Meredith's Husband: 0:33

Hey, this is Meredith's husband. I've got some SEO advice for you, but I'm going to keep it really simple, so that you can understand it, so it makes sense, and most importantly, so you can actually use it. All right, so what do you do if you are starting from scratch? Oh, gosh, if you have, I guess that could mean a few different things. If you have no website at all, no website, maybe you have a website you're just starting. Maybe it's super small, maybe you have a couple pages. Maybe you're struggling to figure out what to put on your website, which is never ending. By the way, you'll be Gosh, tell

Meredith: 1:20

me about it forever. How long has it been?

Meredith's Husband: 1:23

How long has what been?

Meredith: 1:24

How long have I been working on my new website? I don't know. I don't serve as a good example.

Meredith's Husband: 1:35

Well, yeah, you need to schedule time. But anyway, yes, what do we do? We're starting from scratch. What do we do if you're in that situation, you're just trying to get going and you're stuck. So first, if you don't have one already, you need a domain name. You need a website name, right,

Meredith: 1:50

right? How do you go about getting one?

Meredith's Husband: 1:52

You can get them at GoDaddy. If you don't, if you're buying domains, I actually recommend Google domains, okay, just because they're they're a little bit cheaper. They're like, they're$12 a year, whereas GoDaddy is going to be like, 1499 or whatever, and these other sites. But I like Google because this is not their main business. Like, Google is not in business to make money off of domain name. Oh, I see, I see. So they're not, they're not going to be trying to upsell you. You know, when's the last time you bought a domain name on on GoDaddy, for example, how many screens did you have to cycle through saying, No, I don't want that. No, I don't really know. I don't want that. So Google is just like, it's just, you want domain name. Here it is, 12 bucks. They're always 12 bucks. That's great. There's no intro year, so the first year might actually be more expensive, but they're very solid. It's Google. They're not going to get hacked, or it's very unlikely that they get it's more unlikely that they get hacked than somebody like Google or other, some other domain name seller. So then you need a website. So you need you have your domain name. You need the actual site. So if you're just starting, I recommend just going with Squarespace, and it's going to be quick. It's going to be, it's going to be super quick. So first, I've always said, like, the benefit of WordPress is all the flexibility and the features and the SEO. If you're just starting, you just need, you just need a page online, right, right? And it has and you want it to look good, you start with Squarespace. It's going to look good. You're not going to have to worry about the technical issues. Not gonna have to worry really about any technical issues. They're going to take care of it. It's going to look professional. It's going to work on mobile devices. There's lots of help. Super quick. Yeah, it's super quick. You can have, you can have a site online by tomorrow. Well, you know, well, well, with Squarespace,

Meredith: 3:39

yeah, yeah, yeah, right, if you're

Meredith's Husband: 3:40

starting from scratch, yeah, true, true, true. So, so, so, really, if you're, if you're just starting, what, what do you need to put on that site? So you need, like, Technic, like, really, you need, you need your name, yeah, your business name, yeah, your address, yeah, and maybe, if you don't want to, maybe like like you you don't have a studio, you know, your your business address is your home, you work at your client's location. Then you don't want to put your actual address, then just put your, you know, put your address, but instead of your street number and name, say your neighborhood and state and zip code and your phone number,

Meredith: 4:15

which should be, you should have your own business phone number. I do, yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 4:20

it's requirement. But if you, if you are operating on your a lot of people do this. It's, it's personal preference. I like having a business number and my own personal cell phone number, yeah, separate, yeah, I don't, and most a lot of people don't care, but I don't want to associate my personal cell phone with my business, because I already get spam calls, so I guess it doesn't matter. But I just, I just, I just, you know, what? If I want to sell my business someday, I don't want it to be tied to my you know, it's just, I keep them separate, yeah, yeah. And so that's what you need. You need your name, your address, your phone. Technically, that's all you if you're a photographer, you probably want to have an image, right? At least one image, right? Like, this is the bare minimum, right? So it's Meredith Zinner photography, show at least one image, a family photo, and then your contact info. Like, technically, that's, that's what you need to get started to then take the next step. So now you need to take your your website. You need to effectively get it in the phone book. Okay, you remember, like in the in the 80, you know, 20, 3040, years ago? Well, I wasn't bombed then. Oh, right. If your business, you. Your business was not in the phone book. It didn't exist. So you need to do the equivalent of getting your business in the phone book. So what is that? What does that mean? Now, there's a, there's a, it's very different, but it's kind of the same concept. Number one, Google My Business. I'll drop a link below on on how to do that. If you don't have this already, get Google business my setup. That's like, probably, essentially the biggest phone book on the on the internet is all the businesses lit in within Google's business directory. Isn't it crazy

Meredith: 6:03

that now, when we think before, when we before the internet, when we say, Oh, this is one of the biggest things you just you literally think context, and you imagine, like a huge, huge thing. But now that's all on the web, and so it's, it's only in our imaginations, the size, it's not something, do you know, I'm saying it could be any shape, yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 6:28

physically, it's not, well, I mean physical, they have data centers, they have servers, they have hard drives, racks and racks of hard drives, which, you know, it's a thing in Google's data centers are bigger than Yahoo's data centers, you know. So there is kind of a thing, but yeah, compared to the Empire State Building, they're not, they're probably not big, right?

Meredith: 6:47

That's what I'm saying. That's it, just my observation. Yeah, it's,

Meredith's Husband: 6:50

yeah, the world is all data. Now, everything is data anyway, so you need to get into Google. My business, that's, I would call it the largest phone book online, although it's not technically a phone book. Yellow Pages does exist, right? But it's, you know, there's, there's actually 1000s of websites that act as as business directories.

Meredith: 7:11

And so literally, you're saying, go into Google and put in Google My Business, or I'll have a link

Meredith's Husband: 7:21

below, or you can just type in Google My Business, and you'll go to that front page, and they have pretty good instructions there on how to get that set up. Now you might if you're especially if you're doing this for the first time, you may need to verify your business, which is going to mean you're going to need to upload your address and phone number, and then they will mail you a postcard, and then you need to take a code from that postcard, go back and verify,

Unknown: 7:43

yeah, that's just to make sure that you're real, right? Yeah, that you're an isolationist. And people

Meredith's Husband: 7:48

have tried to abuse this system to no end. So they need, so they need to confirm, oh, this is an actual legitimate business with a place of address, like an address. They used to do it by phone, but even that got too easy to work around. So while you so do that, and while you're waiting for that postcard to arrive, you want to go out and get into some of the other phone books that are out there. Now you do this for for one main reason, when, when you do a Google search, and especially for a local business, and you see a map and you see three visitings, yeah, business listings, I probably did, yeah, that's hilarious. When Google is determining what businesses are going to be listed there. One place that it checks is all these other phone books, places like Yellow pages.com, superpages.com, biz, you know, there's 1000s of them, Yelp, etc. So you need to grab some of those links, okay, to make it look to Google more legitimately, like you're a real business, because, because you, because you verified with Google, and they send you a postcard. You said, I got the postcard. Okay, so that's, that's one thing. But the next step for Google is saying, well, they are they? Is this business elsewhere on the web? Are they right, these other hundreds of business directories? If you are, that's, that's a good sign for you. You now look more legit to Google. And that's, that's the goal.

Meredith: 9:15

So how do you get on them?

Meredith's Husband: 9:17

So couple that, I mean, you can do it manually, which is, I think we've, we talked about this in episode like five. You can, you can submit to all these directories manually, which will take four and a half lifetimes. Or you can, you can, you can buy a you can use a service. So service at what's, there's lots of services. I like the one, white Spark, white smart, White. White Spark,

Meredith: 9:43

white strokes, white stripes. White Spark, white

Meredith's Husband: 9:47

Spark, let's, let's call it white spark on the link below. But what? Okay. Another one is Yext. Yext.com this used to be x, but with a Y, right? Like I, I always confuse it with Yelp, but it's replaced the L with a x, yeah, but yeah, you they probably thought of they named it because they wanted to be next, but maybe with the Yahoo beginning, I don't know. Oh, yeah. So what they what they do? You sign up. This is a service, and these are pretty common. Now, you sign up for a service, you enter your business information, and it goes and it puts all your it creates listings for you and all the local business Oh, victories. That's great. And, and you pay, yeah, it

Meredith: 10:24

is gonna say, How much does the call?

Meredith's Husband: 10:26

And you pay, yeah. I used to use Yext all the time. I stopped using it because it's not cheap. It's like. 500 600 bucks a year. Yeah, the benefit is they're they're really well connected to all these directories, and they can get you listed really fast. The problem is that you're essentially renting those listings, because when you stop paying Yext, who knows what's going to happen in those listings, they might not disappear, but that's

Meredith: 10:55

recurring every year.

Meredith's Husband: 10:57

Every year. It's a yearly. I mean, you're paying monthly, yeah, no, it's not cheap for something so simple. So the one I like is, is white Spark, because you give them your business info, they go create all the listings, and they they do it manually, and then they send you a spreadsheet. Here's all your usernames and passwords. And so you pay one time. So much better. So so much so you

Meredith: 11:21

just pay once. It's not annual. You just pay once. Do you know how much it is?

Meredith's Husband: 11:26

It depends on how many you can you can. No, it's It's probably like the cost of one year

Unknown: 11:32

next. But that's it.

Meredith's Husband: 11:35

Own it, and then you own it. And if you ever change, like, let's say you change your phone number, or you move to a new address, or something like that, they will update those, I think, for like, half price or something. That's one of the disadvantage of owning it. If you change something, then you have to, you have to change it. But they, if you've already created those listings with white Spark, they'll update them for a reduced price,

Meredith: 11:58

and you trust them with your name and passwords that you provided. Oh,

Meredith's Husband: 12:03

yeah, no, you don't provide them with any passwords. They will. They create the accounts and give the username and passwords to you. Oh, I can then go in and you can go change them if you want, but I who cares? Like one of the back to Yext for a second. One of the advantages there, if you change your phone number address on Yext, you can go in updated on your dashboard, and it will literally change in all the other directories, like overnight, super fast, and there's no extra fee. But remember, you're paying every year, so you're paying forever. So Right? Another one that is like Yext, but a little bit cheaper, is SEMrush. SEMrush does this too. You love your SEMrush. I love my SEMrush. Yeah, you can go to, I'll have links to all these below. Actually, we have a 10% discount at White Spark, but SEMrush, I think, I think it's, it's 20 bucks a month, and it does, I don't know, 20 or

Meredith: 13:01

30. It seems to do everything that you Sorry, I talked right? Does

Meredith's Husband: 13:04

everything, yeah, no. Some rush does every it does everything. Like, I'm on SEMrush, literally, I'm logged in 24/7, well,

Meredith: 13:13

it's not called, okay, but YM rush, no,

Meredith's Husband: 13:19

yeah, could be, you know what SEM, you know some you know sem stands for

Meredith: 13:25

Sam. It stands for, essentially, ergonomic news,

Meredith's Husband: 13:34

oh, you just missed it. It's marketing, search engine marketing, oh, my god, like SEO as there's in the world of search engine marketing, there's SEM, which usually refers to paid or it's kind of an umbrella and term that would include paid ads on Google and SEO. So SEO is under the umbrella of SEM, and

Meredith: 13:57

then rush, just like, just did it, done,

Meredith's Husband: 14:01

I don't know, yeah, done, man, that was the catchy part. I guess. Wasn't

Meredith: 14:04

there a movie called rush or just a band? I think

Meredith's Husband: 14:08

there's a band called rush, yeah. There's still, yeah, that's what they sounded like.

Meredith: 14:15

It's incredible. I am so good at impressions. Okay,

Meredith's Husband: 14:21

I know. Okay, so let's get back to your website. Okay, so now, so now your your business is kind of on online anyway, is looking more legit. You got a domain name, a website with your contact info. You've got your business info in Google. Yeah, you've got your local links. Google knows you're a legit business. Those also help to start your SEO, because they're inbound links, but you're looking like a legitimate business online. You You have just

Meredith: 14:49

excited for your new business.

Meredith's Husband: 14:53

You have what I would call a minimum viable product. So minimum viable product is like, what is the MVP? That's what

Meredith: 15:01

that is. Yes, MVP coming through.

Meredith's Husband: 15:06

So you've got what you need to move forward now. So I would say so now you probably want to go back and make your, your site a little more robust, right? Maybe put on some more images, yeah. But what do you really need? You need to same thing. You need your business name. You're gonna need to show your, you know, your product, your images. You need to show people what they're going to get. So you could, you could do this to be to begin. You could easily. Really do this just all on one page. If your business name, you have a little bit of text about what you do. You know, the headlines, a family photography, kids photography, samples, a way to contact you. I would say that you want to for SEO purposes. You you're going to want to try to put some words on that page you want to have, ideally, any page that you want to have rank in Google. You want 350, words or more, I would say there's a hard minimum of 200 if you don't have 200 words on a page, it's going to look very thin to Google.

Meredith: 16:07

How do you is there a thing that counts the words? Or do you have to? There's got to be a thing that counts the words. You're not like 4739

Meredith's Husband: 16:16

Yeah. You take, just take a pencil and above every word, 1234, no, yeah, any word processor is going to have a word count feature, okay? Google Docs, Microsoft Word, I'm somewhere in there. You click something will tell you how many words. Okay, so you've got your business name, your contact information, a little bit about what you do via your text and images. You want to have a way for them, for people to contact you, and when people contact you, you want to have what they call a confirmation page. This is ideal. I know, if you're tying your site, if you're integrating it with something like 17 hats, it might give you a form to plug in onto your site. And when people fill out that form, it just says, you know, success or Message received. Ideally, you want to go to a thank you page. So you know, when you when you finish a checkout, you go to a page and says it's like, hey, confirmation. Here's your order number, whatever. That's a confirmation page. And the reason you want that is because the only way that people can get to that page is by taking an action, contacting you. Yeah, it's the call to action, if you if it's E commerce, they bought something that's done. Yes, they got it. So what happens is, then you, Next, you're going to go to Google Analytics. If you don't have Google Analytics, I'll drop a link and how to install that on WordPress and Squarespace. You want to set up a goal in Google Analytics, I'll drop a link to that below to goal, like a goal, a goal, yes, yeah, yeah, goal. It's, it's often called a conversion. But if you log into analytics and try to set it up, it'll it'll say goals, okay, and then if you're looking at reporting, it'll say goal completions. That's conversions. Is another way to say conversions. But the reason you want that is so that you can go back later and look at Google Analytics and say, Okay, this is how many people visited my site, great, but how many people actually click? How many called me or sent me an email or bought my stuff or whatever it is. So it's easy, it's it's the it's the best way to do that, right, right.

Meredith: 18:25

Stop by and look at it. It's people who stop by, look at it and go, I'm going to

Meredith's Husband: 18:31

take an action. Yes, I'm going to do this. I'm gonna contact Meredith

Meredith: 18:35

and I do photography. Yeah, yes, you are.

Meredith's Husband: 18:39

Then, once you have all that, once you have that information in Analytics, you can then see, okay, the people who contacted me. Did they come from Yelp? Did they come from Google? Did they come from Yahoo? Did they come from Instagram? Where am I getting so this is you kind of see, yugal, did I say you go, No, that's, that's the Yahoo and Google combination a wine.

Meredith: 19:01

So you can start to

Meredith's Husband: 19:08

see Welcome to our life. You can start to see where you are actually getting your business, like, where, where would if so, because the next step is you're going to want to go out and start to get traffic. So hopefully, if you have any traffic at all, you'll be able to start to see, hey, where am I already getting traffic? How can I get more or maybe I'm getting traffic from this website over here, but I don't get any conversions from there. I get fewer traffic from this site over here, but I get a lot more conversions. So you start to see where you should put your effort, where you're actually getting the leads. I

Meredith: 19:45

also love that this is the only place where you want traffic. Usually you're like, I don't want I don't want to leave. There's traffic. Oh, I got stuck, traffic, traffic, but now you actually want traffic. Yeah, you want to ever think of Did you ever, had you ever thought of that before? Nope, welcome to Meredith's husband's podcast. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 20:11

you, you really you don't need very much. If so like, and I see this often people get really stuck on the building a website portion. Like, over the years, I have seen some truly horrific sites, looking sites do really fantastically well for businesses. And I've and likewise, I've seen some really fancy. See cashy websites that cost a lot of money and a lot of time a lot of effort do just absolute miserably, right? So crumbs, yeah, so just get the get the basics and and Squarespace will work until you get a site that has, you know, more pages and more content, and you want to maybe dig deeper into something else, or more features, or add flexibility or site then, then you can move it over to WordPress. But for now, if you're, if you're, if you're in that phase and you're struggling with this, just use Squarespace. It's very quick and easy. Thank you. All right, thanks everybody. See you next time he's shaking his head. Hey,

Meredith: 21:14

thank you so much for listening. We really hope that you find this helpful and useful, and if you do what you could do for us as a thanks would be to drum roll, please, yes. Leave a review. Yes, everybody says it, I know, but it really does make a difference. Take three seconds, leave as many stars say something really nice about what you like, about the podcast, and maybe why other people would like it. It would mean the world to us, especially my husband, that better. I'm going to try one where I'm not going to be charming. I'm.