with multiple speakers. It's by far the best that I found. And I looked around quite a bit. So

Meredith: 17:40

onward. There'll be a link to that below.

Meredith's Husband: 17:44

Sure. Sure. And there's gonna be a

Meredith: 17:48

lot of links, wow, we can section them off in different

Meredith's Husband: 17:52

there. Yeah, they're all there in the you obviously, haven't looked at the website, because there's a resource section. And they are all they all have their own category.

Meredith: 18:01

So Craver

Meredith's Husband: 18:03

you can do. So back to potential blog formats, you can do lists, you can do a resource list, and say, Hey, if you're planning a wedding in this, you know, here are the things you want to think about. How much does not only how much does photography cost? Because people are good if you're, if you're the photographer, and you're saying, here's how much photos cost. And that's it, people are gonna see that as a little bit. self serving, right, and rightfully so. But what about how much? You know, what, how much does a wedding cost? And you break down all the different costs? Yeah, you know, because a lot of people I assume, like us, we had$1 amount, and it was in our budget. And then we have all these things that we need. And then we need to figure out what are all the things? How much should all the things cost? Like, think of like, a nice resource might be like, Hey, here's a, here's an infographic or here's a pie chart. And here's where all your money's gonna need to go. And roughly, these are the percentages, and that would vary from location to location. Yeah, but that would that would be a good resource. I would think,

Meredith: 19:04

hands down. We spent the most on photography.

Meredith's Husband: 19:09

Yeah, I think more than our venue even. Yeah, yeah. And worth it. Yeah. It's the one. Yeah. To be honest. You know, it's, it's the one thing we still have, other than our memories.

Meredith: 19:24

And marriage. Yes. Which,

Meredith's Husband: 19:36

yeah, that seems like it would be, you know, stuff like that. So you can, you know, be helpful, in more ways than just writing the photos. And if you if you create, if you create blogs like this, like something like that one, you can come back and you can keep revising it. It doesn't have to be at one time, and then it sits there forever.

Meredith: 19:56

You can't help or hinder if you revise.

Meredith's Husband: 20:00

Yeah, it actually helps. A couple ways. If you, you know, I have clients who they have, they had blogs from, say 2012 that were doing really well. Yeah. And then in 2020, they, they, they revise it and republish it. Now it's 2021 Yeah, Google will. Google has a slight tendency to prefer newer content. Not as much as it used to be. But yeah, they used to really, really like new content. In fact, there was for a very small amount of time somebody figured out that if you publish a blog post with tomorrow's date, guess what? goes straight to number one? Like you're instantly go to number one on Google. Yeah, that only lasted like a few days. But, man, yeah, it was it was yeah, it was quite, it was funny in the SEO world. That's, that's hilarious. That's exciting. Oh,

Meredith: 20:56

it gives me shivers.

Meredith's Husband: 20:58

But also if you update something, put it in the title tag, you know, whatever the name of your blog is, and then after the name, say, updated 2021, you see that all the time. And that helps people click on that people love that's like, clickbait like when you say, when you do a search,

Meredith: 21:15

and you want to see and read the most, and it was sent.

Meredith's Husband: 21:19

Yeah, you want the latest information? So yeah, conditioned

Meredith: 21:22

to do that. Yeah. If it's, if it's best,

Meredith's Husband: 21:26

yeah. If it's May 2021. And you say, in there, you have a blog post that says, like, updated, you know, February 2021. And it's the only one in the list that says something like people are going to click that I guarantee you

Meredith: 21:40

would have to be after me, though. It would have to be September.

Meredith's Husband: 21:44

No, if somebody is doing a search in May, your and your blog post says updated February 2021. That's gonna be pretty appealing, pretty appealing.

Meredith: 21:54

Yeah, like when you're on Amazon, and you want to read the most recent review? Because they may have changed their products. Mm

Meredith's Husband: 22:04

hmm. Yes, yes. So and then once then once you do, like, so that sort of information is going to be helpful to you to your potential clients. And then you can take info like that, and you can repurpose it. And you can, once you create, once you start creating content like this, you'll be able to chop it up and use it on social media. I mean, we are in the age of content. No. Yeah. So

Meredith: 22:32

the age of the content.

Meredith's Husband: 22:39

I'm just gonna let you go with that one. That was pretty good. Yeah, I've heard it said in several different ways that today, if you're not publishing, let me rephrase that. Every business now should think of themselves as a publisher. You gotta be putting content if you don't have a voice. Yeah. In today's world, you don't exist.

Meredith: 23:00

You don't exist in that

Meredith's Husband: 23:02

on line. Yes. Put it that? Yes. Yeah. But anyway, once you start creating this sort of content, and you see what's popular, and what people like, which you'll be able to see from looking at your analytics and, you know, seeing which pages are popular. You can you know, create slideshows, create 62nd snippets create infographics post, you know, this is the stuff you can use as sort of the pillar content on social media, the stuff that and your blog, more importantly, the stuff that is like the flagpole of your of your blog. And then you can fill in, you know, not every single blog post is going to be something like this, obviously. But then you can fill it in with the with the more traditional posts of like, Hey, here's my latest shoot with family XYZ, we did this and that we love them. Yeah, to keep your publishing consistent. And then sprinkled throughout you have these more substantial pieces. That sounds

Meredith: 23:59

great. Yeah, I can't wait to start.

Meredith's Husband: 24:06

Well, you do have I mean, you do have a blog? Yeah, it is on your website. Yeah. Look, deficits.

Meredith: 24:13

Send me a link so I can start.

Meredith's Husband: 24:15

Well, you can't because we were waiting to publish your new site. Yeah, I sent you a link to publish. Then you'll have to just redo it. No. Yeah. So I didn't think you'd want to do that. Nope. Thank you. All right. Cool. If you have any questions, let me know let us know emeritus. husband.com

Meredith: 24:33

Thank you very much for listening everybody. We're so grateful that you took time to spend with me and my husband.

Meredith's Husband: 24:43

I don't know how to respond you know when when you when you laugh at you and you move your head like that this is what Oh, well

Meredith: 25:05

I keep moving away to so it doesn't just like sound like try to

Meredith's Husband: 25:10

tackle so nice cat I enjoy your you married that

Meredith: 25:13

cacophonous hopefully listeners will not find it as hard to hear as I do. Okay, everybody. Okay, fine.

Meredith's Husband: 25:29

Okay, I hope that helped. I hope that helped your website. I hope that helped your business. I hope that helped give you a little bit of confidence that SEO is not this convoluted, cryptic, crazy thing that nobody can understand. If you did like it and you found it helpful, please share with a couple of your colleagues. Tell them what you like. Or more importantly, tell me what you liked. Let me know interview leave a review on Apple. Tell me what parts you like. And I'll try to do more of those parts. And again, thanks for listening