Meredith's Husband: 0:42

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 you ready?

Meredith: 0:58

I'm ready. Okay, let's go. Let's go.

Meredith's Husband: 1:01

I think this is going to be the sexiest SEO podcast episode in history. Wow. Yeah, actually, that's not true at all. We're gonna talk about title tags, title, tags, titles and tags. Title the most, the most unsexy.

Meredith: 1:18

No, they could be totally sexy.

Meredith's Husband: 1:21

I feel like this state of mind, man. I feel like it's like the equivalent of going to the dentist in SEO.

Meredith: 1:29

I love going to the dentist. Yeah, but

Meredith's Husband: 1:31

you're weird. Mostly.

Meredith: 1:33

I love having my teeth clean.

Meredith's Husband: 1:35

This is something that is not doesn't seem like a lot of fun. But you got to you have to do it's like, if you don't do it, it's, you have dirty teeth. Right? Anyway, we're gonna talk about how to how to do it today, what there is a lot of talk in out there in the world about what you need to do with your, your, your meta tags. That means do it. There's, there's a few types of tags that you need to think about when you when you hit it's when you hear the term meta tags. We're talking about title tags, which are technically not meta tags, but they are. They're kind of lumped in with meta tags. So there's your title tags, your meta description tag, there's your keyword meta tag. And then there are your image alt tags, and your h1 tags, your headings. See, sexy, right? Super exciting.

Meredith: 2:32

It's just so confusing. I know I was with you at the beginning. And I'm visualizing like,

Meredith's Husband: 2:37

yes. I'm just laying out what we're gonna do. I'm gonna explain all this. It's not it's really not confusing. I'm gonna explain it.

Meredith: 2:45

Okay, because it seems like, shouldn't they all just be the same? I mean, can you just put the same words in all the places

Meredith's Husband: 2:53

where you can? That would be keyword stuffing, when they Google spam team would be like, This person is a keyword stuffer, you go to Google jail, right? So number one, the very most important one title tags, your title tags. If you do a search in Google do any search. And then the listings that you see, you know, there's a big blue bold line of text. Yeah. And then followed by some some other text, that blue line is the title tech is the title. It's the title of your page. It's very important for that reason, because it's what people are going to see before they decide whether or not to click on your site. It's also going to determine what keywords you show up for or it's gonna help determine. So it's important for for both usability and for SEO? No, gotcha. How do you write a title tech? Number one, okay, I got about, I don't know, seven or eight points here. Number one, it has to be every single page on your website needs a unique title tag, okay. They all know

Meredith: 3:55

how unique like they can't have the same three words in different places. Well, the different

Meredith's Husband: 4:01

just don't duplicate them. They definitely cannot be exact duplicates. Okay. Okay. Number one. Number two length, you're gonna hear a lot about length, like your title tags are too long. Or too short. Whatever. Goldilocks? Yeah, yeah. Good. That works. Thank you. Thank you. There is no technically there is no such thing as a title tag that's too long. According to people at Google, it doesn't matter how long your title tag is, it can be 50,000 words if you want. Well, there's two problems though. Number one, only, like a, like a few words are going to actually be displayed right to users. So nobody's gonna see the rest of them. But Will Google Yeah, but they're not going to pay attention. Or they're going to pay very little attention. The second problem is that it dilutes the strength of your of your keywords. So if you have your, if you have your key, like imagine you have two, two title tags for for a page, and this page is about children's birthday party photography, if the title if the title or the title tag, title tag is children's birthday party photography, it's very clear what that page is about and what it should rank for. If your title is children's birthday photography, and then has 50 more words after it, then it's very much less clear what that title is about. Right. See? So that's those are the those are the two issues. Now, the display issue, typically, you're going to hear that the the length limit is about 60 or 65 characters after that Google's characters meaning letters, letters, or spaces. Okay? Or characters, any, any sort of character Hermite. If you can find a Kermit icon, then yes. So the, so you're gonna hear the length of 60 is 65 characters. Technically, it is a pixel with, like, you have so many pixels after that number of pixels, Google is going to cut off your title tagging, just going to have a dot, dot dot. And the reason that that's only if you can imagine if you had a string of W's, yeah, that would take up but that'd be wider, it would take up more space than a string of eyes of lowercase eyes. Yes. So technically, it's a pixel width. But realistically, you're going to want to keep your your title tag to a max of 60, or maybe 65 characters, in order to have it all displayed. Got it. And that's creating spaces, including spaces. Most any SEO plugin for WordPress is going to have a counter. So as you're typing, you'll see the counter go up. And once you get over 60, or 65, it will turn red. So that's what you want to. But if you use an SEO tool, a lot of times it will come back. So your title tags are too long. That's not necessarily the problem. The problem is that you want to make sure it's you don't it's not longer than it needs to be. And what do you mean by tool? Like SEMrush? There's a million tools like SEMrush. Out there. Number three, your brand name. When do you put your brand name in your title tag? So your brand, generally speaking, a good rule of thumb is your brand name. So in your case, Meredith Zinner photography should be at the very beginning of the title tag on your homepage. Okay, then it does not need to be anywhere else really does. It doesn't need to be on every inner page. Now, a lot of times, what you'll see is people do that. And then they have the brand name at the end of the title tag for inner pages. Because it's not important after your after your homepage. It's not important to have your brand name up in the beginning. So it's less important. So it goes at the end of the title tag. Okay, what the hell are you doing?

Meredith: 8:07

I forgot to put SPF on and

Meredith's Husband: 8:09

you're putting SPF and middle of a podcast.

Meredith: 8:14

I forgot to put it on this morning. I haven't brushed my teeth yet. No, but do you see the light coming in, you see a shadow on my face, people there's a tiny little light touching Meredith. But it's sun and it's bouncing off the building. She's a vampire in the backyard. And so I'm putting on SPF. Let's get back to SEO.

Meredith's Husband: 8:43

You didn't think I'd noticed them staring at you. Your brand name. A lot of times what you will see is people put the brand name at the end of the title tag for the inner pages. Now that's if you have a short brand name. Like like one of my clients, their brand name is literally four letters. So they tack it on at the end. Fitting fitting Meredith Zinner photography at the end of every title tag is going to take up a lot stick and take up too much. So in your case, I don't do it. I wouldn't I wouldn't do it. The only other pages you might want to include your brand name would be like the about page, the contact page. That's about it. Yeah, that makes sense. So what do you put in your title tags? Yeah, your keywords? Put your keywords in your title tags. Now, you had mentioned earlier? Can I repeat the same three keywords on every you know, if you're if your website like children's photography? Do you put children's photography on every

Meredith: 9:39

well? Do you put children's photography, photography children?

Meredith's Husband: 9:44

No. Okay. Every again, every page of your site is unique. And you should be specific to what that page is about in your title tag. So if so your homepage, it should say I think your homepage is probably like medicine or photography. And then a pipe. I'll get to that a second. And then I'll explain that in a second. And then it and then Family and Children's photography. Then the inner pages would be if it's like let's say we're looking at your family, one of your family pages. It would be you know, family photography, prices, family photography sessions, family photography, something you need to be specific to what the pages have in mind what what that page is about, and if you could if we're going to rank for something, what would that be? That's most likely your your keyword for that for that page, now your keywords should go in the beginning of your title tag up very near the front of them. Okay? So don't put them at the end for another. In other words, don't have like a whole bunch of words. And then at the very end, have your, your your keywords put your keywords first, right. Okay. Also with keywords along those lines, don't put the same keywords in every single page, don't stuff your keywords, so don't stuff, you know, multiple variations of your keyword into a single title tech. Don't say something, for example, Meredith Zinner photography, New York photographer, photographing, you know, don't do that. Google, the Google understands the difference, get your important keywords near the beginning, and then don't repeat them. And then don't stuffed them across every single page of your site. Don't say the same thing. On every not every single page of your site is about family photography. Some of those pages are how to contact you. Some of the pages are about you some of the pages or pricing some of the pictures or blog pages, be specific to the page. Okay? Avoid stop words, stock or stop, stop. So T S S T O P, like a sign? Yes. And no, that means words like a and of the stuff like that, Google is going to skip over those words. So you might not always be able to eliminate them completely. But keep them to a minimum. And also they they take up they dilute your keyword space. They take up extra space that you don't need so so keep them to a minimum quotes. Never use quotation marks ever. Don't ever ever use quotation marks that will that'll stop Google gets to a quotation mark is going to stop the heart. I learned this the hard way. Why did they stop? I don't know. It's something Oh, because quotes are used in its they're very commonly used within code. Oh, so Google sees that and it expects code to be coming afterwards. So it stops. So if you put quotations in your title tag, you'll notice in Google, your title tag will stop. Right? You'll see it right before those quotation marks Google. It'll just end your title. Characters that you do want to use and title tags pipe. So I mentioned the pipe sign. Yeah, the pipe? Is that vertical? It looks like a lowercase L but it's just a plain vertical line. Oh, yeah. That's a good one to use. It's a good

Meredith: 13:17

looks like a lowercase L or a capital I?

Meredith's Husband: 13:21

Yes. It's a good set. Yes, it's a good separator because it doesn't take up much width horizontally. Right? Google also skips over that. So it's, you know, some characters like an underscore. Google recognizes as an underscore, and if I do a search for something with an underscore, it will actually look for matches with an underscore in it. So don't use underscores use hyphens instead,

Meredith: 13:49

right?

Meredith's Husband: 13:49

I think you mentioned that once. Yeah, you always want to try to use hyphens, just almost across the board whenever you're when you're naming files or whatever. Or in URLs definitely, in URLs don't. Don't include underscores. But just generally kind of try to use hyphens instead. You can use brackets, you can use parentheses, you can use colons. You know, you can use those however, however you like. Just keep in mind that pipes are a very common one. So what often you'll see on a homepage is the brand name, space and then a pipe, and then a space and then whatever that site is

Meredith: 14:29

about. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 15:12

and visually, it works. Geography you don't need to stuff geography into your title tags, you don't need to put in New York and everyone

Meredith: 15:23

used to be different school right?

Meredith's Husband: 15:26

To be that would be at the end NYC, New York, it would be in every single one don't have to do that anymore. The exception would be maybe in your home, if you're a local business owner, like a photographer. In your homepage, you could say, Mirada center photography, Family and Children's photographer in Brooklyn, New York, right cuz you do want people to see it, because you want people to see it. Yeah. It does not need to be on every single inner page. I would maybe maybe your about page, maybe yeah, maybe homepage and contact contact. By the way, a good thing to put in your contact page title tag is your phone number. Put the phone number right in there.

Meredith: 16:09

Why is it a good thing? Just

Meredith's Husband: 16:12

yeah, so so people can see it, it's handy. It's going to show it's going to start to show up in a lot of places. It's just, it's just a good. It's a good thing to do. Okay. I'll take your word for it. For once. Do that. Okay, that's, that is titled tax. Nice. Pretty good, right? Yeah. So next, we've got more remember? Yes, but wait. But wait, there's more meta descriptions. So your meta description tag is the little paragraph that's going to show up in Google or appear in Google listings after your title tag. So this no longer affects your SEO. So there's nothing you can put in your meta description tag that is going to make your rankings higher. So don't don't worry about putting keywords in here doesn't matter. Doesn't matter, it will make or break, it won't you won't do anything, the things you need to do. Make them unique. Google will perhaps penalize you if you duplicate your meta description tag across every page of your site high enough. Okay. The length there's a character limit here as well. It's about 160 characters. I think the same thing is true. It can be longer, it doesn't matter. But there is absolutely no reason to make it longer. It's just going to be truncated. Okay. So keep that in mind, try to have a full thought in that space. I think shorter is better, to be honest. Yeah, I just think it's gonna get more people to actually read it. This is this is what I do. When I do meta description text I do this for I do it for my site, your site, client sites, everything, I go to that page, and I just copy the first paragraph of text, and then go put it in the meta description thing. And I try to edit it down to less than 160 characters. Okay, I do that by just shortening it. Also, by taking out stop words that are not necessary. By putting in things like ampersand instead of and just just whittling it down. It's not very difficult. But just be descriptive of what that page is about. And that's why you start with the first paragraph of that page. That's a totally legit way to do. description tags. That's what people are kind of expect when people are in Google and they see a little description of a page. And then they click on it, they're going to expect to see that's what exactly what they're going to expect to see this. This is totally good for users. It's totally good for SEO. Okay, next is the meta keyword tag.

Meredith: 18:54

meta keyword. Tag.

Meredith's Husband: 18:57

Yes. And this is not important at all. Oh, don't worry about this. Google announced years ago. They're like, don't pay attention. You don't need to put stuff in your keyword tag. We don't even read them anymore. Why do they have it? Well, they used to have it years ago because they did use it and people like me, SEOs abused it stuffing keywords in there, but not you. Not me, of course not me. Now, it doesn't harm anything. You can put keywords in your in your keyword tag, it's not gonna it's not gonna cause any harm. other search engines might use them. I don't know, Yahoo. Bing. Asked Jeeves, I was just gonna say they might use them. They might show up in like, Who knows if what Facebook is going to do with their in the future, it might show up. It also might not hurt if you know your your keywords for a particular page. It might not hurt just personally for organizational purposes to sticking in there. Now keep in mind that it no no, don't you know, I've seen lots of meta keyword tags were people's lists like literally hundreds and hundreds of keywords. Obviously don't don't do that it doesn't do anything. Just list your one or two keywords for that page. Yeah. Also, if you're on like Wix or Weebly, I don't know if Squarespace does it anymore. They will have something that little have a little field that says your keywords. This is probably what that is doing. And this is why I'm often so disparaging of platforms like Wix and Weebly, they say, Oh, we have SEO settings. Yes. Your keywords in here. Yeah, they are in there. And they are 100% meaningless. Oh, I just I don't you know, I feel like those companies are just lying to you saying that they have SEO features. They know that they don't matter.

Meredith: 20:55

Because so many people use them and you literally think oh, this is taken care of.

Meredith's Husband: 21:01

Why wouldn't you? Yeah, yeah. So we believe so. So again, you can use the same thing. There's no harm in putting stuff in there. Whatever your you know, chosen keyword phrases for a page, I would stick Get in there just for, you know, organization just for your own. Or maybe you have somebody help you with your website someday and they can say, Oh, the keyword for this page is such and such. Sure it's not going to hurt anything. Okay. image alt tags.

Meredith: 21:27

Image. Alt tags.

Meredith's Husband: 21:28

Okay. Yes. Short for image, attribute, attribute. All attribute. Yes. Not attributes attribute. What did I say? Attribute? Yeah, they're not all attributes. Okay? Even

Meredith: 21:43

I know that's not a word.

Meredith's Husband: 21:45

I said that. I'm like, that doesn't sound

Meredith: 21:48

even I caught that. I'm the one that makes up the words

Meredith's Husband: 21:51

alternate, alternate alternate attributes. Alternate attributes. Maybe that's I don't know. image alt tags. I put their alternative. I actually don't know.

Meredith: 22:02

I think somebody needs to do a little homework. I guess. So. Okay. Tune in next time when my husband learns

Meredith's Husband: 22:10

about SEO. Okay, so your image alt tags. These are the tags that you you assigned to images. Most editors, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, WordPress. They're all going to have image alt tag. Yeah, things. spaces. This is not important. These are important. This is not the caption. Don't confuse this with the caption two different things.

Meredith: 22:34

Okay. Okay. Describe what is the difference between captions and Okay,

Meredith's Husband: 22:38

so the caption is just the text beneath it's like an image caption. It's the you know, if you're reading in newspapers an image right beneath, it's gonna have a caption. What is that? Right? Yeah, we do. image alt tag is along the same idea. But it's, it originally was meant for visually impaired people. Yeah. So when so when they can't see an image? They can there's a few words there. And they can know what what the image is, in, in putting words in your image, alt tags, the same rules apply, be accurate, right? The best way to come up with an image alt tag, I think is in your mind. Finish the sentence. This is a picture of blank, what is it? Again, don't stuff your keywords. If it's a, you know, picture of a kid on a swing, don't say New York City family photographer. Yeah, be accurate. If it's a picture of a kid with his parents, you could say something about family. Sure, put a keyword in if it's applicable, don't stuff. Don't, don't use stop words, don't use a n of the things like that, unless they are really sort of necessary, right? All your images should have image alt tags, you can be penalized. If Google sees that you're not using image alt tags, then your website is not accessible, or your website may not be accessible. That's something you want to you want to do. So, I mean, just if sometimes people not anymore, really, but when you know, internet speeds, were not as fast as they are now. Sometimes built, you know, image would take a long time to load or it doesn't load or it doesn't load, you see that you see the image Alltech that's where this so keep it short, not too long. Yeah, yeah. And finally, Juan tax, these are headings are heading of your of your page. This is typically the big, bold headline at the top of every web page, those are your h1, on your h1 tag, there's also h2 and h3 is h 456. Think of it like a like a bullet list. The h1 is like the big one at the top, you need to have an h1 tag on every page. Number one, it's okay if you duplicate them between different pages. But don't don't use the same one on all your pages. If you happen to have two pages with the same one. I mean, that's kind of confusing, because it suggests to the user that the page content is the or the page is the same, it's about the same thing. But there's there's technically not an SEO problem with that. Now you don't want to duplicate it with your title tag. And on that's what happens with WordPress default blogs is that it's going to take your title, whatever your title is, it's going to make it the same as the title tag for that page. Now with an SEO plugin, you can change the title and make a difference. You probably should, in general, that the heading is going to be it's going to be similar to the title tag. It's it's kind of the same same type of thing, but it's usually going to be shorter. The title tag is like it's not a sentence, but it's like I said it's 60 characters. You're heading tag your each one is probably going to be two or three or four words, maybe one word, so it's typically shorter but it's It's in, you're probably going to want to include the same keyword here that you included on your title tag.

Meredith: 26:19

Okay? So that again,

Meredith's Husband: 26:23

your problem. So once you once you have decided what your, what your keywords are for a particular page that those keywords or that keyword is going to go. Remember, right in the front of your title tag, it's also going to be in your heading in your h1 tag. big bold. That's important. This is important for users. It's important for SEO. Those are probably the two single most important things for SEO, your title tag. Got your h1 your heading your h1 tag. Got

Meredith: 26:57

it? Good to know. Okay, I got it. I've got it. That's it. Thank you. That's a good that was that was shocked.

Meredith's Husband: 27:06

Feels pretty. I hoped. pretty full. Yeah.

Meredith: 27:10

That was super fun. I would I would I would need to definitely have my pen and paper and have all of my web stuff open. So I could go and pause and go back would

Meredith's Husband: 27:23

make a good effect. I think I have this as a checklist on my on my blog. Yeah, I do for title tags. Yeah. Good. I'll probably I'll try to do that in the future to do a revised one for all tags. All tags. Helpful. Image Oh, oh, no, not attribute image. Why do I have a podcast? I don't know words. Alright, thank you, everyone. Thank you. 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 it 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. Again. Thanks for listening.