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 what do you want to talk about today?

Meredith: 0:50

I'm going to talk about my, my little my little bunny light.

Meredith's Husband: 0:54

Okay, if you just want to turn your mic off then bunny light. I'm going to talk about something else.

Meredith: 1:04

Like maybe SEO. Gonna talk

Meredith's Husband: 1:07

about, what are we talking about?

Meredith: 1:11

Talk about it. Talk about it, Dad. Thank you know,

Meredith's Husband: 1:15

you're gonna talk about Google business profiles. Oh, fantastic. Do you remember we had an episode? Sorry. Okay. You can you can knock that off. Again, stuff. My very. We talked about owning page one a while ago, like it was Yeah. As several episodes ago. Sure. This kind of ties into that. Okay. It's, I think a it is a very important and I think very overlooked tool for especially local, but I'd be using your hands of course. Oh, thank you, everyone. Meredith cut my hair yesterday.

Meredith: 1:52

Indeed.

Meredith's Husband: 1:53

Something we started a COVID. Yeah. Anyway, so and you think about I want you to think about your good clients. Yeah. You're good clients. And think about, do they have some what it actually let me ask you this. Okay. Your bad clients. So the worst? Yes. Yes. What, what? What characteristics do they have in common? What? How could you define your typical pain in the ass client?

Meredith: 2:21

Well, no, clients

Meredith's Husband: 2:23

are bad. Oh, right. Yes, I forgot.

Meredith: 2:25

Let's let's first state that, um, when your

Meredith's Husband: 2:29

great, amazing, lovely clients? Yes. Do? Do I

Meredith: 2:36

understand what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. It is probably due to Mr. Was

Meredith's Husband: 2:42

not was it nanananana? Not what does it do to what is it? Is it things like, they don't know your pricing? Or they don't know the process? Yeah. They don't know what it is you offered?

Meredith: 2:54

Yeah. But I have to look at that. Like, that's my fault for not educating.

Meredith's Husband: 2:59

That's what we're gonna cover. I'm just I'm just, I just want to identify. Okay, problem.

Meredith: 3:05

Yeah, the problem is that they didn't read the price list. They didn't read any of the literature that I sent them describing my process. And

Meredith's Husband: 3:19

just, they're not well informed. They're not

Meredith: 3:21

well informed. Oh, so no matter how many times I will tell them. I know, I know. They and then then then they try and change my.

Meredith's Husband: 3:32

Yes. Okay. So if those are if those those are your bad, not bad clients, those are the things that you don't like when when clients do. Yeah, by definition, are your favorite clients, the ones who need to know your pricing, and they know what you offer? And they know the schedule. They know the timeline, they know what to expect? Yeah. Okay. That's our goal. Yeah. For example, so what well, what have you heard in your course? Like, what? Like, you began to say that you don't do a good job of educating your clients. That's maybe why clients exhibit these things. Yeah. So is that what you've learned? It's that the advice you've gotten in courses and stuff like that?

Meredith: 4:13

I think it's it's good advice. It's the fact that I haven't taken the time to show my clients and teach my clients. This is how I do things.

Meredith's Husband: 4:24

Yeah. So the advice is not like start educating your clients. Right away. So yes, absolutely. That's, that's what we're doing here with the Google My Business Profile. We are starting to educate clients before they even get to your website.

Meredith: 4:39

What is the my business profile? Okay,

Meredith's Husband: 4:42

so the good to begin with, actually, so it used Well, Google is notorious for changing this it not too long ago was called Google My Business Name, which I thought was kind of stupid. That name stuck for a few years before it's been through, like 100 different names. It's now they've changed it again. It's now Google business profiles, which I think is a lot better, personally. Anyway, so if I if I slip and say Google, my business is not called Google My Business anymore. It's it's Google business profiles.

Meredith: 5:11

Okay. GBP. No, yes. Yeah. And I

Meredith's Husband: 5:15

am used to typing GMP. Hmm. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, of course. So what was what was I saying?

Meredith: 5:23

You're saying In educating from the beginning, and that's what I said, What is Google My Business? Google, whatever the one you send

Meredith's Husband: 5:31

some when somebody does a search for your business name near the center photography, and that panel shows up on the right hand side of the screen, and it has your, your photo and a map of your service area and your business info. That is the knowledge panel. Okay. All right. And by the way, you know that I, one of my good friends works at Google, right? Yes. Now I've known him for years. We talk all the time about Google. But he has never ever told me like he's never given me insider information. I know, I can't take do this. Don't Don't do that. Like, except this one time, when Google knowledge panel was coming out, we were having beers. And he leaned over to me and whispered very quietly, as if everyone in the bar were just waiting for the big secret to draw. He said he was talking about knowledge, panels ease, and he said, it's gonna be really important for you. This is the one and only time he has ever given any event, you know, advice? So so this is what we're talking about. So I'm telling, I'm telling you, oh, yes, this is important for you,

Meredith: 6:39

oh, this very good. Write this down.

Meredith's Husband: 6:41

Okay, so the knowledge panel is the stuff on the right hand side. Now most of the information in that panel for somebody like you, a local business owner, is going to come from your Google business profile. Not all of it, you know, there's going to be some reviews, there's going to be people also search for, there's going to be some stuff that you don't control, okay. But most of it you can control. And you'll notice that if you're not searching for a local business, and you see that right hand panel up here, it's going to be a lot of times from Wikipedia, or some very authoritative, it's supposed to be, like encyclopedia esque information that Google is giving you about where you're going before you even need to go there. Or just making a very,

Meredith: 7:36

I'm gonna say,

Meredith's Husband: 7:38

so but in your case, so in those cases, no one person can control stuff like that. Right? Right. But in your like, if you were to do a search for Dell computer, I bet Dell computer can't go in and add photos and image it like it's a big public company. Yeah, that's the that's what the knowledge panel was really meant to be. And your case, though, you can, you can control almost everything. And so what we want to do is when clients, Google your name, which is going to happen very often, okay, especially if you're a more expensive photographer, like yourself, before people are going to spend that kind of money, don't you think they're going to just type in your business name and see if there's any, like terrible reviews? Or like, I can't, so yeah, don't use when you when you when you're when you're about to make a big purchase? Don't you? Like do a little bit of research? I do tons

Meredith: 8:27

of research, right? Similarly, when people contact me, if they decide to move forward, I totally Google them.

Meredith's Husband: 9:17

Yeah, sure. It's, it's the appropriate thing to do nowadays. Now, when people do that, here, you can control what they see on Google before they even get to your site. Right. So what is that you're starting to educate them? I'm starting to educate them. Yes. So with that in mind, I'm going to go through, I have 12 points. 12 different things you can do

Meredith: 9:42

so prepared, so proud of you, my husband?

Meredith's Husband: 9:46

Okay, number one, some of them are going to be pretty obvious, but I do want to include them. Yeah,

Meredith: 9:50

well, they should be included all deserve.

Meredith's Husband: 9:55

Number one, your business name, obviously, your full business name,

Meredith: 9:59

we and where, where is this support? How do we do this?

Meredith's Husband: 10:03

You get it, you need to sign up for a Google business profile. Okay. And when you do that, this will all be pretty easy to figure

Meredith: 10:12

out. Okay. So if somebody has already has it, they can just go yeah, how do they find this page?

Meredith's Husband: 10:20

They will, if they have Google business, they they will know it, if you just do a search for your business. If you're logged into Google, it will actually show up. You don't even have to do anything, you can just edit it right from the homepage of Google. Okay, so just a Google search for your business name. That panel will appear. And you will see a bunch of buttons right up at the top of the screen. You can edit your business info, photos, messages, blah, blah, blah, everything, all of it. Okay? So you don't even need to go anywhere to log in. You just do it right from Google, no packing bags, but you do need to be logged in and need to be logged in to your to your Gmail account. So yes. So I highly recommend that everybody get a Google Gmail account. Yeah, record even if you don't use it. Just have it because you're gonna need it for Google Analytics and all this stuff. You just want to have it back to the list number one. I feel like David Letterman doing the top 10 lists. Yeah, just go backwards. The business name your full business name, make it accurate. don't shorten it. This is not time for abbreviations. You were photo you get a main photo? I think they call it a cover photo now. Make it a photo of your product. So in your case, that is a picture of a kid like you are selling children's? Don't make it. No, I'm not for I'm just froze. I'm frozen on your screen. So Oh, okay. Sorry. Don't make it a picture of yourself. Okay? Don't make it a picture of your business, that those are gonna go other places. So make this photo because this is what's going to display right in Google right up at the top of the screen. So your main photo that you want to have it be what your product is? So in your case, if a kid's photo, right? The surface area, hopefully the surface area is already correct. You just want to make sure it's it is correct. Likely.

Meredith: 12:14

What do you mean surface area.

Meredith's Husband: 12:16

So there's a service array, you have a couple options. When you when you have these accounts, you can either give your address, if you service if PF clients come to your studio, say you have a studio, then you would put your the the address of your studio and you would not have a service area. I think most photographers nowadays probably don't have studios, I'm guessing

Meredith: 12:36

who knows? Some? Some do. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 12:39

but I especially when you're starting, you probably it's probably not the first thing you do. Probably. So you're probably going to want to put in a service area. I like I like to do by zip code. So in your case, you'd have a you have a bunch of zip codes. You can do city name, you can do country wide. If you're a photographer, I think either your city or zip codes, zip codes I like because you can specify like, Hey, I know this zip code is my target, like slope. Park Slope is definitely your target. Yeah, and there are some other zip codes and there are some zip codes in Brooklyn that are not your targets, right. So you can be a little more specific, yeah, your logo, okay, you're gonna need your logo, and it's going to need to be, it's going to need to look good, small, because it's going to be like a quarter inch by quarter inch circle. On the screen, it's gonna be very small. So make it if you can create a version of your logo that's small, and has a lot of contrast. So it's right. So it's not like, you know, two light colors, you know, like a light colored font on a light colored background is going to be hard to see. Right? So he tried to try to punch it up, punch it. Okay, number, this is where number five, your business info like your hours, your email, I don't know if it takes your email anymore. Your website, your a way to contact you. Things like that. Fill all of this out as best you can. The more information the better. I like to put some form of contact, if not a phone number, like a calendar, you can link to Calendly something like that. Where because again, people are remember, they're researching you. It's in there, they may be getting ready to spend a lot of money, not a lot of money, but they're getting ready to spend money. They want some peace of mind exist. Yes, they want when you do that, if you're about Wouldn't you like to see that there's a way to contact this company. Like there's a support. Yes. Something like that. So that's you want to give the impression right here. Hey, I'm I'm always here. This contact me

Meredith: 14:44

it's very easy covered. Yes. You can good hands.

Meredith's Husband: 14:48

What are we on number six, guess product and prices. So you can put your products right here with a photo. So they can you can put more photos on on the first page of Google?

Meredith: 15:05

Like would that be for me albums?

Meredith's Husband: 15:08

Yes. And you have this I have done it for you. Thank you husband. So absolutely have at least three products. And even if even if one is like, like let's say you have as a photographer you have you just sell albums and prints or canvases and that's it. Yeah, make another product just photos, photo sessions photography and just add another photo there. Now you can include pricing or you don't have to. Okay, so this is a place where you can begin to

Meredith: 15:44

educate your clients educate your clients.

Meredith's Husband: 15:47

Yeah. So you can start you can put your prices

Meredith: 15:50

Yeah, starting at Yeah, I think

Meredith's Husband: 15:54

there you can do you might be able to do a range I know you did have that option for a while I'm not sure it might say started something you but check it out. This this feature like a lot All these features are often changing. So evolve. Google is notorious for changing these. But a good way to

Meredith: 16:12

grow, gotta grow can keep the things stagnant and stale.

Meredith's Husband: 16:16

Number seven, after products, you can use product categories, oh, I encourage you to do this. Also, even if your categories are just photography, and maybe, you know, prints and digital art or you know, digital files or something is fine. Some way to categorize your product, you're just going to this is another way again, to educate you want to say these are the areas I cover, right? Okay. Now, when you when you're doing this, when you're naming your products and your categories, especially your products, you got to make them short, because they only I don't know how many characters they have. But they're they're very short.

Meredith: 16:53

So like signature heirloom.

Meredith's Husband: 16:58

Cut the bullshit handcrafted. If you set like, what initially when you know if you were to put handcrafted albums in your product description, it would show up is handcrafted, or something. Oh, wow. So it is albums, albums, albums, and then the starting price. Yeah. And then it's Prince starting price. So make put the very, most important information like albums has got to be the very first word. If you want to put more words after that you can, but keep in mind, they're probably going to be cut off. These truncated, truncated, truncated, truncated. Okay. Number 11. Nope, eight from the business, so you can do a little section here and they call it from the business. It's like your business description. It's where most people put things like I've been a photographer for a million years, and I love photographing children. As a child, you can do you can do that. That's not my preference. My preference is to do something a little more unique and exciting. Oh, yes. I put a testimonial here. So very smart. For my own. I found a testimonial that starts with OMG, exclamation exclamation exclamation, and then goes on. That's a little more eye catching to me than like, I am married his husband and I help with SEO. Like it's a little more

Meredith: 18:28

clever. Very clever. Like number eight.

Meredith's Husband: 18:32

I thought so too.

Meredith: 18:33

I like number

Meredith's Husband: 18:34

eight, that's an option. That's No, I don't have to do that. But I liked it. Good idea. Yeah. Number nine, you can put your you can put more something like your business information here. And these, this is updates. So kinda this is kind of like the Google's version of social media, you can create updates. Okay. And here. And here. You can put something like, you can again, you can put another photo. Yeah. And you can put something like in you know, I love. I love having been in business for 20 years, like something like they're about your, about your business. Okay. You can also and I would encourage you to post here at least periodically, not because Google's social media features are robust or good at all. But any activity you can do on Google, anytime you can show Google that you're active, yeah, interact directly with Google. That's not a bad thing. I can't you know, there's some debate. Does that help your SEO? Does it hurt your SEO? If you're active on the Google? You know, listings? Yeah, if you're the Google updates. There's some debate there. Nobody knows whether that helps your SEO or not, but it's not gonna hurt. Yeah, my thought is, there's no way it can hurt. Like, there's no way it can hurt. And even if it doesn't help now, I can't guarantee they don't make some change a year from now. And then all of a sudden, it does help you know, yeah. So do that. And the wait, no, no, a little more on number.

Meredith: 20:04

We love nine, let's go back. Nine 9.2.

Meredith's Husband: 20:10

What I would do here, you don't want to knock yourself out. Like I said, because not many people are using this. What I would do if you're active on social anywhere, like let's say Instagram, let's say you Instagram is your platform, every month scheduled like five minutes for this every month, just look at your Instagram and look at what was the most popular posts from the month before. Take that whatever however you measure that at the most engagements or the most likes or shares or whatever, take that and then make that your Google post for the month, the next month. You already knew that. Yeah, well, most people who who are on social media are using it for their business and not just consuming it. So

Meredith: 20:50

not just using it elephants. Yeah. If you do like your planes,

Meredith's Husband: 20:54

when you post things. When you do that, you probably are familiar with the with the feature that you can log when you log in, you can see oh, this post had 100 impressions and 50 likes or 5000 impressions. You know you there's some metrics there. Right. And there's some way to evaluate Oh, this one did better than that one. Yeah, whichever. Pick the ones that did well on Instagram, because you know, those connect with people and then put that one on Google. Okay. And you only need to do this once a month? I think it would take gentleman does that take five minutes? Probably not. Yeah.

Meredith: 21:34

A very, very brief amount of time. Yes. All things consider.

Meredith's Husband: 21:39

Okay. Now, Id number 10. Reviews. We're going back to the list. Okay. Number 1010. Reviews, gotta have some reviews. Gotta have any reviews. Try very, very hard to get at least three reviews. And don't feel pressure that you need to get them all urgently, because that's actually bad. You don't want to get them all at once. Because you know, that looks suspicious, right? When you look at any product anywhere, and you look at the reviews, and they're all left on like the same day? Yes. Okay. No, you don't want to do that. And Google is keeping an eye out for that. So yeah, for the next three months, try to get one a month. You want to have at least three more would obviously be better, I think. But if you don't have three, you gotta get the first three. Yeah. 11 socials. So Google changed this. Also, you've heard for a little while, you could put links to your social media profiles, which is great, then now you can't it Google tries to figure them out on its own. So you can't, you can't directly put links to your social media profiles. But Do do you do want to have links to your social media profiles on your website? Yeah. Now I'm of the opinion that, you know, once people get to your website, you don't then want to send them to social rights, you want the the traffic flow to be the other way you want to, you want to use social media to capture people's attention, and then they come to your website. So don't make your social media buttons, like really big and at the top, I would say keep them in your footer. For me, that's the way I would do it. Also, don't put them on your contact page. Don't I mean, I've had, I've had clients just refuse to accept my recommendation that they don't put

Meredith: 23:22

so because then people are not going to comment. They're gonna be distracted.

Meredith's Husband: 23:26

You know, I've had clients that their competitors are doing it, and they just absolutely must do it because their competitors are doing it. But people are, are just about to reach out to you, and what are you doing, you're sending them away, and there's a pretty good chance better than 5050 They're not coming back, because most people get on social media,

Meredith: 23:43

you know, and you go down the rabbit hole of

Meredith's Husband: 23:47

but do do have all of your social media links, I would say in your footer. I would do this. And that will help to have them appear on Google here in this knowledge because Google will scan your site and they'll say okay, these are their socials. Okay, that's why you went to that. And number 2012. Number 12. The final tip, photos, photos, photos, photos, you want to have as many always have photos people love for and as a photographer Good God, like,

Meredith: 24:21

should they have video too, or just I don't think

Meredith's Husband: 24:24

the I don't know video will actually play on this page. At least right now, as of this recording, so you don't need to do video. I think you can probably do video if you do like their social update feature. But I don't even I think people need to click through to watch that video. Just photos. Remember, people are still on Google. If you dominate this page with with photos, people love photos, you can never have too many photos. And they're looking for photos. Yeah, as as a photographer, you want to say you want to convey to Google, I have photos. So whenever in the products in the updates, add photos, there's also a place where you can just specifically add photos. So add photos.

Meredith: 25:08

You're doing this for me. Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 25:10

I am. Thank you all the things I do for you.

Meredith: 25:15

And I help you with the podcast. Okay.

Meredith's Husband: 25:20

Yes. Okay, so if you do those things

Meredith: 25:23

Yeah, that's a good I think me chunk. Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 25:26

Nice. Doesn't that isn't nice? Doesn't Nice? Doesn't you've gone away in, in the educating your clients before they or maybe they've been to your site, but when this just corroborates Yeah. You know, either they haven't gotten to your site and your crew, you're immediately giving giving somebody the impression of Oh, wow, this person has a lot of stuff. Yeah, that's a great first impression. If somebody is just Googling your business name. Yeah. Or they've already been to your site. You're like, wait, I just want to make sure this person is legit. And then if you've got me if you dominate that first page with all this stuff, and all these ways to contact you and photos and Reviews. Oh, then you

Meredith: 26:06

become irresistible.

Meredith's Husband: 26:08

They're legit. No, you at least get to quit. Yeah, that's exactly how to get. And that's exactly that's exactly what you want to do. Somebody knows your name. They hit search. You want the very first impression to be like, Oh, wow, legit. Legit. too legit to quit. See you don't. You don't want it to be like, Okay, this kind of looks like a bit I'm making a scrunchie face as if like, you can see me, but you don't want to think like oh, that's a weird you know I wasn't expecting that. Yeah, like if you don't put a photo on your cover photo, it might show the outside of your address, which, if you're you know, for us that would be your apartment. Yeah, we don't want to give that infringe dresser. You want to you want to be too legit to quit? Yeah,

Meredith: 26:53

that'd be too legit to quit. I think we found the name of this podcast.

Meredith's Husband: 26:58

Yeah. And I'll probably be contacted by who's the what's the face is? Who did that MC Hammer?

Meredith: 27:04

I think so.

Meredith's Husband: 27:08

Okay, do those things. None of those should take too much time. Yes.

Meredith: 27:14

That's a great doesn't. It's a great great yummy dozen.

Meredith's Husband: 27:18

Okay, yummy. Doesn't give me doesn't, it's gonna make some joke about being too legit. Or not legit enough to make this Yeah. 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. And again, thanks for listening.