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 so last week, we talked about the reasons why SEO sucks. Yes, yes. Which I think was I thought it was kind of unique. I don't think many SEOs are out there talking about why SEO sucks. True. And I did want to address some of those. There's some of those I think are more like, perceived reasons why SEO sex than like, SEO actually sucks. And it's a little bit about how I would approach that those things. Yeah. avoid or minimize the suckiness?

Meredith: 1:22

Yeah, I think that's a good idea in life.

Meredith's Husband: 1:26

Yeah, that's a good approach. But this week, I want to talk about the reasons why SEO was awesome.

Meredith: 1:32

Oh, yeah, bring it out.

Meredith's Husband: 1:35

And so I have six, six reasons. Oh, nice. There, I think there are more. There are a bunch. But I had five, five reasons why SEO sucks. I was thinking of doing five reasons why SEO is awesome. But there are really six I have to include at least Yeah, bring them on. So first, let me ask you. What in your, in your entire professional career as a photographer? What percentage roughly just very roughly, what percentage of your clients have come from Google? From SEO?

Meredith: 2:09

Not word of mouth.

Meredith's Husband: 2:11

Correct. At 80 80% and the other 20%.

Meredith: 2:17

Word of mouth. I'd say word of mouth. And Yelp.

Meredith's Husband: 2:23

Okay, so I'll point out that you won't get any Yelp. You won't get any business from Yelp until you have some business first, because it's the reviews on Yelp. So Yelp is Yelp is a effective? Yes. But without knowing. But without the Yelp the company, not Yelp, the clients, your clients friends. So you wouldn't have gotten those reviews on Yelp if it weren't for the SEO to begin with. Correct. And also true for the word of maybe the word of mouth. Let's say it's mainly SEO, word of mouth. And eventually, yep. So that brings us to reason number one, why SEO is awesome. It can build your career. Yeah. Like it can be it can build your entire career. It's built your it's obviously built my career. Yes, for two reasons. Number one, I obviously I do SEO, and I charge people money for it. But number two, my own SEO like, that's how I got my clients I had when I started my business I had I did some initial, like business networking. You've heard of like, BNI those? I got so I did some of that. And I got some initial clients that way. But since then, since I would say the my first year in business, it's all been SEO.

Meredith: 3:35

It's great. Yeah, me too. Thanks to you.

Meredith's Husband: 3:39

So yeah, so it can, and this is probably not completely unique to SEO, there are other ways you can build a business that you know, can be, you know, you could probably use social media to build a business. Yeah, it'd be very different.

Meredith: 3:53

I don't know. People do dermatologist do. Yeah, photographers do lots of people do.

Meredith's Husband: 4:00

Yeah. And I'll get a little bit. I'll get to that in a little bit more on Reason number three, but it can build your entire career. Yeah. Reason number two, why SEO is awesome is it's unlimited traffic, compared to things like advertising. So when especially pay per click, so my world, there's two sides of search engines, there's the free side, the organic side, and then there's the paid side. The all my clients do both. And most companies do some form of advertising. And it can be effective, but you're paying for every single click right? So, SEO, once you're at the top of Google, who knows that you don't get charged per click. So depending on your market, you can get 10 visitors a day, you can get 10,000 visitors a day, it depends on what you're on top for. But it's it's unlimited. There's a bunch of people and closely related number three is just the nature of search the timing, it's the ideal timing, people are actively looking for a in your case photographer when you are in front of them. Right. Right. That's, you know, that's the ideal time. So compare that to you know,

Meredith: 5:13

street and thinking is there a photographer anywhere in this neighborhood?

Meredith's Husband: 5:17

Yeah, right when they're like, hey, I need a photographer and there you are. Like it's the perfect timing compare that to like traditional advertising or marketing which is you know, way back is Yeah, is you know, think of of TV Yellow Pages. Well Yellow Page Is that I don't know if that's really advertising. That's just that's advertising

Meredith: 5:37

that was advertising back in the day you go under photographers. Yeah, we back in the day that I guess was born yet. Of course,

Meredith's Husband: 5:46

that was kind of the equivalent, I guess of search engines. Yeah, you need something. Hey, there it is. You go look at

Meredith: 5:53

what are the Yellow Pages? I mean, I mean, my parents would say, I guess, I've never seen

Meredith's Husband: 5:59

a yellow pages. But compare that to add, like, think of TV advertising? Yeah. Which is what would be called interruption marketing, you're just interrupting somebody, they're doing something else. And you're putting your product in front of them, and hoping that it connects with them. Right, you're interrupting what they're doing. This is kind of true. I think, for social media, although there's a whole lot more targeting. If somebody is on social media, that doesn't mean they're looking for a photographer, they might know

Meredith: 6:29

it could mean they're looking for. Sometimes people do go on on Instagram,

Meredith's Husband: 6:34

but but in general, in general, like the people on you know, if you go on Instagram, you're going on Instagram, right? And so if you're putting your services and your photos in front of those people, they're not they're not actively searching for a photographer, most likely, I would say most of the time. Yeah.

Meredith: 6:52

I think if you're really searching for something, you go on Google, if you just want to kill time, and you know, see what pops up.

Meredith's Husband: 7:00

Instagram. Exactly. Yeah. And so let's talk a little bit more about social media. Reason. Number four, SEO was awesome. If you're doing SEO properly, like, like we've been talking about building a resource we serve. Yes. That, that? Yeah. Just let's just talk about just the resource. Just the content. Yeah. First, first, okay. If you are doing that properly, that content should feed your social media content. So, so how much time do you so when you when you think about creating content for social media? Yes. I mean, you need a lot of content, right? You need to post often. Yeah, yeah. Come up, you need to come up with things to post how much of an effort is that?

Meredith: 7:53

It's, it's enormous. For me it is because, like, I, for example, rather, I, I can post stories of things that interests me that might interest other people, politically, animal, funny, other cool photographers, etc. Or if I did actually post a post, which I seem to do once every six months, then I'll say New Post, but I get I get very overwhelmed here. And overwhelmed. And I feel like nothing's good enough. So

Meredith's Husband: 8:30

so that's the so let me let me ask you this, if those posts that you create the things that interest you, yes, elephant stories, stories, yes. Now, are those helping to build your business? Are they targeting your clients? No, right? So you still, if if you want to join now, that's, that's fine. I'm not saying that's a problem. So you would still need if you want to use social media to help build your business, you would still need to come up with some content, right? That's focused. Now, if you are building resources for your SEO, that's the perfect kind of content that then you can break up and use little bits of for your social media content. Does that make sense?

Meredith: 9:13

Yeah, it does. It does make sense. I just don't do it, you do it really? Well, I do not yet.

Meredith's Husband: 9:19

See, like into in the world today. Like, it's all everything is about content, you need content, you need content for everything. So you, if you try to build, you know, a mountain of content for SEO and a mountain of content for social media and a mountain of content for something else, you're you've just run out of time, just so the goal should be create your mountain of content. And then you take little bits of that mountain and you put some on Instagram, and some on Facebook, and some on Twitter and some on LinkedIn. And you distributed spread seeds, because you don't there's not enough time in the day to create different sets of content for all these places. So if you are creating content for your blog, that is a resource. And let's say you have an article in it. It's a sites like this podcast six points about SEO that are awesome, right? That's going to be at least six pieces of content. It's going to go on my blog, there's one that's one big piece, and then that's going to be split up and put all over other channels. Right. So that's kind of and I'm not saying I'm great at it. I'm really good at it, I think. So you want to create your content, and your content is your content. And then it lives on your blog, and then you distribute it through the channel. through Instagram, social media,

Meredith: 10:35

can I just take a minute? Like 20 years ago, if you said that sentence, you would sound like a crazy person

Meredith's Husband: 10:43

20 years ago, any conversation we have throughout the day, we would sound like crazy people.

Meredith: 10:48

Do you understand? Like, you create the content? Put it on your blog? Yeah. And that's your media for the

Meredith's Husband: 10:56

month. That's a topic for another another episode. I think. It's interesting, but it's so anyway, back to the list. That's gonna bring us to reason number five, why SEO is awesome. And it's kind of along the same lines. With SEO, if you're building your content, you, you own your content. It's on your site, you're building your empire and you own it. You've got the keys to the castle.

Meredith: 11:22

That is that is yours. Yes. That's not

Meredith's Husband: 11:25

the case. If you are building on, say, Facebook, or if you're if you're building something on Facebook, or Instagram or Twitter, they can take you down anytime they talk. They can take it down, but the rules are going to change. Yeah. So whatever you're doing on any of those platforms, just know that the platform may change will change. It will change. Facebook and Instagram are and tick tock are the are you know, how are the big ones now and the most recent? Yeah, that'll change. I remember my MySpace like Friendster. Yeah. Well, MySpace, I think now is called Facebook. Even Zuckerberg has been has said, like, oh, yeah, we just kind of did a lot of the same stuff. But you know, that the if even if the platform stays the same, the rules are going to change. This happens all the time. All the engagement. Yeah. Even things that like Facebook said to do? No, I don't care that

Meredith: 12:24

you're engaging. Oh, yes. True.

Meredith's Husband: 12:28

That was a good one. Thanks.

Meredith: 12:31

That was wild. What we've been waiting for from Meredith, what was I talking about? Rules of Engagement,

Meredith's Husband: 12:41

the rules of engagement will change. And this happens all the time. Even stuff that Facebook said, like a year ago, oh, to all our creators and advertisers, you need to do this. And then this will happen a year later, that's they changed their mind. And they're not doing that. And there's a lot right now, there are a lot of creators who are super pissed off with Facebook.

Meredith: 13:03

Because people then find a way to get around all of it. And then Facebook goes, no,

Meredith's Husband: 13:10

no, no, no, they just they keep growing. And they they keep wanting to obviously make more money, trying to figure out how they can monetize your content, your content is what's making them money, a new topic for another episode.

Meredith: 13:25

Another day.

Meredith's Husband: 13:26

So then the last point, and this is, I think these are all big ones. But this is an especially big one. Yes. You remember one of the things we talked about why SEO sucks, is it? It takes time? Yes. Well, one of the biggest reasons why SEO is awesome. Is it lasts a long time. Yeah.

Meredith: 13:42

Right? And is it the more time you put into it? The more it helps you?

Meredith's Husband: 13:48

Well, I mean, you will Yes. But I would say in general, I would say what comes fast goes fast, right? In SEO and everything really. But you know, compare that to others that like on social media, like if I do a post on Instagram, how long is it before that post is ancient history? Right? Like 30 seconds. I don't know. If you build your rankings, and let's say you get to the top of Google for some of your keywords, they're gonna be there for a long time, you know, not not days, not weeks, months at the minimum. And then you're probably talking about yours. So, for example, the blog that I built for Meritus husband.com. Yes. I built that last year. I just did a whole bunch of blog entries about how to deal with certain SEMrush issues. And I started getting lots of traffic. I haven't done anything. In terms of SEO, I haven't done anything extra special for it. I just created it. It got to the it's getting good organic traffic, I haven't touched it really for months, it's still getting 1000s of visitors per month. Wow. That's so that's the type of and it's going to stay that way. You know, eventually it will start to trail off. And I would lose that if I don't, you know, do some upkeep if I don't keep adding content, which I will do. But it's just going to last a long time. There's not there's not much else out there in the online world, you know, ads, they will not you know, they they run as as long as you are actively paying for them. Right? There's not much else out there. That's gonna has any lasting power.

Meredith: 15:23

Because where's it going to go?

Meredith's Husband: 15:25

Where's what kind of go

Meredith: 15:26

content on

Meredith's Husband: 15:28

your content stays? Yeah, yes. On the interweb Yeah, and remember, you own it. Nope. already else has the ability to take it down. Now if you if you do build good rankings, and then you don't do anything and just sit back, like I said that it'll last months at least it will start to trail off over time,

Meredith: 15:46

because somebody else is going to be working on it. Yeah, exactly.

Meredith's Husband: 15:49

But it's not going to be like, your number one today and tomorrow, you're gone. If you're if you don't stay active with it right. Now, I think that there was something in that first point that I mentioned that I was going to talk about later. I don't think I did. Okay. I don't remember what that first point was.

Meredith: 16:07

The first point of why, why? Why SEO is great.

Meredith's Husband: 16:11

Yeah, it was a career. It was like, it can build your career and my career. Yeah, no. Oh, I know.

Meredith: 16:19

You built it. And of course, I did have something.

Meredith's Husband: 16:22

You did the work. Yeah, I brought attention to your right.

Meredith: 16:27

You brought the eyeballs. Yeah. And then people that the people decided

Meredith's Husband: 16:32

Cafe pa

Meredith: 16:33

yo nights. Were not over. Goodbye, church.

Meredith's Husband: 16:38

Is that special? That from something? It's like

Meredith: 16:41

a chance from marches? I've been at people,

Meredith's Husband: 16:45

you know, right? Yes. That does sound familiar. Okay, so what I am going to do right now is I'll probably go back and listen to this episode. And try to figure out what that one thing was, and then I'll come back if if necessary, okay, and add a little note. But otherwise? No, you won't. You'll be gone. I'll be gone. Yeah. Or maybe I'll come back with you. Okay, turn your mic, Becca. It's on. So I mentioned in number one, you're talking, we started talking about a little bit about social media and how social media can build your career. And I said, I'll talk a little bit more about that. It was good. It was it was Reason number four. I said, Oh Moore's coming up. And reason number three, it's Reason number four,

Meredith: 17:30

two and four often used three one and for

Meredith's Husband: 17:34

any numbers if you're talking to me with any numbers as Reason number four, and how your your use content and then repurpose your blog content for social media. Okay, that's it back to the show. Those are six reasons why I think SEO is pretty awesome thank you, Dolly.

Meredith: 18:02

Thank you Dolly. The great Dolly Parton.

Meredith's Husband: 18:05

Until next time, bye bye. 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