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 okay, this is the top five reasons. SEO sucks. Okay, take two. You are kind of lucky in that you have never really had to even think about SEO. But he just takes care of it for you.

Meredith: 1:12

Gosh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, but yes,

Meredith's Husband: 1:17

there. I think there are a handful of reasons out there why people really don't like us. Yeah, yeah. Problem. Do you agree? Yes. What's What's the general kind of concerns among your peers?

Meredith: 1:27

Time? It's impossible. Gosh, that that time like, it's yes, it's so so much, and you're never going to be on top of it. Because it's always going to chain.

Meredith's Husband: 1:41

Well, it does take time, then that is one of the one of the topics we're gonna cover today. And there are some other reasons why it's perceived as being so impossible.

Meredith: 1:49

Well, it's also perceived to be so impossible for me because I have no idea what it is. I

Meredith's Husband: 1:54

guess. Most people don't like that's kind of another one of the reasons.

Meredith: 1:58

So when I have to describe what you do,

Meredith's Husband: 2:02

yeah, my parents can't even describe what I don't know. Sometimes I can't even describe what I know. I know. Anyway, let's get into it. Yes, let's get the number. It's the number one reason why SEO sucks. According to me anyway. Okay. Is scammers. There are so many scammers out

Meredith: 2:20

there. Right. How many emails? Yeah,

Meredith's Husband: 2:23

I'm sure you've got you got an email just probably this week saying, Oh, hey, we saw your site. And something with it is terrible. And you're not appearing? Yeah. Click here if you want us to fix it. Yeah. Yeah. So that happens a lot. And I think one of the reasons why that happens is because there's no sort of credentials. In the SEO industry, you there's no license, you can't be a licensed SEO person can't go so for it. They probably teach it in school. They they teach it in, I think they probably cover it in school, it's probably called Organic something nowadays. What is and you can use, of course, you can go find courses, you can find people who teach it in the private world. But there's no, if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I'm a professional SEO, there's no way to verify that. And that's only made worse by the fact that there is so many buzzwords, and like SEO, web techie jargon that people can throw around to just make it sound like they know exactly what they're doing. Even even if they don't. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if somebody says, you know, if you're if you're if you're talking to SEO people, and somebody says, Oh, the reason you're not ranking for this is because if you have unmodified JavaScript on your CSS file, and it sounds like a call. That's, I mean, that doesn't even make any sense. But how would you ever know? You don't? So the way or one way to get around this is, if anybody contacts you out of the blue unsolicited and tries to give you SEO advice, like in an email, or any like, you can pretty much ignore those. I've never ever come across a legitimate SEO consultant or firm who is going to send outgoing email. Good point.

Meredith: 4:12

Good point.

Meredith's Husband: 4:14

Yeah, that's marketing. Isn't it? Cold? Cold, cold, cold? Yes. Cold. Yeah.

Meredith: 4:21

Cold, like a fire? Like, like a coal miner? No,

Meredith's Husband: 4:25

I've never heard that. Oh, my. Yeah, cold calling was like, yeah, if like it before the internet, before email, if you received a call out of the blue, somebody's trying to sell you something, you know? Right. So don't when you get those emails, you can ignore them. You know, I got an email one of those. I got one of those one time and I just wanted to follow up because I wanted to see what would happen. And I so I called the guy and it was like, it was a well educated American accent. Guy. sounded totally legitimate. And we were talking and he was explaining how his company was, uh, they, they provided there was a they were I think data providers for Google. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, I

Meredith: 5:07

get some of those

Meredith's Husband: 5:08

and ice and I said, Oh, awesome. I was playing along and he's like, okay, just let me know what industry you're in. And I said SEO immediately click. Anyway, so don't don't fall for those those

Meredith: 5:22

which is great. We you now have permission to delete every single one of those things that come in.

Meredith's Husband: 5:28

Yeah. Number two, the reason why SEO sucks is just as an outsider, yeah. If you're not an SEO professional, you don't this is not common knowledge. There's no overlap between SEO and other things. This is sure, you know, there's no reason why you would know anything about SEO unless you were to study SEO. Right?

Meredith: 5:47

Go out of your way, you have to go out of your way. It's not something that's just gonna come like, Hey, I'm just sitting here.

Meredith's Husband: 5:53

Yeah, I've made the comparison in the past about stos. And like car mechanics, how car mechanics you can take your car into get fixed, and they can tell you anything. And you have no idea because you're not a mechanic as a mechanic. Yeah, you've told me that. I believe that.

Meredith: 6:09

It's true. That computers that was two years ago, right?

Meredith's Husband: 6:13

I love car two years. 30 years ago, there's too many computers and cars. Yes, there were

Meredith: 6:18

some believe already. It's totally maybe 25. Okay, 25.

Meredith's Husband: 6:22

Anyway, but when you go like, even in that situation, if you take your car into a mechanic, and he says something, you have some rough knowledge about how a car is supposed to work, like you step on the gas that goes, you turn the state like you like, you know, you have some understanding. With SEO, that's even less like, nobody really knows how Google works unless they set out to understand how Google works. So intentionally, yes. So my solution for this is if somebody is, is talking to you about SEO, and they say, Oh, the problem is XYZ. And it's some sort of jargon, you can just straight up ask, what does that mean? Or why is that important? They should be able to describe it in a very common sense type of way, like almost everything that goes into SEO, there is a common sense reason why you need to do that, or why you shouldn't do that, and what it means and kind of the bigger picture. So just ask question, what's that mean? Or why do we need to do that? Right. Reason number three, why SEO sucks is that it's still pretty constantly changing. Yeah. So Google has hundreds of updates every year. Right? So I mean, that's, that's good, and that it's constantly being updated and made better. Yes. It's kind of dangerous. Because if you receive the, like, some SEO advice from three years ago, or five years ago, yeah, even if it was good advice three years ago. Now, that doesn't mean it's still valid.

Meredith: 7:44

Oh, man, think of all the time that some people are just thinking they're doing the right thing by stuffing keywords or all these things. And then wait, right. Now,

Meredith's Husband: 7:55

this is this is actually the reason why we started this podcast is because you would hear advice. Yes. And I'd be like, Oh, that's not only is that bad advice, it would now do more harm than good. Like it's gonna raise red flags. Exactly. Exactly. So I think I solution. Yeah, thank you. I think a good solution for this is when you see advice, try to verify it, and go online, do a quick Google search. And there are some websites that are going to be way more trustworthy than other websites. How do you know? So I'm going to give you a list? I'll actually provide a longer list in the in the show notes. But if you see articles from websites like Moz, mo, z.com, uh huh. Or search engine land.com or search engine, journal, I guess.com Very creative. Website names here. Or my favorite SEMrush or a H refs. Those are all good sites. I'll put a list of these. Okay. Okay. You find information on these on those sites? Know that it's pretty solid, right? If there's outdated information that's no longer valid. Is there going to take it down and replace it? That is good to know. Yeah. Other websites? Not so much.

Meredith: 9:14

Yes. Okay. Reason

Meredith's Husband: 9:16

number four. Why SEO sucks, is there's no direct cause and effect. You can't really do something. Yeah, right. You can't do something and then get a call the next week and say, Oh, that person found me because I changed my title tech. Right? It doesn't really work like that.

Meredith: 9:33

Yeah. Yeah. And we want that as society. Yeah. All about the before and after and quick changes, and, of course, results results.

Meredith's Husband: 9:43

And other forms of advertising, or other forms of marketing online, such as advertising, the exact opposite. You can tell exactly. You can run an ad that in you know, you paid $1.76 for it. And this person clicked on it. And they did this on your website, and they either called or they didn't call you know exactly what happens. And even with social media, a lot of times you can tell more exactly what happens. Yeah. Yeah. Not so much with SEO. Interesting. So the thing, the what how to get around this with SEO is, hopefully you have Google Analytics installed. Yes. The thing to watch is just your overall organic traffic. Is it trending up? Is it trending down? If it's trending up, if you're getting more organic visitors like each month, and it's not going to be a totally flatline, you're not going to increase by site. A 10% every single month, it's going to be more of a jagged line. But over, you know, weeks and months, you want to see that trending upwards. If that's happening, then your SEO is working. Yay. And then the final thing, and I think this is the biggest one. So when that you mentioned is time it does. Just because you like, if you do something, can you stop singing? Yes, sorry. Thank you. I'll give you I'll give you a moment to sing in a couple seconds.

Meredith: 11:06

Oh, sorry, everybody in events.

Meredith's Husband: 11:10

So one, one reason for this is Google is not, it doesn't update instantly. If you make a change to your website, Google only is only going to come back and visit your site every so often, maybe once a week, maybe once a month. So if you do something to your website, and then you go look to see the changes in Google, you're gonna have to wait a few weeks.

Meredith: 11:28

Yeah, that's hard. We want instant results.

Meredith's Husband: 11:31

Yes. I'm still kind of I'm often surprised how, how many people will actually verbalize that they want to get results quickly and easily. And, of course, I mean, I understand the impulse.

Meredith: 11:44

Yeah, that's our culture. Yeah.

Meredith's Husband: 11:47

But I've always thought that like the really, the really worthwhile things in life, yeah, are always going to require some effort. Yeah, they're not going to be cheap and easy, especially investment. Now, I'm not really actually saying that. SEO was one of the big worthwhile things in life. But when you're trying this is good. For my business, yeah. I mean, yeah. And for my business, yeah. Any, like any sort of marketing, especially if it's if you get really great results, and it's really quick, and it's really easy. And or cheap. Yeah, that's not gonna last very long. That only happens when like, Facebook introduces some new type of ad. And people. nobody's using it. So the first the early adopters are getting great results. Yeah, for about a week. And it won't last. Yeah. In fact, it here's your chance to sing coming. Okay. One of my favorite quotes. Yes. Paula Abdul. Oh, yes. This says, Hold on, let me get this right. Paula Abdul says, there's no traffic beyond the extra mile. So you know, when people say, Oh, you need to go the extra mile, you need to put in the extra effort. You need to go above and beyond? Yeah, once you do that, you're gonna find that not many other people do it. So it's so

Meredith: 13:07

true. Why everything true, we all hope to do the extra mile. But not everyone does. But when you know, traffic, I think traffic to your website. Thank you. Good one. Thank you.

Meredith's Husband: 13:22

I think the way to deal with this, like at least mentally is just okay. This is going to it's going to have a worthwhile effect on my business. Yeah. So I'm gonna need to put some time in. Yeah. Like, yeah, or Yeah, eating healthy exercise, relationships, relationships, all the worthwhile stuff.

Meredith: 13:42

Indeed, it's true. It's true. You have to put in that work, because you know what most people want? Yeah, and I have been most people

Meredith's Husband: 13:50

many times. Yeah. And so I think this is true, actually, with all this entire list, when something seems challenging, no, that that is kind of, it's really an opportunity in disguise, because a lot of your competitors are going to hit that challenge. And they're just going to give up, they're gonna stop,

Meredith: 14:07

you're gonna start scrolling on Instagram. So I think that covers

Meredith's Husband: 14:11

kind of, what do you think if you if you had to do your own SEO, you were in charge? I wouldn't do it, I would would

Meredith: 14:20

be successful as I am. I would not be as successful as I am. No, I wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do it at all. No, it'd be something I need to do. And similar to changing from 17 hats to dubsado and I bought the amazing Koli James's course for a freaking $1,000 which is worth it. And I got really excited and was doing it and was doing it. And then now I had a busy season, and I just had to pay to renew 17 Hats again, because I didn't finish it in time.

Meredith's Husband: 14:55

The other question was about SEO.

Meredith: 14:57

Well, since I know that you're doing it, I don't do it.

Meredith's Husband: 15:02

But if you if you had to do it, I had to do it. What would be what would be your aside from the time? You already mentioned time?

Meredith: 15:10

Yeah, I'd have to I would only wish that there'd be a podcast that could help me. As a photographer, I would wish that there was some kind of I don't know podcast are something that I could listen to to guide me. And know what's right, a trustworthy source that's not going to fuck around.

Meredith's Husband: 15:33

I I'm gonna have to edit this shit out of this episode. Anyway, I hope that that helps like, because I know that I know the common objections. I think I covered most of them. Yes. I hope this puts them into perspective. Yes. And helps you feel a little bit better about trying to tackle SEO. My advice is just, you know, understand is gonna take some time, and all important things. Yeah, just, you know, put in some time and don't get discouraged. Yes. And with that, bye bye 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.