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 Alright, keyword stuffing, do you know what keyword stuffing is?

Meredith: 1:03

I'm picturing of course, a turkey stuffing. And that's, that's really, really not a pleasant.

Meredith's Husband: 1:10

That's actually hilarious. I should make I should make stuffing for turkeys and just call it keyword stuffing. I'd be it'd be, it'd be hilarious to like 50 people in the country? Yeah, that's about it. Anyway, but what is keyword stuffing? Why it's important? How to avoid it. That's what we're going to talk about today. Okay, sounds good. Yeah. Okay. So what have you heard about keyword stuffing? If when I say when I say keyword stuffing, what pops into your mind?

Meredith: 1:41

Well, I see an image tags. And then I see 46 words on each image. Everything possible being stuffed into it. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 1:54

that's one that is that is one. One instance of keyword stuffing. Yes, there actually there are several, right. And this, and this is something that you can be your site can be penalized for if Google thinks that you're stuffing your keywords, because it starts to look like something that SEOs have done in the past. Again, they tried to spam the system. So the Google spam team was trying to find a way to find this. Well, because

Meredith: 2:19

humans, we do want to get away with as much as we can, without getting caught. Well, I speaking for a friend,

Meredith's Husband: 2:26

also, you just want to get high, you know, you try to figure out how to get high rankings, there are ways to do it. And you know, at a certain time, in the in SEO history, there was a time when it worked like you could like you remember when you would do like, say, let's say you're doing a search for New York photographers, and you find a website through Google. And the text reads something like New York photography for New York photography, photographing New York families in New York and areas surrounding New York. I'm based in New York, New York, and it's just like the pages just is literally stuffed with your keywords. In that case, your your your keyword would be New York, it wouldn't always, you know, maybe it would be Sierra, right. And so and so yeah, that that actually worked for a while. And then people would stuff keywords in all sorts of places in their title tags in their keyword tags. And in fact, if you have a website on something like Wix, or Weebly, or maybe even Squarespace, there is something called a keyword tag in there. And those platforms certainly suggest that's where you put your keywords and right if you want to rank for, well, Google doesn't pay attention to keyword tags anymore.

Meredith: 3:38

Okay. You just exploded several brains who just spent hours and hours thinking, Oh, I got it, I got it. I got Wix, I got it all taken care of. I don't have to do anything.

Meredith's Husband: 3:50

And the reason is because, you know, again, same thing, SEOs and website owners would put Oh, well, my, my keywords are New York and photography and variations. So in the keywords tag, which isn't even visible to users. So you're and Google knows that it's not visible to users, people with stuff like New York City, New York and why NYC photography photographers photographer, photographing New York like they would just stuffed endless keywords in there because little white sex? Yes. To be honest. Yeah, that's that was the number one driving SEO, like people would put in like, so you put in your your keyword sex. And then somebody realized, Oh, if I put sex, sex sex, I rank higher than the guy who just did six. So keyword tags would be like 50,000 characters long 666636, you know, like, but it happened in all industries. Porn was one of the first to take advantage of that. But that's yeah, so that's so Google, at some point said we're not we're not even going to read your keyword tag. Because it's not something that users are ever going to see it was originally meant for you, for us for you to tell Google Hey, this is what my website is about. But of course, people took advantage of that. So Google said okay, we're not going to do that anymore. We're not going to read those. So if you're on Wix or Weebly and you and you have a keyword tag, you don't need to bother putting anything in there doesn't need to be

Meredith: 5:22

I think hard for people to process. Yeah. Because what they're gonna do is they're gonna say, Okay, it's your word against a program that I paid for and I They tell me that my keywords will be taken care of. But secretly,

Meredith's Husband: 5:40

well, they're just they're trying to get your business. Now, that's no, make sure you're you're looking at the keyword tag field and not like the title tag field, there are other fields that are there, your title tag is actually extremely important. Your title tag is what's going to show up. If you do a search for your own website and Google and you see your listings. It's that it's that first line and big blue bold text. That's your that's your title tag. And then the text that shows up in this little smaller font, like just the paragraph size font in in black or dark gray text is your meta description. Okay, both of those are important. Yeah, your keyword tag if something that says specifically, keywords like it's a box and where you can put stuff in keywords. Yeah, that's probably your keyword tag. My suggestion is to go ahead and put your keywords in there. Just don't don't stuff it but just put a couple in there. It like for you like for in your case, you would say New York City, Chino, family and children photographer. Okay. Okay. You know, that's that's fine. Because a couple reasons, Google is not going to see that in like an in penalize you unless Unless unless you put like, unless you repeat that phrase 100 times or something.

Meredith: 7:01

Right? You can repeat it per What if you repeat that same thing on all images in that post

Meredith's Husband: 7:09

is that we'll get to images in a second. This is your keyword tag. This is every page has a keyword can have can have keywords in it in your in your in your meta keyword tag, right? Your image, your images have image, alt text, those are those are different, confusing to write? Well, they will work on that every page has a keyword

Meredith: 7:32

to be nice if for every problem you have you have someone who's like will work on that.

Meredith's Husband: 7:38

Yeah, right? Well, I'll take care of the SEO stuff, you take care of everything else. So every page has a has at least a meta keyword tag available. I was you can go in and put something in there. There are also other search engines. Google's not the only search engine in the world, there's Yahoo and Bing, which I think as I don't know, is as chief still thing. I'm kidding, probably, I don't know, might still be there. I don't know. Yahoo and Bing, have not have not come out and publicly said we do not read your keyword tech. So maybe they do, maybe it still matters. And who knows, maybe like Facebook is going to have their search algorithm. And you know, so go ahead, and you can put something in there. But don't think that now you've taken care of SEO, and you don't need to worry about it. Where and so other forms of keyword stuffing is like what I said in your actual page text, you don't need to repeat your words over and over. That used to be a thing. Also, it used to be like a, it was a keyword density. So you figure, okay, I want to have this page rank for this keyword, I need to have my keyword density be 2.5%. So 2.5% of the words on this page need to be my keyword that used to be a thing also, wow. Again, you don't need to do that. That would be an example of keyword stuffing. You do not want to stuff your keywords into your image alt tags. And this is kind of a common thing. Everybody says, Oh, you need the image alt tags, you need the image alt tags. Yeah. And people tend to stuff their keywords in there. Really don't do that. That is a that's that's a that's not good. Because Google is pretty, it's getting it's pretty good and getting better all the time at recognizing what an image is. Thank you. I got to make a note to myself, like never say anything that might have been a song lyric, because I'm going to hear soon as I mentioned. Yeah, Google knows what an image is. Especially if there's a person if there's a person in an image and you can see their face Google knows it's an image of a person probably knows who that person is also, but that's a different story. So don't stuff your keywords when you are doing your image alt tags, make them accurate. tell Google honestly what the image is. If one of your keywords is appropriate, then super. Right. You have images of sex, family photography website. You have other problems.

Meredith: 10:21

Yeah, you got a bunch of other problems. This is not the podcast you need. Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 10:25

Don't like like for example, don't say don't put I would say don't say photography in your in your image alt tags unless you You are, unless the image is somehow of photography, and I don't even know what that image would be. You could say family like this is a family in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Sure. Don't say, don't take an image and say children's photographer. It's unless it's an image of you, maybe on the about page. If you're if it's an image of you, and you say I'm a New York armor book, and I'm a Brooklyn, children's photographer, Brooklyn book, then you can do that, but just try to try it, you know, be be honest, like and clear like that is, because that's what Google is looking for in the end. And I've said before, that

Meredith: 11:14

nice again, that they are. They're looking for authentic, good quality, and that the person running the web isn't looking for who's the cleverest spammer,

Meredith's Husband: 11:29

it's in their best interest. I mean, they, you know, the Google about this. Yeah, Google wants people to come back to the to Google every time they want to find something online. So they're not going to do that by sending people to crappy, spammy websites, right? Sure. That's what set part that's what set Google apart from other search engines, you remember the results and other search engines like they were crappy. And Google was just somehow better. It was like, nobody knew what the difference was. Yeah. So yeah, so try to align yourself with those goals. be accurate in your in your, especially in your image, alt tags, because that's texts that you're probably going to be showing to Google, most users are never, they're never going to see that. So it's, it's one of those places where SEO is have taken advantage. And they've tried to trick Google and they've tried to spam the system. So Google is especially on the lookout for the other places you want to avoid keyword stuffing is your title tag. Now, you do want to put your keyword in your title tag, like let's say you have a page on your website is about family photography, you want to have family photography in your title tag, but you don't want to, you don't want to repeat it in your title tag that becomes keyword stuffing. Don't have it don't say family photographer, photographing families like that. You don't need to do that. Could

Meredith: 12:52

you do something such as family photography, same sex couples, couple spouses, or is that also stuffing?

Meredith's Husband: 13:03

No, that's not really stuffing. But it you want it to have a flow also, you want your tight your title tag is short. Yeah, you want to you I would say when you're writing a title tag, know what the page know what the main focus of that pages. So that's gonna be your main keyword. And you'll have some variations, but in the title tag, you want to have the main keyword. And then inside that page, you want to have some variations. So in your heading in your, what we call the h1 tag, which is typically the big the biggest, boldest line of text at the very top is probably going to be your h1 Tag, you're then you want to you know, include some variations of that in the copy. But naturally, don't force them in there. Just put them where they are natural.

Meredith: 13:49

Google makes it easier. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 13:53

yeah. You know, also Yeah, it should relieve some stress. Oh, I need to get my I need to find a way to get my keywords in here. Yeah, if you just you know, chances are pretty good that if you just as a as a photographer, and you wanted to write a page that explains your family photography, business, and you write that page without thinking about keywords at all, most likely your key Your words are going to be there, right. So just make it flow and in the one place that I say that I would say that you do do want to make sure you have your your keywords, your title tag, and try to have it near the beginning of your title tag and your heading. Right and then it'll probably be interspersed in your copy but just you know,

Meredith: 14:37

naturally Yes.

Meredith's Husband: 14:42

Does that make sense? Does that Do you have a firm hold on keyword stuffing now?

Meredith: 14:49

I do am very full. Okay good. But I I don't want to be next time when I do my keywords. I don't want to be stuffed. I want it to be just try to be keyword natural. Keyword natural.

Meredith's Husband: 15:05

Yes. That's it. Thank you. You can say bye. Okay, let's try that one again. 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. addict 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. And again, thanks for listening